Gavin Calver on faith and young people

What a lot of young people struggle with is when they feel they are doing their best and they meet with some older people for whom Jesus is an associate and not the transforming figure in their life.

Jonathan: That's an interesting point. If a young person came to you now and said Gavin, the kind of things that people have told me and things I am trying to find in my faith and my relationship with God, I'm just not seeing it; I am disappointed, I feel like I've have been sold something and its not really there. How would you encourage them to move on from that point?

Gavin: I think we have to start with a faith that's vulnerable, not superior. If a young person says to me, 'I have been praying about loads of things and sometimes it feels like I'm praying and there is no-one there', you might as well say that I feel the same. The difference is I have fewer questions with Jesus. I know he is the way the truth and the life and I am going to persevere through. I think the problem is today's culture doesn't say, 'does it work?' but 'how does it feel?' and there's a lost art of perseverance that we need to bring back in to faith as well.

Growing up, the shop at the bottom of my road was the most successful one and it was the TV repair shop. These things don't exist anymore. We live in an instant culture where if it doesn't seem to work we throw it away. I think if I was a young person in my youth group I would seek to work at the need for a persevering faith and not a faith that the second it doesn't feel as vibrant as it did in that big spiritual moment last Saturday night, you give up on it.

Jonathan: Who is your book particularly for?

Gavin: I first wrote it when I was 21 and I'm now 30. It surprised me how popular it has been. I wrote it for young people, but it's proved to be far more successful with older people who feel divorced from the mind of a teenager. It was written for young people and it's still relevant for young people to be able to keep going with Jesus, but the real market for it is every adult Christian to get an understanding of the mindset of teenagers and be able to reach out to them in a new and fresh way.

Jonathan: You are also the national director for YFC. For those who don't know about the work of YFC, what is it all about?

Gavin: We teach teams to reach young people for Jesus. We do this primarily through our 65 centres throughout Britain. We work in schools, prison and churches seeking to reach young people with the good news of Jesus in relevant ways to them. At the moment we work with 300,000 young people a month, but our real dream that we'd love people to stand with us in prayer, in finance, in heart for, is by 2020 we'd love to reach a million young people a month and see a whole generation of teenagers transformed.

Jonathan: That's an incredible vision. What's your website if people want to go to it?

Gavin: It's www.yfc.co.uk

Buy 'Disappointed with Jesus. Why do so many young people give up on God?' from Cross Rhythms Direct for only £7.59.