Ninety-five young people, including three from Scotland, gathered at King’s Park Conference Centre in Northampton from 7-9 March for the United Reformed Church (URC) Youth Assembly 2025.

At the event, themed “All are Welcome”, a robust debate was held about encouraging local churches to sign up to the Welcome Directory, which supports prison leavers with rejoining faith communities. The directory is an independent multi-faith charity that lists faith communities welcoming and accepting of former prisoners. Issues of safety, safeguarding procedures and logistics were addressed. Youth Assembly accepted the proposal and with the support of the URC's Mission Committee, will aim to bring a resolution to General Assembly to support this.

During the  Assembly Maya Withall was inducted as the Youth Assembly Moderator for 2025-26. Maya is a law student at Aberdeen University and was joined by her sister and parents for this special moment in her faith journey. Also attending Youth Assembly was Michael Smith from Augustine United Church who is continuing in his role as Synod representative on the National Youth Executive.  We wish Maya and Michael well in their roles for the year ahead. 

In a well-received keynote presentation Dr Lisa Adjei, Head of Racial Justice Priority for the Church of England’s Diocese of London, urged Assembly members to shift their thinking from “welcome for all” to “belonging for all”. She said “belonging” means we are all accepted as we are and “can each bring something of ourselves to the table”.

The Moderator of General Assembly, the Revd Tim Meadows, led in worship and offered a challenge to ask not “Who is my neighbour?” but, rather, “Are we going to be the neighbour? Are we going to be that welcome?”

Other highlights included workshops that covered topics such as refugees, faith on social media, and vocation and call. A guided session also enabled members to highlight issues important to them.

Another motion discussed by Assembly was a review of Youth Assembly Executive structures which recommended dividing Executive responsibilities into three areas; a representation task group (to include reps to General Assembly), a Youth Assembly planning team; and a synod reps task group. The aim is to reduce the time commitment for individual executive members and to encourage greater participation. The proposals were accepted, initially on a one-year trial basis.

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