Yesterday I travelled down to Poole to the FARSIDE youth celebration where I was due to speak. I dragged a friend from college to keep me company (and awake) on the drive… and it is a slow drive. 75 miles that took 2.5hrs. Couldn’t even enjoy the scenery as it was dark when we left Brizzle.
Anyway… the event was great – about 150 youth there, lots of creativity, great worship, and good atmosphere. I spoke on Zacchaeus in Luke 19.
Grace.
It is dangerous to hide up a tree when Jesus is around.
We had a fab time leading the THIRST team this year – the weather was rubbish but that meant that more people came into the venue!
So many highlights…
Young people becoming Christians, miraculous healings (including a lad who was partially deaf having his hearing restored), amazing worship, fab team, catching up with old friends, God speaking really clearly to both of us, and on and on and on.
Personal favourite – getting my tooth kicked out during a game of “Knights, Horsemen, Cavaliers”. The video will appear on here soon…
Thanks to all the team that served… you were all legends!!
Off today down to sunny Shepton to get ready for next week’s fun and games!
I’ve not been going as long as some but I wouldn’t miss it for anything… everything is nearly ready, except the usual last minute hitches and things we’ve forgotten.
Pray for the youth venue, for me and Matt as we host and lead, and for the young people… we long for them to encounter God in a new way.
Great day today – as part of the HOPE 08 thing that we’re doing in Tewkesbury a team of people headed up by Rachel – youth worker at the Baptist Church, and Urban Saints (Christian Youth Charity) came and put on a family fun afternoon on the Vineyards in Tewkesbury.
We had loads of large inflatables, a free BBQ, free cakes, ice creams, drinks, German chocolate (don’t ask), a roadshow on the back of a lorry run by the team from Urban Saints, a prayer tent, face painting, hair braiding and a big 5 a side tournament.
The weather forecast didn’t look good but we had blue sky for most of the day, which led to about 1000 people turning up. Every single activity had huge queues. The whole day went fantastically well. After the games and free food had gone, we had “Church Outdoors” running afterwards with about 60 people present.
All in all a great day - big well done to Rachel and her fab team.
I spent my time teaching people how to look busy whilst doing nothing.
Had a great evening last night – spoke at the THIRST (14-19s) venue at New Wine North… having been working at Shepton Mallett for the last five years, going up to the North was fantastic. They’ve got clean cow sheds for a start!! The whole festival had a great community feel – its about half the size of the weeks at Shepton Mallett and I think that helps.
I think New Wine is a fantastic movement… I love the festivals, but more importantly, I love the focus on the local church – equipping it to be all that it should be… to be ready for ministry and mission. In fact if they didn’t have that focus, I’d probably have lost interest by now… because I L O V E the local church.
I also managed to crash the leaders cheese and wine evening… very nice. Just a shame I had to drive back as they had some fantastic beers there.
Baptism and confirmation service at Trinity… my lovely wife got confirmed, and I got to help baptise one of the girls in my cell group.
I never get bored of those kind of services… listening to stories of lives changed by God.
In the evening I went to speak at a great little church in Awre (by the River Severn in the Forest of Dean). A 14yr old guy at their church was so inspired after being at New Wine (Christian festival) that he set up a monthly service at their church with more contemporary music, teaching and prayer ministry. I took a friend to lead worship, and a couple of teens from my youth group and we went along.
It was a great evening… we all came back totally inspired and knowing that we’d met with God… in a tiny village that most of you have never heard of.
This game appears to be stirring some debate amongst Christians (well they need something REALLY important to write articles about) as to what the church response to the game should be. I can’t critique the game because I’ve not played it… I’ll leave it to the several million others to do that.
Read this article on Our of Ur (blog from the States) for some of the details about the debate that seems to be taking off there…
Here’s my slant on the whole thing:
I’ve never played GTA and probably never will, but I played some really grim games when I was a kid, and I have been playing some of the Tom Clancy stuff quite recently (not the Vegas one because I can’t afford it!). I’ve shot, punched and blown people up on screen (including playing lots of James Bond with other vicars on a leadership course!) without much thought. Is that as bad as playing GTA? Is it fine for me to buy and play the game?
Firstly, what we put in our heads (and hearts) will influence us. TV, films, video games, magazines can all have an effect on us. If I’m honest, I don’t think that there is a line that defines “good” from “evil” (i.e. that game is fine, but that isn’t) but what is good for me. There are plenty of people who have an unhealthy addiction to video games – be it GTA, World of Warcraft etc etc etc. Their only friends are online, they spend hours and lots of money on this habit and it does nothing to improve their life. Some of us might be more susceptible to this addiction than others - I know that Championship Manager has an addictive draw to some of us…
Also the content of the games we play says something about us – is it good and healthy to fill our minds with extreme violence and gore, sexually explicit scenes, and abusive language (GTA has this warning by the 18 certificate on the back – I know, I’ve looked). I suspect not. Am I judging those that do play it? I guess so… does that make me better than them… nope.
So what advice might I offer to people (not that they’ll probably ask but that’s what a blog is for - giving advice when no-one wants it!)
The Bible encourages us to fill ourselves with good things and to guard ourselves against things that might cause us or others harm (too many references to quote but Prov 4:23 is a good start). Also, what kind of fruit is our life bearing – good or bad? Are growing in our love for God, others and a lost world, or are we becoming more self centred, withdrawn etc? Is our character more Christlike?
When it comes to GTA, what kind of worldview and entertainment do we want to support and endorse? I honestly can’t believe its a healthy way of entertaining yourself and I can’t see any benefit to anyone in playing the game (other than the company that made it).
People in my youth group and church will be playing it… my friends and family probably are too… I’ll be told how out of touch I am, and how it’s only harmless fun. I’m happy to disagree.
I’m sat in my office on the phone to BT (on hold funnily enough!!) and I’m reading a Faithworks magazine that has landed on my desk. There’s a great article in there about Maggie Ellis, who has pioneered the first Christian based rape crisis centre in the UK.
Maggie set up the Life Centre in response to a great need for more care and counselling for victims of rape and sexual abuse. She tells the story of one woman who had been raped, and the only support she was offered was a number in another city, and when she called she was told that they couldn’t help because she was out of the area.
The centre is thriving (although not without needs) and Maggie would like to see other such centres set up around the country. Check out their website HERE. If you can support them in any way then its certainly making a huge difference.
Just got back from our youth leadership team meeting. It was a great evening of reviewing and reflecting on how we are doing as a youth ministry team, where we are going, and how we are going to get there. I’ve come away feeling very challenged with some of the things we’re facing, but well encouraged and fired up.
If you don’t do ministry in a team then get one now. We can’t do anything useful without others working with us. I’m more convinced than ever.
As I’ve mentioned before - we’re going to be doing some fun stuff next year in Tewkesbury with HOPE 08. Things are gathering pace which is really exciting. The steering team have put together a little vision statement for the year as well as some objectives. We’ve got some great ideas for starting in the New Year. I’m meeting with the church leaders in Tewkesbury tomorrow to hopefully encourage them and inspire them and challenge them to get involved. They are a great bunch………………………….
Over the last weekend 40 of us from XCITE went down to St Georges House in North Devon for our annual XCITE weekend away. It was a fantastic time away… I managed to get surfing both morning and afternoon on the Saturday (thanks to the other leaders who let me!). I have finally come to the conclusion that I am the worlds worst surfer. However, I really enjoy falling off so I never fail to have fun!
Highlights of the weekend include a couple of teens becoming Christians, lots of great conversations and relationships built, surfing, the food (thanks Lou), the speakers (not me – well done Kev and Sophie) and just being away. I have now done 7 weekends away with teenagers since being a youth worker and they are always a massive highlight. It’s also great to see how they’ve grown in faith over the last year…
Well…. what an amazing time we had this summer. Due to the floods I was only around for part of the first week (led brilliantly by Paul and Sarah) but what I saw happen there was fanastic – dozens becoming followers of Jesus etc. Nell and I arrived right at the end of the first week and got ourselves ready for the 2nd week which I was hosting with Matt from Trinity Cheltenham and Nell was running the show as admin/operations manager for Thirst.
(Info for those confused about various terms – New Wine is a Christian family conference that takes place over 2/3 weeks every summer at the Bath and West Showground. Thirst is the name for the work with 14-19 year olds. Hosting means being in charge and admin operations manager means you are the real boss.)
Anyway we had an amazing time! God really showed up in a fantastic way – lots of young people becoming Christians, some amazing healings – including one girl who had an eye that drifted towards her nose and that had a damaged pupil. She came to me during the meeting and looked at me with two perfect brown eyes looking straight ahead!!! It was great to see God working amongst the young people throughout the week.
We had two great worship bands headed up by Luke Tebb and Andy Smith which were amazing. The team worked REALLY hard (big thanks to all of you that might read this). During the week we had lots of great speakers – Paul Oxley in the mornings did a couple of our Bible teaching sessions, along with Mike Pilavachi from Soul Survivor, Kim Mason from Trinity church and Matt P (co host with me). In the evenings Matt kicked us off on our theme of “Children of a revolution”. Paul Unsworth spoke on the revolutionary nature of God’s love. Then Kiera with her first main stage talk (AMAZING) spoke about getting off the fence to follow Jesus. Debby Wright (Trent Vineyard/Venue 2) spoke on God’s heart for the poor. Rachel Gardener came to speak about revolutionising the way we handle our relationships – great stuff! David Ruis from California spoke on how we are most powerful when we are weak… finally I finished the week with a talk that encouraged the young people to catch people’s vomit in a pan and pray for those who cry through their nose. Anyway, this only touches on a few highlights of what made for a great fortnight.
Also great to have lots from my church (Holy Trinity Tewkesbury) around for the week. Hope you guys coped with the camping! More thoughts to follow in a bit on this… C
The other book that I really enjoyed over the summer was “Christianity Rediscovered”. An old classic about a catholic missionary, Vincent Donovan, who was working with the Masai in Tanzania. The book tells of Vincent’s frustration with the model of missionary work taking place in Africa and how in the end he just gave up with the schools/hospital work and went to the Masai with his sole intention being to share the Gospel.
The highlight of the book for me was seeing how Vincent had to strip away all the peripheral baggage that he had attached to the Gospel and how he presented the stories using imagery and analogy that would have related to them.
To be honest, if you are serious about communicating the good news about Jesus more effectively with anyone you should read this book. In fact, every follower of Jesus should read it. 10/10
Just read this on Michael’s blog (highly recommended reading) and wanted to post a bit of it here, partly to remind myself of some of the really important things about worship… he’s taken it from Dan Kimball’s book Emerging Worship
1) Did we make Jesus the focus?
2) Did we have time in the scriptures?
3) Did we pray together? (including time of quiet in which God’s spirit could be listened to)
4) Did we experience the fun / joy / encouragement of being with each other?
5) Do we take the Lord’s supper regularly together?
6) Did we somehow remind each other of the mission of the church and why we exist?
7) Did we enable each other to contribute something as part of the body of Christ?
I listen to quite a few different podcasts – all of which are listed down the side of the blog. Here’s a few highlights from them over the past few weeks.
MOSAIC - They’ve just finished a 4 part series called Romance unwrapped. I think this is some of the best stuff on healthy relationships that I’ve heard. Kim & Erwin McManus do the sessions together and cover lots of the usual questions about sex, relationships, singleness and marriage from some really interesting and creative angles. Just some of the best Christian teaching that I’ve come across.
Mars Hill - Greg Boyd speaking on Jesus’ death on the cross. Really thought provoking and deep. Only down side is the constant references to how great Mars Hill is… does grate after a while.
HTB - A really good set of 3 talks by Father Raneiro Cantamalessa (??) on the “Go’s in the Bible”. Simple but profound. Anyway, check them out for yourselves. C
This is going to be good. You’ll hear lots about it on this blog. I’m going to be heading up Hope 08 in the beautiful Tewkesbury on behalf of all the churches. Had a great meeting today with the ministers from Anglican, Baptist, Catholic, Methodist churches who are all on board. No ego, no “we’re doing our own thing”. Just a concern for getting the whole church in Tewkesbury to reach the whole town for a whole year and beyond. These leaders from all ends of the church were coming up with ideas for logos, outreach ideas, contacts and more. This is going to be good.
Over the last weekend 40 of us from XCITE went down to 
An old classic about a catholic missionary, Vincent Donovan, who was working with the Masai in Tanzania. The book tells of Vincent’s frustration with the model of missionary work taking place in Africa and how in the end he just gave up with the schools/hospital work and went to the Masai with his sole intention being to share the Gospel.
