Amplify Evangelists Academy review by Olly Shaw
November 25, 2020
|In Youth
Amplify review by Olly Shaw, Youth Worker at St Leonards, Eynsham
Amplify is essentially a year long course for young people from across the country who are already invested in reaching out to their mates and sharing the gospel with them. The aim of the course is to encourage, equip and mentor these young people in evangelism. I put 2 young people forward for the course last year and both were accepted.
Both of the young people who I put forward for Amplify loved it. The talks were some of the “best they had ever heard” and being acknowledged for the ministry they had already been doing was really affirming for them.
When my young people took part last year a key part of the course were the residentials. However, for obvious reasons around the pandemic, residentials will not be a part of the next years program. Ah, happy times, remember when meeting up with young people and youth residentials were a thing? Roll on 2021. Anyway, this year, they have sought to capture the best of what happened and bring the events online to provide space for like minded young people to gather and be resourced.
Another huge part of the course were the regular small group meetings with other like minded young people to share the joys and the pain they had been through when trying to evangelise. Each course leader is given good material to work through with the group but the main thing is to hear each others stories and learn form one-another experiences.
The final element of the course is what they describe as ’specialist mentoring’. Essentially Amplify attempts to group every young person with a specialist in a particular ‘field of evangelism’. For example last year a number of the group was interested in politics, so Amplify set up sessions with people who were practicing evangelism in that field (as well as about 12 other fields!).
I actually helped as a small group leader and attended the residentials for last years Amplify, so I really got to see the inner workings. The whole thing is run by a team of amazing youth workers and evangelists. A massive plus of Amplify for me was seeing my young people be supported and invested in by this incredible team.
If you want to hear a bit more about my experience of it then feel free to get in touch.
If you want to know more about next years Amplify, check out their website here:
Amplify Young Evangelists Academy is a partnership between; Youth For Christ, The Message, Pais Movement, Scripture Union, Church of England, Alpha, Redeemed Christian Church Of God, Advance, Luis Palau, Evangelical Alliance and Hope Together.
