Eye Level FAQ

eye level is Scripture Union’s project to find new ways to make Jesus known to children and young people who are unconnected to a church community. It aims to provide ideas, resources and training to enable and support Christians and churches to look out for, make contact with and make Jesus known to these young people and children.

Increasingly fewer young people and children are in contact with a local church in any way, never mind in ways that allows them to hear the Bible’s message, know Jesus and take their place among God’s people. Instead of expecting them to come to church, church must take Jesus to them. Scripture Union saw a need to look for new ways to do this; to find some new and effective places to meet and talk, methods of making contact and ideas that will work to make Jesus known to these children and young people.

If someone climbs a ladder or lies on the floor their eye level changes radically and they have a different perspective on their surroundings. The intention of eye level is to help Christians see things through the eyes of those who don’t have any experience of church, so that are able to talk about Jesus at the right level: in relevant ways and words. That should help children and young people catch sight of him – look him in the eye, as it were – and get to know him.

There are a number of ways that you and your church can get involved:

• Assess your current children’s and youth work: does it only involve those whose parents are in church or does it attract those with no church background as well?
• Look at the area around you to see where children and young people are. What are the things that take up their time? What makes up their world? Are there ways in which you could get involved in their lives and so build the sort of friendships that allow you to show God’s love to them and, in time, to talk about Jesus?
• What are the needs of these different groups that are not currently being met? Do they need somewhere to go in the evening? Help with homework? A place where the parent with whom they don’t live can meet them at a weekend? A safe area in which to skateboard? Are there ways in which the church can meet these needs?
• Is there a need to set up new work that gives you specific opportunities to talk about Jesus? What should it be like and when should it run?
• If these children or young people began to come to church, would they be able to participate in the worship? Are there adjustments that you could make so that they would understand what is said and done, and so become part of the church family with ease?
• You can pray for young people and children who have no knowledge of Jesus, and pray for those who are making him known to them.

A large number of churches run successful holiday clubs each summer but there is a need to maintain contact with the children and their families all through the year. So we want to encourage churches to run weekly, Bible-based clubs that are similar in style and that take place either after school or on a Saturday morning, and so meet the needs of those children who would not normally be in church on a Sunday.

As you will see from the Weekly Clubs page, there are lots of different styles of club that you can run – whatever the connection point is between you and the young people and children in your area could be the start of an eye level club.

Although it doesn’t help to label young people and children, it is useful to recognise whether or not they come from a church background. That way we should avoid making assumptions about their knowledge and understanding, so that we talk about Jesus in everyday words and ideas, and relate the Bible’s message to their world. We may describe someone as ‘unchurched’ or ‘unconnected to a church community’ if they have no regular past experience of church, as a reminder to ourselves that we need to think carefully about what we say to them.

We can help you with training in a number of ways:

• Check out the In Training page (it will grow monthly with new articles)
• There are training pages in Streetwise and successive weekly club resource books
• Contact us via trainman@scriptureuniuon.org.uk for details of training events planned for your area, or invite us to run one!

There are a variety of styles of club that you can run, to suit you and the young people or children that you want to meet. See the Holiday Clubs and Weekly Clubs pages for more details about this.

We are not here to tell anyone that there way of ‘doing church’ is wrong! But we do want to help you assess how ‘user-friendly’ your church is for anyone with no church background, and discover ways to make worship more accessible to those with no previous experience of church. See the Have I got Church for You? page for some questions to set you thinking from their perspective.