5th Birthday Celebrations

Report by Edward Keene

CEYC recently celebrated its 5th birthday in style.

Not only were there festivities at the usual Synod fringe event in York (the conception anniversary) and at our November meeting in Hertfordshire, we also put on a service of commemoration in Westminster Abbey (third round of cake and back-slapping) at the invitation of ex-National Youth Adviser and long-time CEYC friend, The Very Rev'd John Hall, Dean of the Abbey.

The first five years of CEYC, though stimulating, have not yet produced suffient alumni to pack our the great minster of St Peter on Thorney Island, so our party, drawn from past and current council members, along with friends, family, well-wishers, supporters, functionaries, and hangers-on, occupied only the crossing. Worship was youth-led (ancient and modern sung equally heartily), liturgy youth-designed (though tastefully so), and arrangements youth-co-ordinated. The sermon was left to the dean, who commented, profoundly, with just a touch of wistfulness intincted, on the age of the stones in the abbey. Very old, apparently (if like the dean one is an old-earther).

Lessons from Holy Scripture were on passages used by successive incarnations of CEYC as their memory verses - 1 Timothy 4:12 and so on - and were read by some of those who have served as leaders in the past. Our current Education Officer, The Rev'd Janina Ainsworth led the intercessions, aided by two large 'rolls of record' detailing the life of CEYC.

Though we dispersed to a gloomy wet night, the fire of inward faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, His death and resurrection, had been brightened in all of us through our reunion in worship in the ancient house of God in our nation's capital. We continue to pray for blessings on CEYC, for gospel truth to shine brightly from it, for generosity and Christian love to permeate its discussions, and for it - and its members - to be an effective part of Christ's body here on earth.