The focus of advent is to orient ourselves towards Christ, yet in mission it is too easy to orient towards the people, or the task or the time available. The critical link is the need to orient ourselves to see Christ in the people, the task or the time.
This season of advent each day (although advent always seems to be way to busy so no promises) I want to take a word that links mission and advent and reflect briefly.
Awareness in advent is obvious but the concept is critical in mission. How aware are we of our motives, our position, our power, and God? Advent is a season of preparation but what missional awareness preparations do we make. Practicing the presence of God in our lives and basic awareness exercises help us prepare. Yet in the bustle of mission as in the bustle of Christmas it is too easy allow this busyiness to cloud our awareness, and shadow our missional consciousness.
If you are looking for the resources and slides I mentioned in the training session yesterday you can find the bits and pieces by clicking on the bit you want or looking on the right below
FLOW stories
Off the beaten track and The tacking church see links on the right
SLIDES
heretical imperative
please don’t forget to give a notice in your church about the widows mite appeal
Do something small to make a big change for young people! Text the word MITE to 82540 and help Frontier Youth Trust raise £100,000.
Please could everyone turn their mobile phones ON! An unusual request in church – but let me tell you why!
Imagine the young people you see most days, the young people that every one complains about hanging on the streets and in local parks, the young people who are avoided, now imagine those young people being in regular contact with a Christian youth worker with the skills and support to get alongside them and see lives transformed. StreetSpace is a new initiative from Frontier Youth Trust already working successfully with 100’s of young people just like those you have just imagined, young people that would not come near a traditional church. The work has been so successful that Frontier Youth Trust has been awarded £60,000 to start rolling StreetSpace projects out across the country. The plan now is to grow 36 new StreetSpace projects and we need your mobile phones to make this happen!
We recognise money is tight for most people at the moment so we are simply asking for lots of people (actually 100,000!) to contribute a small amount, their widow’s mite (see Mark 12: 41-44), via a text message. We are asking Christians everywhere to turn on their mobile phones and to text their individual mite to help us help young people and workers engage with what God is doing on the streets.
So please turn on your phone now and text the word MITE to 82540 – calls will cost £1.50 and over a pound will go directly to the StreetSpace initiative. Text with all your mite (excuse the pun!) If you don’t have your phone today write the number down and text when you get back and don’t forget to tell your friends to text as well.
we usually make our christmas cards around now but as the children get older they seem to get more complex. This year tuffy did a graphic to print, and I did an image for our news.
Can you guess whose is whose?
Check the air out on THIS made by one of the yp from the trip on Saturdays Streetspace trip with the Chard group.
One of the yp found this for a service we are running in Novemeber
Years ago when Off the Beaten track was first published I did a training session, and described a street based communion (coke and crisps style) and asked participants – Is this church? Oli was present and has been thinking and working on his eccelesiological position in response to the question. He has published an interesting short read exploring the need for orthodoxy around the issue of eccelesiology and communion that is well worth the read and download. Find it here.
I really like the fence model he proposes and it presents a good challenge, but before I post my responses i would be interested to hear others views.
I was listening to radio 4’s technology show the other day and there was an article on young people and technology and one thing that stuck out was the comment that the reason adults struggle with new technology is that it breaks into our world and have we have the choice of interaction. However young people inhabit / live in the world of technology. It was the inhabiting word that struck me. There are lots of articles on how computers are changing the way we think, but I wonder now if as digital natives young people have already been socialised in different conceptual frameworks and if this is some of shaping factors the changing approach to commitment and faith.
