School and College Pastor initiatives are set up and run by a group of local churches. To join your nearest initiative or to start a new project, please read below to find out more.
Becoming a School or College Pastor
School and College Pastors are people with an open-minded attitude, an ability to accept all people, and who are committed to offering young people time and love. All school pastors are Christians who agree with the core values of the School Pastors movement.
You do not need previous experience working in schools or with young people, as your training will include topics such as:
- Society and youth culture
- Listening and communication skills
- Conflict management
- Safeguarding
What is the level of commitment for a school pastor?
School pastors are volunteers. Like Street Pastors, it is helpful if you can commit to at least one duty per month, but you will undoubtedly find that the more you commit the better your relationships with the young people will be.
If you want to get involved, please click here to contact our national School Pastors coordinator, Daniel Stone.
A guide to training
All school pastors are trained in accordance with our training programme set out in the School Pastors Training Manual, compiled by The Ascension Trust and the Churches Child Protection Advisory Service (CCPAS).
The Training Manual contains 10 sections. It is important to include all of these topics in the training, though there is flexibility to tailor the programme to the specific needs of a school or locality. For example, we recommend that some sections are adapted for delivery by each School Pastors team, so that the host school’s policies and procedures, its unique geography and demography can be represented. The same can be said for College Pastors in the +16 context. It would be important that the college took some responsibility to cover the differing issues/vulnerabilities this age group might face.
For the same reasons, we recommend that, where possible, these training sessions are also delivered by officers from the agencies concerned. In this way the School Pastors Training Manual has been developed as working model for the training of school pastors nationwide with loose-leaf inserts, creating maximum flexibility.
Each section of the training contains a number of common elements designed to assist learning as follows.
- Summary and objectives stated at the outset of each section.
- Subject explanations for sub-sections providing detail about the subject matter.
- Practical exercises and discussion points to aid understanding.
- Kingdom principles to reinforce the Biblical underpinning of each subject area.
- Learning outcomes to clarify what trainees will have learned throughout the section.
- My notes to keep a record of specific learning points and any action required.
This training manual is accompanied by a set of PowerPoint slides for use by School Pastors teams undertaking training for new school pastors. The slides follow the content of the manual throughout the 10 sections. The methods of training delivery should be as varied as possible and address the different learning styles of trainees, making best use of all supporting materials.
It is vital that The Ascension Trust continues to deliver training that is locally defined, resourced by ongoing learning and reflection and committed to the sharing of best practice. The Trust has developed a partnership with CCPAS to develop and review these training materials to ensure they remain relevant and up to date.
