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Category Archives: Zzzz … Old Stuff
UK Youth online
Great resource magazine from UK youth. Particularly good are the issues looked at – with both ideas for when working with young people and for in your staff team. This edition looks at spirituality as one of the issues
Youth work news
DCVYS newsletter highlighted the following
GOVERNMENT OFFICE FOR THE SOUTH WEST – as part of the re-structuring of the GOSW the Safer and Stronger Communities Directorate has been established. This new Directorate pulls together GOSW’s work on crime, drugs and antisocial behaviour with that on neighbourhood renewal, community cohesion, equalities and the third sector.
NEW DEPARTMENTAL ARRANGEMENTS – with the advent of Gordon Brown’s leadership there are changes to the departmental set up, with the DfES being split in two. The Department for Children, Schools and Families will be responsible for children’s services, families, schools, 14-19 education, and the Respect Taskforce and The Rt Hon Ed Balls MP is the Secretary of State for this department. Further education will come within the remit of the new Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills with The Rt Hon John Denham MP as Secretary of State.
IMPLEMENTING YOUTH MATTERS: Continuing the dialogue with young people – The DfES has launched a drive to gather young people’s views on its youth policies. The initiative follows on from the consultation on the Youth Matters green paper, which attracted about 19,000 responses from young people. The department wants to ensure that it continues to receive feedback from young people as it implements the proposals in the green paper and so has recently held a consultation with young people (closing 2nd July), seeking their views on a range of subjects, including whether they feel that services have improved in the past year, and whether they are aware of youth initiatives such as the Youth Opportunity Fund and creative fund Mediabox – see www.dfes.gov.uk/consultations/conDetails.cfm?consultationId=1483. As part of the drive Parmjit Dhanda, the undersecretary of state for children, young people and families, has recently undertaken a seven-stop tour of England, visiting youth groups and meeting young people and reported his findings at The National Youth Agency’s Youth Summit on 25th June. He planned to talk to as many young people as time allowed – including those from the poorest and most challenging backgrounds and was joined on some of his visits by other Government ministers who were keen to learn more about youth issues, including Culture Minister for the Third Sector, Ed Miliband. For further information see www.dfes.gov.uk/pns/DisplayPN.cgi?pn_id=2007_0100
Worth a look
Worth Unlimted has a new website, that is a must see for anyone working to engage socially excluded young people.
www.worthunlimited.co.uk
Sundays Talk
READING 1 – Matt 9 18-31
There are two parts to what I wanted to say today, but they are linked. This first section was from when I first started thinking about what I was going to say today ages ago I thought about the role that HELP plays in deepening Christian fellowship. At the time we were without a kitchen for about a month, and the washing was piling up. Lots of people are great at offering help, and that is great we were offered help, but your immediate is “I don’t want to people out or your busy�. I wanted to get over this, so we asked various people do our washing. It was good for me to have to ask, to show that I needed help, to make myself vulnerable. So I asked different people if they would help us with the washing. Now I am able to report of the quality of the washing machines and services offered, Meurig and Heather, are definite contenders for best service, we do iron BUT HEATHER does, and it came back dried and ironed. Warwick and Carol, Colin and Ali, are good because we got fed whilst we did the washing, but Warwicks machine does spin as well as Colins so the washing was slightly wetter. Annie and Mark, being the eco warriors they are led me down to the river and showed me the large stone to rub the clothes on, no not really but they have separate spinner which is very old but very efficient and your clothes are almost dry when finished.
I asked – they all helped, but more than that – they were happy to help. BUT the process got me thinking that maybe the sign of a deeper fellowship is not about the numbers of offers of help, as I think we are good all pretty good at that, but actually deeper fellowship is about being in place where you are happy to ask for help or take people up on the help that is offered.
Turn to person behind you and answer these questions?
Which is more difficult – to ask for help or to offer it and why?
How does asking for help or taking up an offer of help enable others on their journey with God?
PART 2
Can anyone remember what Warwick talked about last week?
BEWARE I’ll make sure whoever is speaking next week will test you on what I am about to say!
The second part I wanted to explore today links into the idea of help, and builds on Last week when Warwick talked about the TRINITY and how the church family should reflect the relationship of the Godhead drawing on 2 Corinthians 13 v 14 May the Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
At the very heart of the trinity is love, Father Son and Spirit three persons but one, who for all eternity the one God has been involved in the concrete activity of giving receiving and sharing love amongst one another Father Son and Spirit, – so when we say God is Love or when the bible says God is love (1 John 4 v 8) it not simply saying God has loving feelings towards his people but God is constantly involved in the concrete activity of love. God is a fellowship of love.
Our theme is deepening Christian fellowship –so if we are to do this in our fellowship, what ways can we deepen fellowship or to put it another way-
how do we exhibit this love, – Well Warwick again gave us a key verse when he discussed, 2 Corinthians 13 v 14 May the Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
Here we see the love part is mentioned and the trinity talked about BUT the critical factor I want to draw your attention to is – GRACE – Notice how precedes the mention trinity and love at the very start. You see without grace we will have schisms or factions, etc that Paul was warning about, because we are human, we do think different things, even Paul suggest we question things, and we have different callings, I am sure that NOT many of you would want to come out the street with me at 10.30 to talk to the skaters hanging out at lidls car park, and with no offence the last I want to do is go on the trip with rendezvous to Powerham castle.
In our reading we heard about 3 of the miracles of Jesus, and three common threads in them was that the people asked for Jesus help,
“come and heal my daughter�
the woman from bleeding asked in an active way by reaching out to touch the cloak and
the blind men, chased him up the road shouting heal us.
We see countless times the onus is on the person to ask Jesus to act and then Jesus responds to those specific requests, even if it may not be the best thing for Jesus personally as was the case with the blind men, which was why he probably told the blind men NOT to tell anyone.
If are going to take God the trinity seriously as our model, we have to recognise as well as in the trinity being love there is the dna of the trinity – Mission
The primary way God choose to reveal himself was through Jesus. A missionary move. John 20v 21 Jesus said “as the father sent me I am sending you� The missiologist John Bosch reminds us, that Father sends the son, and the father and son send the spirit and this can be extended seeing the father, son and spirit sending the church. So if we are to be church we must be missional in our dna.
Yet mission is messy and messy particularly when is comes to church because as mentioned my mission field is not the same as yours, but we should all be striving for the same goal. So what can we learn from this verse to help us in our fellowship with one another.
Well firstly they were different with different roles Father Son and Holy Spirit but One. it must have been difficult for the father and spirit when jesus died on the cross but they were still unifed because God is love, so jesus was still in this loving relationship. Jesus time on earth his time distanced from the father andspirit was a concrete embodiment of love, it was love that took Jesus to earth and love that enabled the Father to give his Son to death on the cross.
Therefore deepening fellowship is about living with tension that enable each of us to fulfil the calling of mission placed on us by God whilst remaining unified by love and grace.
We may do different things and express our faith in different ways, and the mission may take us in different directions but so long as we have examined ourselves as Paul mentioned in 2 Cor 13 and we act in good faith, God’s grace and love can hold us together.
You know it is difficult to ask for help, and at times it takes grace to ask for help and it takes grace to give help, but if we are going to move into a deeper fellowship we do need to embrace the tension that helping others move on in their journey of faith may create for us, personally or as a church.
Sometimes we confuse unity with uniformity, particularly if think about church before mission. The churches in the New Testament were different because they arose out of different missionary contexts, the idea that unity is about us meeting together perhaps on a Sunday morning or at other times, is a false one. Real unity is one that springs from the triune God, different but the same,
real unity is not a unity that is about us all doing the same thing, but a unity rooted in the deep grace and love of God that enables the church to flourish by enabling it’s people to follow its calling to be the bride of Christ to hurting and broken world regardless of the cost to us.
Skate Safari
Whose idea was it to do a skate safari? Well mine actually, but we needed to consolidate the group with a trip or something and I always want to add value to the youth work- create a memory, put a twist on it. So today at 10-30 we bundled into the minibus 11 skaters and three bikers with a support car.
The weather was great and getting lost on the way to the first park just give it that edgy feel that we were on more that just a trip. Arriving at Ilchester, they piled out after memorising the first rule of skate safari. “What’s the first rule of skate safari?� I asked as each person descended from the bus. “If I break my neck it’s not your fault� came back the reply.
After an hour of skating and pictures of Ryan’s first ‘dropping in’ and massive air on the bikes and boards, an ice cream van pulled up, and we chilled before getting ready to move onto Somerton. Two young people navigating in the front of the bus, whilst shouting to the back to score Ilchester – 7 came back the reply. After stopping for water on the way, we arrived at the park. It was literally glistening in the sun and had a concrete surface like marble, but boiling, with no shade from the midday sun. First rule of skate safari was reinforced and they raged through the park like an all consuming fire. It scored a 6.5 but they were wiped out by the heat of the day we headed for lunch in Glastonbury, the biggest park in the area. A great place to skate and ride with some great tricks being pulled, 7 foot drop ins, and rails to slide. A definite highlight and very credible 9 out of 10.
Onto Weston Super Mare, directed by the guys in the front and time for chat as we drove, so I asked “how does it feel when you skate and everything is going right?�
“It’s like you’re, you’re kind of, you’re one� he replied
“Is it spiritual?�
“Yeah, the adrenaline is going and it flows�
So we chatted about surfers feeling at one with the world and in the zone. The conversation meandered around the idea to do a skate church and experiences of doing church on the streets with young people. After a few strange looks they got the idea. I explained about the idea of dong a skate pilgrimage, which they were well up for. So we discussed the old Celtic saints and the crosses around Cornwall deciding that a nutty Celtic saint would be a good patron saint for skaters.
Arriving at Weston Super Mare, it was better in the pictures that in real life. Following on from the Safari idea it was decided that Ilchester, Somerton, and Glastonbury were the big three – Lion, Elephant and Rhino, but on any safari you were bound to see some more boring deer, or squirrels, however in the end Weston was labelled Giraffe as it looked good but didn’t actually do a lot. Ever one to try to encourage new experiences for the group I offered around olives stuffed with garlic I had brought, no takers even when I explained that were up for trying new tricks in new parks but not new food. So we got a few takers on the cherries instead. Weston only warranted a 3 and we headed to the final park of the day.
Down the motorway explaining to two different skaters the previous conversations and getting their views on skating and spirituality. Different answers, but coming from the process of learning a new trick and how it feels to perfect it. Arriving in Taunton and after skating their way through the local supermarket and picking up drinks as they rode through, heading towards the final park. Smaller boxes to try and perfect tricks, it was a whistle stop ending as we headed home after 8 and half hours, on the road, or in the parks suitably exhausted. Everyone had a burn or scratch to take away as a memento of the day, but everyone had remember the first rule of skate safari and no one broke their neck!
NEO Falmouth
Met with the Salvation Army guys in Falmouth woking on one of the neo projects Supergirl dvdrip ,. Great project and worth touching base with if in the area. It was suggested about trying to get people together doing emerging church type stuff in the south west could be an idea – any takers?
change and the insider
Can you really change a system from inside? I was wondering how inside the system Jesus was? Yes he was Jewish but choose mainly not to preach in the synagogue. There is no such thing as free lunch and if we try to work from inside there is an inevitable need for politics etc. In an age when many of our institutions are still strong although on the demise I wonder if the cultural layers built up can really be changed from the inside?
Still Places
This Snow Cake ipod could be for you.
Looking for God
With the much reported increase in gang related violence and deaths amongst young people in Britain today, our inner cities are the last place one would expect anyone to go looking for God. But ‘urban pilgrims’ Dave Wiles and Tim Evans are on a mission to discover the truth about youth and spirituality in some of Britain’s most troubled communities.
Avoiding more traditional holy sites, their 285 mile ‘pilgrimage’ will see them meet with young people from the Hartcliff area of Bristol, Kitts Green in Birmingham and Newham in the East End of London, as they attempt to find an answer to the question ‘Where is God?’. It’s a bit of a change from the day job – when they’re not wearing friar’s smocks, Dave and Tim head up national youth work charities Frontier Youth Trust and Worth Unlimited respectively.
Inspired by Franciscan friars, who will be providing hospitality to the travelers along the route, the pair plan to travel light, carrying no cash, wearing simple clothing and a ‘Tau’ – symbol of service to others.
Dave explains: “Pilgrimage doesn’t have to be about going somewhere remote to encounter God. The work of both our organisations is about meeting with young people who are ‘on the edge’ of our society. We wanted to make our pilgrimage to the places where thousands of young people live out their daily lives – and to explore whether God can be found there.�
The pilgrims will be holding an open session on the question ‘Where Is God?’ at Hartcliff Community Centre in Bristol on June 17th, and all young people are welcome to attend. The session will be informal, with opportunities to take part in creative arts activities, games and discussion – or just have a chat. They will also be visiting schools in Kitts Green and Newham to talk with the pupils there.
And for those who aren’t on the route, there’s a novel way to join in – a text or phone messaging service for God will be available for the duration of the pilgrimage.
Pilgrimage Dates: 17th – 19th June 2007
Open Session: Hartcliff Community Centre, Bristol, Sunday 17th June 4 pm
Text God: (Available 17th – 19th June only) 07799 108339
Phone God: (Available 17th – 19th June only) 01225 480973
More Info: Jo Fitzsimmons 0121 687 3505 or email frontier@fyt.org.uk