Our church is trying to be good news to the local community. I felt a bit like bad news last night as I helped to eject three young lads aged, probably, not much more than ten from the youth club. They had pushed a female leader down the stairs, climbed on the roof, shoved blu-tack in the yale locks and taunted us, with one foot in the door, that we couldn't lay a finger on them to throw them out because that would be assault. One lad locked himself in the toilets so we ended up boring him out by ignoring him.
The sad thing is that these lads want attention and it is the only way they know how to get it. The very committed leaders of the group rush back from work on a Monday night to be abused and pushed down the stairs. They come back for more week by week because they want to love the lads and be good news to the community.
All of the leaders (and me too) would love to give them a good listening to.
Given that they had already assaulted a leader and were really annoying three other sets of users of our hall (all of which had paid to rent rooms) I found myself ending up using the minimum force necessary to eject them from the premises. As I shut the door in their faces they responded by kicking it (or punching it or something) violently.
I feel that we are really working on a knife edge. These lads would get their Dads round threatening assault charges if we went one small step too far. Most of them however have no relationship with their Dads to speak of. We gather that one lad found that his Mum's boyfriend had smashed every window in their house yesterday. No wonder they learn that damaging things gets attention.
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