GYM: Guildford Youth Movement is a youth project run by St Joseph's RC Church, Guildford

GYM is an open, accepting, non-judgemental and fun environment for young people in the Guildford area where they can grow as a community. GYM seeks to understand, encourage and empower young people aged between 13-18 years of age, in their search for meaning of life for today and provides a model of how Jesus met with people.

We are currently running Youth Alpha Tech Stream. The Youth Alpha course is an opportunity for anyone (church goers or non-church goers alike!) to explore the Christian faith in a relaxed, non-threatening way over ten thought-provoking sessions. GYM started off the back of a youth alpha course many years ago and it has been run a few times since. We highly recommend it!

We like to run a social action/teaching course alternatively to a faith course. Last term we went through the Soul Action video resources. These videos give a few little investigations into
what following Jesus and responding to God's heart for justice are all about. Each video were powerful and thougth provoking and really got our young people talking and praying. A really great resource that needs no preparation. Highly recommended.

We have also gone through the "Discipleship training series 1" by Tim Hawkins. We didn't actually finish this series but it is definately something that we will revisit.

With the general election coming up in May we are going to be going through the Why Bother 2010 resource during one of our sessions. This session encourages a group to consider their involvement in the upcoming General Election. It will help them to reflect on their participation in the political process, and will challenge them to think about the implications of their faith on political decision-making. Even though our young people are not necessarily old enough to vote, they know plently of people who are and they are the citizens of the future.

Tim Spurgeon was invited by Fr Ian (former parish Priest for St Joseph's) to set up GYM, with the remit to create a 'youth movement' rather than a 'youth club'. The idea behind a youth movement was to create an environment for young people in the Guildford area where they could grow as a community. Tim says "For me, GYM has come to represent a model of the way in which Jesus met with people, on one level - open, accepting, non-judgemental and yet at the same time a powerful, life-changing encounter". After 5 years of amazing work at St Jo's, Tim is taking a well deserved break to spend some quality time with his family in lucky NZ.

GYM is now run by , who was appointed as Parish youth coordinator for St Joseph's Church in September 2007. We have been exploring discipleship at GYM this year through "Discipleship Training Series 1 - My New Life" by Tim Hawkins.