How the course works:
eXperience students have their time divided between three main activities: churchwork, schools-work and training:

Schools-work
Students work in schools with their team and team leader including lessons, assemblies and lunch time clubs. Lunch clubs are fun packed and dynamic times sharing how the gospel is relevant to young people and 21st century life, as well as engaging with issues that affect young people, through games, talks, activities, discussions and more. Depending on the borough, lunch-clubs can be from 2-5 times a week. They may be regularly be involved on a weekly basis in helping some young people to read. Lessons and assemblies are also part of the day-today experience.

XLP does R.E. and P.H.S.E. lessons with topics range from the life of Jesus and the Bible, to Drugs and Sex. Some teams are also involved running after schools clubs as well, some of which are held on the XLP youth bus.


Church-work
Part of the students placement is working for the church that they are placed with. This work can take a variety of forms, but typically involves serving the youth-work of the church, such as discipleship or outreach work. It can also involve community work, sports, mentoring of young people or other types of work depending on the church. This work is always done with the support and experience of a youthworker within the church. The church placement is set-up through discussion between the church and the borough leader, aiming to provide a placement that is well matched to the student and their timetable.


Training
The eXperience course uses both in-house teachers such as Patrick Rega, together with a network of speakers who are affiliated to XLP including Mike Pilavachi, les Isaac, Tim Hughes and Ali Martin. The teaching sessions are scheduled twice weekly: Youthwork on Mondays and Theology on Fridays.

Theology
Our theology course is designed to both broaden and deepen students’ understanding of their faith. Topics that are studied include: Kingdom of God, Christology, Holy Spirit, Christian Life-style, Prayer and Biblical studies that will review both Old and New Testaments, and include more detailed appreciation of the Gospels, the Letters, and Daniel and Revelation! We appreciate that our
students will come from a wide variety of denominational backgrounds, and look to reflect this in our course content.

Youthwork
Our youthwork course is intended to equip and empower students to communicate with more than words. Topics that are studied include: Communication,Understanding Black Culture, Conflict Resolution, Answering Difficult Questions,Other faiths (e.g. Islam), the Media, Key Issues (e.g. Drugs, Violence, Teenage Pregnancy, Abortion, HIV/AIDS, Poverty, Sexuality), and Christians and Politics.

During the course of the year there will be 3 written assignments. One assignmentalso involves giving a presentation. Students are given study time in their weekly timetable. As each person has different interests, students are allowed to help choose the focus of the assignment. The important thing is that it is something the student is interested in and wants to find out about.


Timetables
The eXperience gap year revolves mainly around the school timetable of 3 terms, with the year running from September to July. On the 3rd week of September the course will start with an induction week for students joining their churches. The 4th week of September will be the start of schools and church work. The student will have 6 weeks off during the year to coincide with school holidays:

October Half Term, two weeks at Christmas, February half term, one week at Easter, May half term. The course finishes at the end of term in July. During the other week of the Easter holiday, students will fly to Ghana to spend one week of mission.

Each week, students will spend roughly 15 hours involved in schools-work, 15 hours in church-work, and 6 hours in training. There will also be admin and study time allocated within each students timetable. Each student will have every Saturday as a day off (except for occasional special events, in which case anotherday will be allocated) as well as another half-day off each week. How the exact weekly timetable looks, will be determined through discussion between the church, the student, the borough team leader and the eXperience course leader.