After more than 2 and a half years over here at blogger I have decided to make the move to Wordpress. I have been trying to create some more sidebar space by adding an extra column but it seems far beyond my technical capabilities. So please update your blog roll and viewers to
http://weirdhippy.wordpress.com
Check out the new site and let me know what you think. It'll take me a while to get it as I would like it to be.
Well it's been a manic week running holiday club. Here are a couple of photos of me playing Dr Potty in the daily drama and explaining one of the games. I've discovered this week that my capacity to learn lines each day is limited and have had to work hard to get them to go in. It seems to have been going well although I find this younger kids stuff very tiring.
It's been great on a youthwork front to have a number of our young people helping out and learning about leadership and being part of God's mission. I hope thta some of the lessons that they learn this week will go with them and help them in their development.
As always loads of great photos but not many that I can publish as they have the children and young people in.
This week is half term in our part of North London. For us that means Holiday Club week and this year is Pyramid Rock. We'll have a bunch of primary school kids descending upon us. It will be a hyper week I'm sure but usually ends up being a lot of fun. I have loads of our young people helping out in various ways which will be great for them. I have many drama lines to learn and there will probably be photo's of me looking ridiculous to follow.
Interesting quote flagged up by Jonny here. It reminded me of a conversation/discussion that Roy (who has sadly killed his blog) were having over coffee yesterday about directing/steering/building plans for organisations . I hope I didn't burden you too much with my bablings yesterday Roy. I'm not sure if it helps us come to answers about what we were talking about but it definitely adds to the conversation.
I agree with the quote but for some reason it doesn't fit completely comfortably with me. With all the recent talk of entrepreneurs I have questions about the too many chiefs not enough Indians scenario.
I've just finished putting together a video for use on Sunday morning. We are teaching a series called "The Story We Find Ourselves In" where we are trying to run from creation to new creation in 8 weeks with a group of 11-17's.
This video will be used as part of the second in the series 'Vandalism' which Andy will teach. I taught the first on creation a few weeks back and I asked Andy to speak on the fall under the title of The Hijack but he has changed it to vandalism which I actually think I like better.
Anyway I managed to get the video to post on youtube although it's a little jerky and a little distorted but it's not too bad. Andy supplied the photos and I cut it together.
I have been making more visual stuff like this since getting the mac and now I have cracked it I'll try and post the creative stuff on youtube so that people can use it if they so wish. I'll go and add them to my sidebar.
For those of you who have Year 11's or others who are facing exams over the coming months there is a good website that you can steer young people to called Exam Attack. It does a good job in dealing with some of the emotions and issues that could arise. It also offers the opportunity to use their material so that you can offer this resource to schools. Excellent stuff and it seems a great example of free sharing around youth workers.
I'm in one of those periods of time where there is much that needs to be done but it's not the stuff I want to do. I don't know if there's anyone else that gets like that. I have a mass of loose ends to tie up and a bit of prep to do but the thing I want to focus on is the creative and from my perspective more fun stuff.
The fun idea is a discipleship course called Let God Grow that was the brain child of Dave Steell when we worked together at SBC. When we first launched it back in 2001 it was a phenomenal success. The basic principle is to link an experience with a Christian principle or theme.
What would happen was that the group would meet at a mini bus one evening a week. The people on the 8 week course would have no idea where they were going but we would introduce the theme for the evening, for example faith. We would then go on to drive them to a place such as the tallest building in Luton where we got access to the roof and took the group up there (don't worry it was quite safe) to look over the town. Whilst up there we would get the group thinking about how being on top of this tall building reminds us about faith. We would then let the discussion develop before heading home. On the way back we gave each of the group something to remind them of the experience and the theme (for example something like a small piece of concrete might have been used in this example). We would do this for 8 weeks thinking about a variety of themes
Faith - Tall building
Journeying - motorway service station.
Guidance - Luton Airport
Aim - Driving Range
Spirituality - Church Ruin
Christ - St Alban's Cathedral
Well the idea that I am hoping to develop is to use this idea around the Easter story during Holy Week.
My plan is to get a small group of young people and to help them to journey through the Easter story in the week leading up to Easter Sunday by looking at a particular part of the story each day and by linking this to an experience and to something that they can take away with them each day.
I have developed some ideas that I think will work for it and am excited about the opportunity to be creative. I'm taking along our Pastor for the week as well as we think about whether this is something that we could do with adults in the future.
If anyone wants the full Easter Course drop me a comment and I'm happy to share it with you if you have people you might like to do this with.
Well I'm back from our weekend away. It ended up being an amazing time where a fairly disparate group came together formed new friendships, hung out with each other, did some mad activities and met with God.
I love these times together. I find them physically exhausting but also inspiring. As many have said, a weekend away together is the equivalent to many weeks or even months of our programmes.
I hope that it times of closeness with each other and also with God that they will remember for the rest of their lives.
One particular highlight for me was during a time where we were praying for a number of the group, one of the young people who is a little bit on the fringes of our work looked very thoughtful so I asked if he was ok. He said that as he was sitting and I was speaking and we were worshipping and praying he felt the Holy Spirit say to him that he should come and pray for me. So that's what he did, after I had prayed with a number of individuals he came and prayed for me. Wow what an experience for me. That is certainly something I will never forget.
I came a across an interesting article in yesterdays Guardian regarding Steve Chalke and much of the work that he is involved in. It continues the very current debate about how intertwined church and state should be. I have a vested interest as the first Oasis Academy will open in enfield in september.
I also have a long standing interest as I have any friends still working for Oasis and have spend 3 years with them in different capacities myself.
There is a statement here which should also be read as it corrects some mistakes in the original article.
Steve is an amazingly driven guy which I think came across to the journalist writing the article. He has his critics but I for one have never failed to be inspired by him when I have spoken with him or have heard him speak at events/college.
Not sure about this one. I found this link via Mark Russell's blog. Here are my celeb look a likes (I haven't heard of many of them).
There will be nothing of substance coming from this blog over the next little while as my brain is a bit fried after manically trying to get the talks written for our weekend away.
I think my wife would like me to look life Matt Damon.
I've just come across this performance of in my opinion the best song of 2006, 'My Secret is My Silence' by Roddy Woomble at the Cambridge Folk Festival. You can see my video of the song here from when I saw him on London last summer.
According to this article on the NME website we may soon be worshipping using 'One' and 'Beautiful Day'
So I better dust down the electric guitar and turn up the amp.
This weeks looking a bit manic as I gear up for our annual weekend away. We're off to Halls Green and I'm going through that mix of really looking forward to it with that there is so much left to do and the what have i not remembered question nagging in my brain.
I'm encouraged to be taking a good mix of young people from our friday night youth club. We are taking 18 young people which is really encouraging as it's the most we've had in my time here.
Anyway, back to the to do list,
room allocations
transport
bible sessions
wide games
risk assessment,
consent forms
who still owes money?
etc
etc
etc
An interesting piece from Ekklesia here about end times theology. Not something I claim to be an expert in but I tend to agree with her piece.
I've just come across the as yet to be released new single and video from one of my favourite bands Idlewild here. I'm loving the track and it seems to be a return to slightly harder rockier stuff but not quite as much as there first album where as a 16 year old I thought I was going to die in the mosh pit of the Camden Dingwalls (now Jonglers). I've followed Idlewild development and in the last 8/9 years and there journey and maturing of music and lyrics has in some way mirrored the mine.
It's was great to see lead singer Roddy Woomble last summer on his folk tour, but unfortunately I can't make the London Idlewild date. Well hey ho I'll just have to wait for the album.
We had a really nice little break over the weekend. It ended up being quite tiring as I ran from one activity to the next as well as sharing our villa with our nieces and nephews (3 under 4).
We had a great family meal in a revolving restaurant with a live pianist which was cool. I've added a set into my flickr set in the side bar as well as organising most of the photos in there now.
After a very mild Christmas in London we have had some more extreme weather over the last week.
This was the affects of the weather near our street in North London on Thursday
And this was my walk to my office this morning
Yesterday Jo had her first scan. The highlight was being told everything is going well closely followed by there's only one in there. We have endured various taunts about there being twins.
After Juan Mann's Free Hugs campaign in Australia attracted millions of hits on youtube the times newspaper have re-inacted the campaign in City of London's square mile. A male and female journalist both went out with the obligatory 'free hugs' signs. The article is in today's paper.
You can see their video here, and the original video which I posted here.
Go on give someone a hug today.
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