Holiday Club Photo Share

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.

Let God Grow

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.

Weekend Away

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.

Know any rich kids?

I love this new idea for child sponsorship that Bart Campolo posts about here. It flips the whole idea on its head. I reminds me a bit of a project that Tony used to do when we were in Custom House at Ascension Church where he took local East London kids and rich kids from Felsted school on a sailing trip for a few days and got them interacting and working together.

Psalm 139

I got our youth discipleship group re-writing Pslam 139 in everyday language. Here is one of the offerings.

Lord you know all about me
And you know everything I do and think
You know all my actions
You know what I'm going to say before I say it
You protect me everywhere with your power
You know more than I can understand
I can't hide or escape from you
You are with me everywhere
No matter where I go, you will guide me,
You're like Tom-Tom, not Jack-Jack
You'll protect me with all your strength
Your light will find me,
Even in the darkest places.
You are creator, you created me in my mum's tum-tum, not tom-tom

Switch Off

HT to Tony for this video, love it. I'm sure this will be used as some point. I love the subversive nature of stuff like this, teenagers doing good, being models to adults. Wonderful

The Weekend

Well it's that time again on a Friday afternoon when i have to motivate myself to get set up for our youth club tonight. I love it when it actually starts it's just that the set up is a bit of a drag but hey ho.

When looking at my archives November proves to be my bloggiest month in the 2 and half years of this blog. Well it's the start of advent and i haven't got a calendar which i think possibly is the first time ever. I may have to rectify this however. It's been fun this week to get groups making very basic advent calendars with promises from God behind each day.

I'm looking forward to getting back on the football field in the morning after a month lay off. Hopefully my newly mended hamstring will get through ok. That is followed by the north london derby at luchtime, come on you spurs.

Youthwork the Conference (Day 2, part 1)

Wow it was windy this morning as i ambled along the sea front back towards the conference centre (video has been removed because it seems to start all the time even when its not the latest post and that is far too annoying. The video is here instead now). I love having that chance to walk first thing in the morning especially by the sea. I like my 15 min walk to the office each day, if only i could move the sea there.

Rob was straight into it this morning as we explored Sabbath, boundaries and various other classics that come up at these type of gatherings. The main thing today that has been taking up my headspace has been a nagging question.

What has God called me to? What is his/my vision?

There's a lot of stuff caught up in this for me, personally and theologically. I find it hard to nail down one thing but i have a sense that i need to work through again my calling and then re-focus ensuring that i don't spread myself too thinly.

This probably sounds more worrying and extreme than it is. I don't have doubts about my calling into Youth Ministry at this time, it's more about making sure that my time is spent in the right areas and perhaps that there are others who should be doing other things.

Well it's the end of the full timers mini conference and as i sit drinking my coffee i can see the swell of people arriving for the main event. I managed to fill 19 pages of my note pad and i only took notes in 2 and a half of Rob's sessions as there was quite a lot of Q&A

Part of this Q&A should appear in Youthwork Magazine next month.

Here are a couple of quotes from Rob Bell

whilst speaking about dealing with criticism 'Bloggers are the new Pharisees'

'It's not a good time for any american to be going around the world telling anyone how to do anything'

'If the bible was a movie, most Christians wouldn't watch it'

Conference Time

Well i'm getting there in my attempt to get everything off my to do list before i venture off to youthwork the conference in the morning. I have however turned into more of a control freak than normal as i try to make sure everything i should be at is covered. As usual it may well run much more smoothly without me trying to interfere.

Our youth club on Friday is one thing that i have been trying to sort. It's been great over the past little while to see number double. My attempts however to coerse last weeks by supplying Krispy Kreme Doughnuts may however backfire with my adding to youth obesity, but how good do they look.



So yes if you read my last post, i get organic fruit and veg and ply everybody else with doughnuts.

The Weekend (nearly)

It's been one of those days so far. I lost a cash card the other day and then discovered that it hadn't been cancelled today as i had asked them to. Anyway i went into the branch and they assured me it was now done and it was. Unfortunately for me as i used my other card from the same bank that one was eaten by the machine because as i later discovered they managed to cancel both cards. Very frustrating as i have to wait 5 days for each to be replaced. Aghh

I'm currently taking a quick break from setting up for youth club tonight. We are launching a new format where we use more of the building with some new activties to give us a bigger capacity. It has been good to see some growth numerically in this group since september. I pray that this continues but that we also have volunteer levels to sustain this.

A little profound quote from Winston Churchill for the second week running.

Never, Never, Never, Never, Never, Never, Never, Give Up

True Beauty

I love this wonderfully provocative video by Dove that a few people have flagged up recently. I used it last night and it does prove to be a good discussion starter. I'm sure i'll be using it again as it is very powerful.

God and young people have a sense of humour

It's been a manic start to the week as i've run from one meeting to another and one group to the next.

I was leading a session last night with our youth discipleship group and on my way home was reflecting upon how it had gone. I was a little down as it hadn't gone as i had hoped and i was thinking through a few dynamics issues with some younger members of the group and the impact that they were having on the feel of the group. Just as i was expressing this to Jo (and she was giving me that 'you've been out all day and i've not seen you and all you're talking about is work look') i received a text from one of the older young people (who i thought may have been negatively impacted by the presence of some disruptive influences). She just thanked me for the time we had that evening and how much it had impacted her in a difficult time. Isn't it funny how God works, His ways are definately higher than ours.