As an oldie I have increasingly been wowed by young people. I have often been annoyed with you media people for really not being fair. You write banner headline stories about young people who go wrong. You hardly ever write stories about the many, many young people who do fantastic things. I just say, what is amazing is not that some young people go off the rails, make wrong decisions; what is so amazing is that not more of them in fact do that.

Just think now how young people can access the internet and I'm told there are some very, very 'interesting' things on there. They can access anything, and to find that we have young people who can still be so wholesome. I think of young people who could very well have stayed in their countries living comfortably. I've been to quite a number of poor countries and your breath is taken away completely by the number of young people who leave their homes and go and work in these poverty stricken places.

Now here we have a programme (Xplore) that says it wants to prepare young people to become what God wants them to be, because as you know we have a God who is extraordinarily partial to young people, using a Joseph, a David to fight Goliath, a Jeremiah, Mary the mother of Jesus. God constantly using young people.

When we were fighting against apartheid, the people who supported us most of all, not exclusively, but the people who supported us mainly were young people, the students at universities, and it's been so ever since.

You think of the Bonos and all of those people who say: 'Let us make poverty history.' Young people have been passionate in the support of that campaign. Young people are passionate in their support of a world that knows war no more. And here we have a fantastic programme that wants to prepare young people for exposing to their contemporaries the fact that God loves them, that they are very special to God, that God loves each one of them as if they were the only person on earth. Isn't that fantastic?

And these young people, and all of the others who are going to be part of this programme, are saying: 'For us it's not just a gap year where you go off and do something and return to do what you had already decided you were going to do. For us, it's a year that may turn our world upside down.' In fact, many of those who have gone on this programme return totally changed and want to do things they had never believed they would have wanted to do. So turning the world upside down for God is what Xplore says.

So we want you to know too that God gives up on no one. There isn't for God a hopeless case. No one is a hopeless case. No situation is irredeemable. Most people would have thought that South Africa before with apartheid was a totally lost cause. Well, it produced Nelson Mandela and did some very strange things. And look at Northern Ireland. Who would have believed that you would have seen Martin McGuinness and Ian Paisley talking together on television.

So we say to these young people and to all of the others who are going to be part of this programme: go on dreaming. Go on being idealistic. Don't allow yourselves to be infected by the cynicism of oldies like us. We've made a mess of the world, and we're leaving it to you and know that you are going to help change it.

Click here to read more about Archbishop Desmond Tutu's visit to Sheffield and to download an mp3 of his full talk at the press conference. To find out more about Church Army's Xplore programme for young people, click here and here.

Fifteen minutes later a stillness has settled on the room and they sit engrossed, touching a plasma ball as they think about how they might connect with God, writing the names of significant people in their lives on leaves and adding them to a tree, playing with Mr Potato Head as they think about the labels that they use for other people.

This is Breathe, an installation that enables pupils to explore some of life's big questions. Its ingredients will be over familiar to anyone involved in alternative worship – iPods with words and music to listen to, stations with a focus that encourage questions and wondering, creative activities with an element of surprise that unlock their spirituality.

The difference, perhaps, is that this is not worship and it's taking place in a school, far from any church. And it's happening with young people who just don't normally do still and quiet. One teacher booked Breathe without knowing much about it and when it was set up hurriedly sent for the deputy head to come and help supervise. She expected her class to throw wooden bricks at each other instead of using them to measure out their carbon footprint; she imagined them starting a riot instead of engaging in spiritual reflection. We were all quietly amazed as they passed our expectations.

One boy who had been in trouble with the police and who was on the brink of exclusion wrote movingly afterwards about his mum's experience of faith and how perhaps there was something in it. Another time, at a conference for diocesan officers, we kept Breathe open late so a couple of staff members who worked in the venue and were intrigued by what they had seen could have a go. One wrote: 'Really very inspirational. Didn't ever really take time to think about things and in this relaxing environment really gives you the chance to.'

Resources like Breathe create a space – for questioning, reflection, wondering – and a sense of place – that this is what you do here. (Words coined by Bob Mayo in his work on the spirituality of young people.) It makes the most of the curriculum requirement to learn about and from religion, the potential for a thin place in the otherwise noisy school day; if young people have to do that, why not give them the best of what we have discovered that feeds our souls? The challenge for those of us who maybe take for granted the riches of creative spirituality is how we can create more opportunities like these for those outside the church to participate in.

Each month in Grace we invest time and energy in creating a space for people to encounter God. We've often asked ourselves how we can also do that in other contexts for people who will never come into our building. I'm not sure we've come up with many answers, but we've been inspired by groups like Beyond in Brighton and their beach hut advent calendar. Again, they have used the thin place that Christmas provides and invited people to consider what it's all about.

These stories remind us that God has set eternity in the hearts of people and perhaps all they need is a little nudge and a bit of space to connect with their creator.

Jenny Baker is a writer and a co-founder of the Sophia Network for women in youth work. She is a member of Grace, an alternative worship community in Ealing. She is the author of Heart, Soul, Strength, Mind (Monarch). More details about Breathe here.