Words: Sonal Patel

Patrick Regan, CEO of the urban youth charity XLP, talks to us about his new book Conspiracy of the Insignificant. In it, he writes about his childhood growing up in a nice neighbourhood, his journey from rough London estates to poor Ghanaian villages and the life lessons he learnt along the way.

SB: Tell us a bit about yourself.
PR: My name’s Patrick Regan. I’ve been working with young people in London for 15 years. I’m the founder and Director of XLP – a charity which aims to meet the social, educational and behavioural needs of young people, empowering them to make wise lifestyle choices and realise their potential. One of my passions is mission, in London but also globally, this has taken me around the world to places like Ghana, South East Asia, St Vincent’s, Trench Town and Guyana. I’m married to Diane and have two amazing children, Keziah and Daniel (which explains why I can often be heard singing ‘What’s the story in Balamory?’).

SB:What kind of work does XLP charity do?
PR: The aim of XLP is to communicate and demonstrate the love of God and see places of trouble become places of hope. We do this through working in schools, helping young people with their reading and literacy skills, taking assemblies, running lunch time activities and taking lessons on issues such as anger management and sexual health etc. One in three young people have had sex under the age of 16. Over one third of all pregnant women between the ages of 13 and 15 end their pregnancy in abortion, this is really important stuff.

We also run an arts programme that gives young people an opportunity to express what is going on in their communities through the performing arts, they can perform to family and friends and it is a platform to show their potential. We have a community bus that travels onto some of London’s more challenging estates providing IT facilities and detached youth work. We resource these activities through training year out students on our course: “eXperience”. The students operate in borough teams and are also connected into local churches. We are always trying to bridge the gap between schools, urban young people and the local church.

SB: You’ve co-written a book called Conspiracy of the Insignificant. What’s it all about?
PR: I grew up in a nice neighbourhood. At 16 I came to London to do some mission work. God broke my heart for the inner city and I desperately wanted to see a move of God. Soon the issues that were in the community became my issues and I wanted to learn how to deal with them. As a result of all these things XLP was born, and God has taken me on a journey from the roughest estates in London to Jamaica’s Trench Town and to poverty stricken villages in Ghana. Through it all I learnt that bringing the Kingdom of God to a place can mean anything from helping a child learn to read to negotiating between gang leaders. The book looks at this journey and explores some of the issues that we’ve grappled with.

SB: What did you intend to achieve, if anything, from writing the book?
PR: There are five things that I hope the book achieves. Firstly I wanted to highlight the issues faced by young people in South East London; Issues which I believe are common to inner city areas across the country. Secondly, to give an understanding of how to cross cultural barriers. We’ve learnt a lot of valuable lessons and made mistakes over the years XLP has been working, the book shares these stories that may help other people on their journeys. I’ve also tried in the book to explore it means to bring the kingdom of God to a city on day-to-day basis and through these stories and exploration of God’s word to encourage and inspire people to work within inner city areas and to commit to being there for the long haul.

SB: What part of working in schools motivated you to write the book? What were your concerns?
PR: When we started XLP the aim was to go to schools and say that we are from the local church, we believe in serving our local community and as a school you are a massive part of our local community, what can we do help and serve. Working in a school is an amazing opportunity, there is nowhere else you can speak to so many non Christians, the church must be engaged in serving local schools. XLP made the conscious move from working exclusively in schools to working in the community as well; we recognised the importance of meeting young people where they were at, on their turf. The concern I have at the moment is that there are a whole load of young people in our urban communities between 11 and 14 who often come from dysfunctional backgrounds and are on the verge of getting into gangs. If we don’t disciple them and get alongside them now by the time they reach 16 they will be out of control. We need to go to where people are and not expect them to suddenly come into our churches.

SB: What projects are you currently involved in?
PR: The Arts Showcase that I mentioned earlier is one of our projects really developing at the moment and we have several more shows coming up. The showcase gives both the students and their families reasons to be proud, often for the first time.  The Bible speaks about God placing the lonely in a family and I knew God was also calling XLP to help put the lonely back into their own families too. John is a classic example.  He was from the Aylesbury Estate - a typical South London estate with high unemployment and crime rates, where the inhabitants often have cripplingly low self-esteem. He had a great talent for playing the bongos (he taught himself by tapping on the desks at school) though none of his family knew about it.  When they came to the showcase John’s dad shed tears of pride over his son – he was used to being told about John being in detention, not showing such incredible talent in front of so many people.