Life Before YFC

Did you know that Youth for Christ meetings in Cambridge took place regularly in the 1950's?

John Wick writes:

I was very young at the time and remember my parents and my older brother going to the monthly meetings in the City restaurant. This was a building opposite lloyds bank, and was demolished to make room for the Lion Yard development. In my teens the name was changed to the Civic restaurant, but it's purpose didn't change. It was a canteen type of place for city works, serving bangers and mash etc. Tea was in two sizes of cup! small and large. It was hired out in the evenings for social events, I think these included dances but my family didn't talk about such dubious happenings!

I would guess that at the time the YFC meeting was running, there was probably no official affiliation, but YFC meetings sprung up in many places following the visits of Billy Graham to Britain in the late forties and espicially in 1954/55 when he came to Harringay arena. I do believe that many of the people that went were not that young, and a lot were from church backgrounds. Certainly several people from Harston Baptist used to go. I have a photograph somewhere of four people standing outsdie a meeting, but where I am not sure. By the time I was a teen in the early sixties the name had changed, but the people had not, they had just grown older! It was always said that it was changed so that older people didn't have to leave and they could still be in charge. I cannot vouch for the truth of that comment.

I do remember that there used to be good support from Panton Hall, Queen Ediths Hall and also St Barnabas Church, but the numbers were not great, and even in those days young people were not that keen to come and listen to a soloist, not in their first flush of youth, followed by preacher.
This meeting was then known as Cambridge Christian Challenge or CCC rather than the original YFC of the mid fifties. It was arranged by the then Cambridge Evangelical Association, which was a cross church organisation. This group did organise a couple of two week missions on Midsummer common, with national speakers and a choir. I think they were the guiding committe that supported the TV relays of Billy Graham to the Regal cinema in 1967."

Can you add any details to the history of interdenomational youthwork in Cambridge? Please click here to email us your memoirs!