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by Tony Davenport

It appears a humble loving Christian youth ministry has been far more successful in tackling youth crime than politicians and bureaucrats who’ve invested tens of millions of dollars — possibly hundreds of millions — in trying to reduce one of Australia’s fastest-growing social problems.

Street Peace has effectively dissolved the youth gangs from the Melbourne suburb of Frankston. Street Peace is a not-for-profit, faith-based organisation providing outreach, mentoring, training and employment opportunities for high-risk youth based in the heart of Frankston in Melbourne’s outer southeast.

Founder and CEO Jay Shelling is a former builder and landscaper with a heart for young people. He told Vision Radio:

“We have a serious issue with family breakdown across our nation. I think the restlessness of that is producing youth who are not able to concentrate at school, so they’re just getting disengaged from school or they’re getting involved in drug and alcohol addictions and self-medicate.

“Many of them congregate to try to find some sense of belonging and family that they should have at home. All of this results in the blind leading the blind and activities where youth are involved in crime, in different levels of anti-social behaviour, and in many, many, cases they’re actually also very vulnerable to self-harm as well. I guess the fabric of our society is being torn apart within the family that’s resulting in so many of these kids being found on the fringes.”

Searching for Belonging

While there’s community pressure to give police and courts a whole lot more empowerment to crack down on youth offenders, Street Peace takes a “love and kindness” approach to the problem, as Jay Shelling explained in an extended interview with Vision Radio’s 20Twenty program.

“We, at Street Peace, have a heart to get alongside these youth and care for them. We had a pretty big gang 20 years ago called the Apex Gang. That was sort of the beginning of this youth issue that we’re seeing currently. One of the key gang members said that when they joined Apex, it actually gave them the support that they needed and were looking for in their own community, which lacked the ability to get alongside them. So, they found it within the gang culture.

“It’s not just loving. I mean, we have tough love with these kids, but we are actually seeing them, seeing their value, hearing their stories, understanding where they’re coming from and creating a safe space and a safe environment for them to connect and engage with healthy adults through trusting relationships that allow us to speak into their lives. I am truly convinced that love transforms people. And it’s the one thing that will remain forever.

“I think a lot of these young people are looking for a sense of belonging. They’re looking for an adult person who has a willing and listening ear to hear their stories. They’re in much need of care. A lot of them are getting neglected at home. I would say that 95% of the time, when you actually go home and you see the family situation, it suddenly starts to make sense why they’re involved in crime.

“Street Peace has outreach workers that actually go into the fray. We go into the spaces where we have youth hotspots, where they hang out, and we’re out every week or multiple times a week on the streets, connecting with these kids. We’ve been doing it for four years.

We started with youth who were 13 that have gone all the way through to 17, 18, 19 now. We start working with them when they’re young and journeying with them — there are new ones coming in every week — we find new kids out on the street that are disengaged from school and have run away from home.

‘They’re trying to find a sense of identity and belonging and value, and they’re out there getting involved in a host of different things and we’re connecting with them. Street Peace has become a family for many of these kids. Every three or four months, we do a little questionnaire for the youth. We ask, why do you come to Street Peace? The overwhelming response that we get from these youth — we have up to 80 on a Wednesday night at our NEST drop-in centre — is that Street Peace is family, Street Peace is home, it’s safer at Street Peace than at home.”

Family and Identity

“A lot of these kids are finding a healthy family environment that they’re looking for. We’re a faith-based organisation, and I love the fact that God started with a family in the garden, and He’s coming back for a Bride. He’s going to come back for a family.

One thing that the church represents, and carries is that anything we should carry to the world is a heart and an identity of a family that so many of these kids are longing for right now.”

Jay Shelling says his ministry relentlessly pursues volatile, at-risk youth. It’s not just hanging around waiting for them to come to Street Peace and the NEST for that sense of family.

“It might sound crazy, but it’s as little as celebrating their birthdays. Many of these kids don’t even have their birthday celebrated by their family. It’s the little things. It’s the care. It’s do you need food? Do you need clothing? It’s seeing the need. You need help with a resumé, let’s do that. It’s that mentoring relationship, that one-to-one where it’s like, number one, we’ve established trust. We build trust with these youth. Once we’ve got trust, we can lead them.”

“We have a specific strategy. And we found it’s worked amazingly in Frankston. We’ve seen whole gangs dissolve in the vicinity, which is phenomenal. We don’t even have gangs in the Frankston region right now, which is awesome.

“We found that if we went after the leaders, we have the most problematic youth. They come into the NEST or its surrounds and they’ll create problems. Often, society can tend to kick those guys out because other kids are scared of them or whatever, but we realised that at Street Peace, we actually need to draw them even closer. We need to pursue them with love, and what we do is we pursue them, and we don’t give up, and we don’t let go, and we don’t relent.”

Relapses and Restoration

“We’ve had youth who have been mentored, gone on a massive journey and then swung back into drugs. I’ve got one young guy who’s worked with me for like a year-and-a-half, and then he had a terrible breakdown with his family and just went and did some shocking things. He’s not proud of it.

“Sitting with me last week, he was crying as he’s going: I’m going to go to jail. But he’s come back, and he knows the truth and he’s experienced true love and experienced true worth. And he knows, he’s actually lived a life free from drugs for a season. And he knows he can do better. And he knows there’s people who can see that he does better and don’t just see him because of the mistakes he’s made. They actually see him for the value, the intrinsic value that he has. That speaks volumes.”

“I’m not saying that these young people shouldn’t go to prison or experience penalties for what they’ve done. 100% they should. But we don’t define them as problem youth. We see that they carry the value that God’s placed upon them. God saw them in their mother’s womb and had a plan, a purpose for their lives. And we see them like that, and we keep believing. We don’t give up. Their past — and some of them have experienced severe trauma — doesn’t have to dictate their future.

“They don’t have to live a victim mentality for the rest of their lives. They can actually overcome. That’s one reason why at the NEST, we have people every week who come and share their stories of how they came out of difficult situations through faith and through making good choices, though a life that can actually succeed. We really try to encourage these young people, not only love them, but also see them chase their hopes and dreams and callings.”

Jay Shelling told Vision Radio he can see Street Peace expanding across Australia.

“We’ve got our target set on three regions right now. But I believe that there are people all across this nation who actually have a mandate on their lives to do this, and we really believe that. I’ll just be straight out as a Christian organisation and say we believe that Jesus is the answer and that his Bride is the answer to the problems of this world. The love of God can transform.

“So we’re really keen to engage with new regions where there are these youth that are hanging around and help and mentor and disciple them and also launch new Street Peace hubs around the country. That’s my main focus right now. I’ve taken my hands off locally. We’ve got an amazing team that runs it locally.

“I’m spending the next six months looking at building a strategic plan and our capability to see the transformation that we’ve seen in Frankston just grow across our country. I personally believe that we can see this whole youth problem curbed in our nation through the local Bride with the salt and the light that it’s called to be, to love the least of these in the community.”

Click on the link below to listen to the full interview with Street Peace Founder Jay Shelling:

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Republished with thanks to Vision Christian Media via the Australian Prayer Network. Image courtesy of Street Peace.