Great expectations for teenage girls at North Brisbane Corps
When Arabella Holley was a young high schooler, a girls’ group at North Brisbane Corps (NBC) had a profound impact on her life. Now 21, Arabella is the youth ministry coordinator at NBC and, as part of her role, runs the girls’ group – called Expectations – which is impacting the lives of other young women.
“It’s very special,” she says, “to now be making an open and safe space for young girls to explore their faith and learn life lessons. By doing a program like this, we can disciple the girls and help them to then go out and disciple others.
“As a young teenager (in Years 7 and 8), it was good for me to be in a group that was led by an older female, someone not too much older, that I could look up to and trust and learn from in that space. And someone different to my parents.
“Bible study for teenagers can be a bit weird. You go to camps, and you do all those things, and you're like, ‘Yeah, I'll read my Bible, and I'll do this.’ And then you get home, and it’s like, I don’t really pick up my Bible again, or I sit in church, but I don’t really listen. And so, I found doing the group with my friends was an intentional Bible study time. It’s always fun doing it together and being able to talk about it later.
“So, that’s why I wanted to pick it up and be like, hey, let me do that for you guys too.”
Chloe assists Arabella with Expectations, which has around 15-20 girls on the list.
“As someone who has recently navigated the teenage years as a Christian, helping other girls get through that time is important to me,” Chloe says.
The girls love it! One participant recently said, “Expectations is a lovely way to connect with other girls my age and talk about things that we should know as we get older, like relationships and being a child of God. It’s a wonderful way of connecting and strengthening friendships in the church.”
Another girl said, “I like learning about God in a way that’s easy for teenagers to understand.”
“I like Expectations because you get together as a group, and you get to talk about anything. We learn about the Bible and the meaning to the verses.” – Expectations participant
Transition focus
Expectations is open to any girl in Years 7-9 and takes place monthly during the Sunday service at NBC. Girls from the corps attend the group (there is also a boys’ group), and occasionally bring a friend along. The corps also runs “a multitude” of girls’ and boys’ Bible studies at youth group on Friday nights, which attracts more young people from the community.
“The girls’ and boys’ groups help those in the early years of high school who are transitioning from a weekly Sunday School program or kids’ church,” Arabella explains.
“As part of this, our ‘expectations’ are that they will be part of a ministry a couple of weeks in the month, attend group each month, and sit in the Sunday service at other times.”
Once the girls finish Year 9, they are encouraged, as seniors, to participate in Friday night Bible studies at youth and to be active in ministry.
“We are looking at Valere, the new Salvation Army resource for young women and teens for that age group,” says Arabella.
Click here to read the Salvos Online story about this new resource.
Girls’ identity
“Our focus in Expectations this term is on identity, helping the girls discover who they are themselves first and foremost through Jesus, and then helping them help others,” Arabella shares. “We’re also discussing self-love and issues they are facing as they progress through their early teenage years.”
Arabella and Chloe have made personalised notebooks for the girls, each with the girl’s initials and a “bunch of identity Bible verses inside”.
“These verses emphasise that the girls are each a child of God, wonderfully made in God’s image, made for a reason, forgiven and never alone,” they explain. “Over the year, we have been unpacking each verse, having conversations around them and tackling the issues that come up.”
Arabella and Chloe also discuss life issues with the girls, including topics around relationships.
“We ask permission from parents before we talk about any deeper conversations and have good relationships with them,” Arabella explains. “We tackle a bit of the hard and tricky topics but not in a super heavy way, and we make sure we study something different to what they’re looking at in youth group or that girls may not want to talk about in front of boys.
“The girls keep coming back, so it’s obviously meaning something to them.”
“We are intentional about them doing most of the talking – we are just there to facilitate the conversations, talk with and not at them, gently challenge them if needed, but basically, they lead the space. And they can always talk to us privately if there is something they don’t want to share in the group.”
Feedback
The girls’ parents are very positive about the influence of Expectations. “They thank us for what we do because we are teaching the girls,” says Arabella. “Obviously, it’s all done to the glory of God. But their daughters aren’t following the crowd of being out at parties at a young age or doing those things, and some of them have started their own little Bible study among themselves.”
Bibles
North Brisbane Corps also funds a Bible for each of the girls in the group.
“We buy brand new Bibles, individual ones for each girl [and boy], and write them a note in the front. When a new girl comes in, we buy her a good quality, nice Bible too. There are no repeats or double-ups. We ask them what they would like, and most of the time they say a study Bible so they can write notes down the columns, highlight passages and those sorts of things. We just think it’s more special when a girl's handed a Bible that no one else has.
“We want to step away from phones and Bibles on phones and go back to the physical world and teach them to read it and what everything means.”
