JOHN DEMPSTER: Christian leader helping everyone to feel included

Tim Raynes is passionate about helping children and young people in Scotland who are on the margins. "The Bible is so clear about God’s heart for the poor," he tells me. While caring for all of us, it seems God has particular concern for the marginalised.

Young people can face marginalisation for a variety of reasons: 25 per cent of young Scots live in relative poverty and daily face daily struggles which can include dysfunction. Having additional support needs; being care-experienced; having a parent in prison; being of a different skin colour from your peers can all lead to a painful sense of exclusion.

I’m talking to this intelligent, articulate Christian leader in the coffee shop at King’s Inverness in Smithton where he is an elder. He’s telling me about his role as Scripture Union Scotland’s ‘Ministry at the Margins Lead’.

I ask if he has personal experience of being marginalised.

He tells me about his youngest daughter who has additional support needs. Watching her struggles – to make friends, to reach goals and move forward, to understand the world – has deepened his empathy with those on the margins.

Tim’s previous role with the Christian youth organisation involved working with churches across Scotland who were running missions and holiday clubs where local children would have fun, feel welcomed and valued and explore Christian faith.

But he found that the majority of the churches running these events were in the more affluent areas, and he began to experiment with resourcing churches in areas of deprivation to give ongoing help to young people and their families in a holistic way.

Words about Jesus are not enough, but must be accompanied by actions. It’s a question of "being good news, not just speaking good news," Tim says. He describes a Scripture Union-related project in Glasgow, Junction 12, where staff work day-in, day-out with young people, mentoring, supporting, helping.

"It’s about long-term faithfulness," as he puts it, by which he means an on-going presence on the ground, as youth workers express in their living something of the Jesus who befriended those on the margin. "It’s about being there. It’s not about judging, it’s about listening and listening and listening."

While Tim shares this vision with Christians around Scotland, one day a week he will be "hands on": he hopes to set up a local project along the lines he’s described, working with churches in and around Merkinch in Inverness.

And all of us who, for whatever reason, stand on the edge, can be sure that God listens, listens, listens and does not judge, this God whose empathy with our woundedness was deepened through watching a beloved son walk the margins, and suffer for it.

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