October 2006 Archives

Welcome to my virtual bloggy Halloween front door *creaking hinges*
I guess we could have a huge theological reflection on our response to Halloween BUT I reckon it would be more fun just to play Trick or Treat :-)

Sunset in the UK is at 16:36 today so the first 6 (UK) commenters who leave a 'Trick or Treat' message (with the time tag showing 16:36 or later) will get a bag of sweets. *Creepy laughter*

*Youthblog is not neccessarily endorsing Halloween or the practice of 'Trick or Treating' Your home is at risk if you do not keep up repayments on your mortgage or loans secured against it. Batteries not included. Actual colour may vary

Got to chatting yesterday about all the additional gumpf that becomes part of being a church youth worker, other than youth working. I guess in an ideal world (which I know does not exist outside of TV commercials and Disney Films) we'd be free to youth work, i.e bash on with the business of relationship building, informally educating, group working, ministering, listening, creating opportunities to grow etc etc. Instead there is a massive amount of admin' and all the other duties that could be summed up by, "everything else the vicar thinks is a good idea!" It was a good conversation and remarkably gripe-free. I was reflecting on the fact that I used to run an entire 'Yoof' building which was a GREAT privilige but involved a HUGE investment of time.
So, I got to thinking about dividing jobs into their primary skill function and secondary support work! Now I know that no job is complete without the paperwork (*avoids doing obvious toilet joke here) but even so it's an interesting piece of pseudo-analysis. So, for example a Lorry Driver spends the majority of the time using their primary skill function i.e driving, whilst a Sales Rep (and I speak from experience here) spends the majority of their time on their secondary support work (Driving to and from customers and filling in all the paperwork) and relatively little actual time using their primary Sales skills.
So how does youthwork sit on this continuum*** from Lorry driver to Sales rep? What percentage of your job is PSF (ooh, note very professional utilisation of a TLA**) and what percentage is SSW? Or to put it more simply, what percentage of your working week is actual contact time with young people? And what other elements of your job do you see as Primary and which areas do you see as secondary? Discuss ....

Credit to Sian de la Nix and Yvonne von Matz for inspiring this post by beginning this (eclair fuelled) debate yesterday :-)

* Ok I did the toilet joke by pretending to avoid it :-)
** TLA = Three letter acronym
*** Isn't the word 'continuum' great!

In 100 years time nobody will care how much you earned, but the world may be a different place because you were important in the life of a child!

Deploying, as usual, my capacity for overstatement, Welcome to 'World of Youth Ministry' where random is the watchword and all that really happens is I blather on a bit!

Youthwork the conference is fast approaching with the one at Southport (ooop Norf) happening over the second weekend in November, the corresponding one for us soft shandy swilling southerners in 17th-19th Nov at Eastbourne. It's entitled "Infinite possibilities" and one of those possibilities (and thus preventing me from being Norman no-mates) is meeting up for coffee on the 18th if you are around?

US Youth ministry blogger Marko is in hospital with a Pancreas problem, he's hooked up to an IV but he's STILL blogging! Marko, you're a legend! Get well soon eh :-) Talking of blogging, welcome to God is my Director who has hit the ground running, oh and to the Chester crew who still seem to be blogging well. I'm not wanting to introduce massive levels of competition here BUT a goodly number of CYM students each year begin a blog and then just disappear, so it's Chester Uni 30 points, CYM 15 points :-) Mike, consider that a nudge to actually writing something!

Youth ministers were left bereft of humour when Dave Walker's cartoon church reached meltdown due to it's HUGE popularity. Please subscribe to his offbeat take on all things churchy so he can afford more bandwidth :-)

The women only youth ministry gathering, "More than Survival" was cancelled. I'm wondering whether this was because there wasn't the demand? What do you think about singe sex youth ministry conferences? Is there a 'market?' I really enjoy the fact that youth work conferences have a male and female perspective and humour, I wondered though whether a male only retreat though might be a good thing? Discuss .....

OVERWORK! Really striking critique here from Bob Mayo via Michael in NZ. The danger highlighted being that commitment is demonstrated in busyness.

"Christians are subdivided and then reclassified according to their levels of commitment -- there are cultural Christians, believing Christians, born again Christians and then finally committed, believing, born again Christians."

And finally ..........
The following Advisory poster has been developed for youth workers considering job opportunities with the church:

I found this picture from a an awareness campaign about eating disorders and thought it might be useful for sessions on self image, it's certainly a discussion starter.

Apparently I slept really well last night!

The reason I know this is because last night someone drove a stolen car into the Close where I live. They then set fire to it on the piece of sloping road past my house and let it roll down and crash into the woods (passing a few yards from my car) where it completely burned out. A while later a fire engine turned up to deal with the blaze.

I didn't know ANY of this until this morning
Apparently I slept really well last night!

I've never been to Spring Harvest (yet). I've been to the Methodist gig, "Easter People" which I really enjoyed ( I thought their philosophy of hitting a different town each year and people being a witness where they were staying was fab!)
I've been to Greenbelt LOADSA times since 1985 and have done a few Soul Survivors. I've also been to many and diverse christian conferences at Swanick. So my "I-Spy" book of Christian gatherings has a goodly (Godly?) number of ticks in but up until now I've not done Butlins for Born-agains!

All that is due to change in 2007 though as I'm accidently going to Spring Harvest!
I know what your thinking! "How can you accidently go to Spring Harvest?"
Well we were offered the use of a chalet at Butlins Minehead which is owned by a charity in Newbury. The only dates available were at Easter and I was delighted with this, a holiday! Wahoo :-) When I got home, I told the family that we were having a holiday at the seaside and sketched out the details to which my good lady wife replied, "Are you sure we are allowed to be at Butlins as Spring Harvest take over the site at Easter?"
Doh! (I'd completely failed to make the SH connection) and thought that it had all gone pear shaped. However on checking, we are allowed to be at Butlins as the chalet is owned albeit a lot of the normal entertainment etc is not happening as it's not a regular Butlins week. NO probs, we can still use the swimming pool and can still walk on the beach :-) Very excited

So I'm accidently sort of going to (or being next to) Spring Harvest! LOL
Undercover Youthblog report will follow

* re the picture, I looked up Spring harvest on Google images?

This is the latest ad' from the Churches Advertising Network, it links into a MySpace site for discussion and exploring the question. What do you think?

Wahooo!

Bruce Cockburn is in the UK in January. He's playing Manchester, Sheffield and Milton Keynes! (I hope to be at the Milton Keynes gig)

You know that moment when you realise you have bitten off WAY more than you can chew, metaphorically that is!
Definitely suffering from this at the moment. I'm trying to write "Youthwork Update" that goes out to all 627 of my churches and had a great idea. I wanted to distill Bob Mayo's and Phil Rankins research on Spirituality into a useful summary that I could link in with Kenda Creasy Dean's perspective on young people as "Intuitive theologians!" Then use that as a challenge to help Youth leaders explore Contemplative Youth Ministry and hence work that engages hope, creed, call and community. Oh and did I mention that I needed to fit this in to half a side of A4!

In the UK news this morning was the fact that youth custodial and secure accomodation places are full to capacity. I was very impressed with the person who commented in the radio interview (I missed their name, doh!) but said,

"Locking up more young people is the penal equivalent of building more coal fired power stations to tackle global warming"

So asks the BBC! I shall watch this debate with interest.

The independent has a great article today exploring, "Teenagers the Shocking Truth!" I like the way they've used a Daily mail shock heading but present a vary positive and balanced view. Well worth a read

"Watch out! - I am from the evil and hated generation. Believe it or not, not every single teenager around my age goes around beating up people and smashing up cars. Can you seriously claim that today's youth are that much worse than the mods and rockers of the former generation? My generation never gets a positive thing said about them - GCSEs for example - we do better than the past generation and the courses must be getting easier - obviously. Is it really any wonder then certain youths rebel?"
A teen from Bristol

“Most religious communities’ central problem is not teen rebellion, but teenagers’ benign ‘whateverism' ”
Christian Smith

I was just reviewing the notes from Kenda Creasy Deans visit to the UK, I was struck again by the above quote from an American study in 2005. More importantly though were the andedotes as Kenda perceived them, these were the foundations she highlighted that young people need in order to have/live a faith of consequence.

* A creed to believe

* A community to belong to

* A call to live out

* A hope to hold onto

Amen to these! I think this is a very cool piece of reflection on what Discipleship is based on, which is in turn forming some of my thinking on Confirmation.

If you are looking for resourcing STUFF and ideas then check out The SOURCE and Youth ideas! Both include some great ideas for film clips that you could use for discussion and exploring themes! Nice!

Holy Phil managed to unearth that there's a film called THE NATIVITY coming out this christmas? I didn't know anything about this, did anyone else? Have a look at the trailer, it looks pretty cool :-)

"The Nativity Story is directed by Catherine Hardwicke from a screenplay by Mike Rich (Finding Forrester, The Rookie). It is scheduled for a December 2006 release. Filmmakers are bringing an unprecedented level of commitment to ensure the authenticity not only of the Nativity story itself, but of the film’s look as well. "We are looking for epic intimacy," says director Catherine Hardwicke. "We want this journey to be big and beautiful, but we want to feel what these people felt. I hope audiences can relate to the film on a personal level and find some inspiration to get through their own challenges and difficulties." Producer Wyck Godfrey adds, "We chose Catherine because she cuts against the grain of the picture-book version of the movie that could have been made. She has had great success at really capturing the lives of young people in particular, and the conflict, crisis, and pain of growing up. The idea of bringing her point of view to Biblical times is very interesting." She, writer Mike Rich, and production designer Stefano Ortolani spent countless hours researching the era to ensure every detail looked and felt authentic. Because the actual locations of Bethlehem and Nazareth have become fairly modernized over the years, the production decided to shoot in the village of Matera, Italy, which has been virtually unchanged for centuries (and was previously used as a location for The Passion of the Christ)"

A parcel arrived this morning with a couple of books that I'd ordered, the revised version of The Art of Youth Work and a copy of Don't shoot! I'm a detached Youth Worker. The initial wahoo of anticipation is soon run over by the bus of reality as I try and work out if/when/how I'm going to read them.
This got me thinking about a continuum on which all books must be placed. The continuum runs from 'I'm not EVER going to read that' (eg a Rosamund Pilcher) right up to 'Put everything on hold until I have finished reading this book' ( e.g Bill Bryson). It also strikes me that this continuum is at an angle running downhill from the Bryson end, it is therefore possible for a book to settle briefly on the line at "I need to read this soon" but to slide through "Going to read when I've got chance" before living happily ever after in the LARGE pile defined as "Books I've read some of and in an ideal world will finish before I die"

I wonder if I should re-order my books on the shelves in keeping with these classifications?
I wonder if I should ask Amazon to be a banned URL until I've finished reading the books I have?

So little time, so many books!

I have the office all to myself for a while so have Antenne Bayern on LOUD (Favourite German radio station) AND arriving in the car park this morning I pulled off a beaut of a handbrake turn to be able to drive straight into my parking slot :-) Nice!

I now intend to single handedly take on my 'In Tray' aided only by a coffee (or three)

Listening to Chris Evans (as I usually do) on the way back from work I heard this song, "How Come". I'd not heard of Ray Lamontagne before but am going to check out more off his stuff. Thought this song could be a good discussion starter!

People on the street now
Faces long and grim
Souls are feeling heavy
And faith is growing thin
Fears are getting stronger
You can Feel them on the rise
Hopelessness got some by the throat you can see it in their eyes
I said how come
How come
Everybody on a shoestring
Everybody in a hole
Everybody crossing their fingers and toes
Government man spin his politics till he got you pinned
Everybody trying to reach out to each other
But they don't know where to begin
I said how come
I can't tell
the free world
from living hell
I said how come
How come
all I see
is a child of god
in misery
I said how come the pistol now as profit
The bullet some kind of lord and king
But pain is the only promise that this so called savior is going to bring
Love can be a liar
And justice can be a thief
And freedom can be an empty cup from which everybody want to drink
I said how come
I can't tell
the free world
from living hell
I said how come
How come
all i see
is a child of god
in misery
I said how come
Its just man killing man
Killing man
Killing man
Killing man
Killing man
I don't understand
Its just man killing man

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

Sunday was a fabulous day of Churches for me! It's not often I get to write that being the post modern that I am who struggles with mainstream church services (even though I passionately believe in Church). But a good day it was!

If you'd like to know why then pour yourself a coffee and I will tell all .......

In the Morning I headed up to St Matz in Oxford as they were experimenting with a different patern for their mornimg worship and I really wanted to see how it worked and how the young people connected in with it. (I took my eldest with me which meant I also got to give St Matz a thumbs up on wheel chair access). Anyway, St Matz is a trad' Anglican shape on the outside but bright, warm and welcoming on the inside. The pews are moveable so they'd be re-arranged to focus in on the middle of the church, with the worship group off to one side. The service started off conventionally enough but after the reading and Talk (which had focused on the theme of Worship) people were encouraged to go and engage with "Worship" at the various zones around the church (all of which were on the planner in the service sheet). My 11 year old immediately wanted to go off to the silent zone in the vestry which was set up for reflective prayer, we then went to the writing zone where there were some questions about us and worship to respond to. I then checked out the cafe zone and spoke to some of the young people who were discussing Bibles on the sofas and lastly caught up with a bit of the stuff around worship and emerging church via a DVD in one of the discussion areas. For the record the service concluded with communion with some wonderful choral singing from the worship group and then a belter of a hymn accompanied by the organ, violin and trumpet.
I came out of church delighted to have had the chance for silent prayer, having participated in the worship and having benefitted from the space to explore and to move. Thumbs up!

In the evening I headed off to St Laurence in Reading, a church that has a VERY strong focus on mission to young people. I arrived a bit late and all the teens/young adults were on the sofas and there was some Bible discussion happening. From there we moved into the chancel where people stood, danced or hid in the choir pews while the worship was led by guitar, voice, beat box and some awesome MC-ing rap. It was incredibly powerful and had a great level of particpation, spontaneity and engagement. LOVED IT! We then all moved into the darkened chapel for a simple eucharist. We stood in a circle around the altar where there was a simple candle and cross as the focus as well as the smell of incense. Came away feeling excited in my heart and spirit. FAB!

Sunday Funky Sunday :-)

I have continued to reflect on the whole Confirmation thang and have stumbled into an interesting think today! Churches often tell me that Young people view confirmation as a passport out of the church. A postulate based on the fact that many young people NEVER re-appear post confirmation. The way that some churches have phrased this phenomena, to me, gives the impression that young people think,

"Wooaaaa I'd love to leave this joint but OH MAN, I can't until I'm confirmed!"

However the thought that crystalised today, or at least the question was ..... Maybe for many young people it's the experience of confirmation preperation that convinces them it's time to check out for good.

My reasoning is based on my experience. In my time in church as a kid and a teen I experienced little of God, I didn't understand half of what we did or why we did it and no-one was answering the questions I wanted answered BUT was afraid to articulate. Confirmation group was a big deal then as I'd be able to learn, experience more of God, ask questions and also, finally encounter Adults who'd explain how this stuff actually worked in their lives and how it might work for me. Here was the chance to encounter the real deal, faith that grabbed the heart and the mind. What actually happened was that my questions were brushed over, the Adults presented some theoretical aspects of faith and I was told lots of stuff like why we were ACTUALLY the "Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church" even though we were Anglican. Answers to the wrong questions.

I realised that Confirmation had been a disillusioning experience for me despite an earnest desire for it to change my life.

I guess I wonder how many young people have a similar experience OR was it just me? I'm pretty sure though it's not Confirmation that's to blame (implying the fault is with the young people), we need to look more carefully at the whole process and experience.

I rather like this site, the Department for Social Scrutiny. I particularly like their guide to Notwork Rail and their explanation of Governmentally declared Peril levels :-)

If you are doing some self esteem work with young people or discussion around beauty and the media, this video is FANTASTIC. It's a stop motion piece taking a woman through make up, hairdressing and then comupter enhancement.

ht to the Marko man

Man, where did the weekend go?

Friday: Public transport home. The ticket queue was SO long I missed my train and headed off to the bus station and found a coach heading South. Lateish back unable to get the Divine Comedy song out of my head!

Saturday: Graduation from Yoof Wurka School then onto the Vertigo event. Mad time making hot chocolate and the like for 500 people. Great time (thanks to the team) and it was awesome to be spending time with so many young people and youth workers.

Sunday: St Matthews, Oxford in the morning to worship in an experimental morning service that they have been doing* St laurence in the evening** to see how they work and to begin planning the Licensing service being held there on November 5th.

It's now Monday! Unable to get the Bangles, Manic Monday song out of my head :-)

* Review to follow
** Review to follow

On saturday I graduated (oops, can you graduate if it wasn't a degree?) from Ruskin and was formally* presented with my JNC certifcate as a qualified Youth Worker. Huzzah
**Throws Hoodie in air**
Been there, done that, got the qualification! I'm a JNC don't you know :-)

*It would have been more formal if my son hadn't been so excited about my achievement that he ran across the hall and cannoned into me shouting "Daddy" while I was accepting my certificate

I have at least a couple of meetings a week where the easiset place to rendevous is in central Oxford. This is great for me as it's only 8 minutes from the office by Brompton (zoooom) and means I escape the desk!
The preferred option until now has been Starbucks but I'd much prefer to go to an independent place rather than be endorsing Globalism. Starbucks had won up to now as I can hook up to the world via T-Mobile (which allows me to surf via my BT Openzone membership) but I've been experimenting. I tried Mortons in New Hall Inn St but they have a minimum spend before you can use the wifi and as I only wanted a drink it was a case of, access denied :-(
On Friday though I discovered Combibos on Gloucester Green (by the bus station) and really liked it! Good welcome, great coffee (fairtrade!) and sublime cheesecake, all with wifi access as long as you bought something! I would have signed up on the spot and declared my defection to Combibos via the blog there and then BUT the connection was not up to much at all. I got so fed up with how slow it was running that I ran a check and clocked it at 79k ie not much faster than dial up!

CAPTAINS LOG SUPPLEMENTAL: Wifi connection now up to speed and I'm adopting COMBIBOS as the watering hole of choice in Oxford.

I rather liked this surreal idea/debate on Hayley vs Gareth (one of the Chester blogs) that sees Emo's ranked against Nemo!

Anyone think of any other rhyming but absurd sparring partners?

No pressure then! Zac has already included a link to Youthblog on the assumption I'd be publishing some stuff from yesterday's look at Contemplative Youth Ministry!

Yesterday was our termly gathering of Youth worker/ministers from across the Diocese and we met up at the Eton Dorney Centre to look at Contemplative Youth Ministry. I'm very excited about Mark Yaconelli's book (the main basis for our day) as I feel like it's given a langauge to the things I was sensing/feeling about youth ministry, for me the book has an enormous sense of "YES!"
This seemed to be the experience of others too and there was a real energy around looking at the themes and being vulnerable about what that meant for us!

The structure of the day was thus (in case it's useful to anyone else)

1.Worship

2. Exploring the critiques of church/youth ministry levelled in the book
"We don’t know how to be with our kids.
We don’t know how to be with ourselves.
We don’t know how to be with God"

and a summary of the other critiques that our default approach was built around:
Words, Busyness, Answers and Expectations

3. Question: Has your faith and Spiritual life grown or diminished since you started work for the church? and why?
4. Exploring the contrast between anxiety led approaches and love motivated responses to youth ministry (p51)
5. Looking at what it means to the centred in Christ, living from the centre of our lives (quote in extended entry)
6. Question: "What is your deepest hope for the young that you know?"

Lunch

7. A Contemplative Prayer exercise
8. What does it mean to build a "beloved community" to deliver/live Youth Ministry
9. Prayer for one another

Enormous thanks to Doc Brush-Hamilton and Yvonne von St Matz for the work they did for the day and the top job in leading worship and programme!

You need a good sense of humour to be a Youth Minister!

"Well thank you for applying for the post of youth worker at St Hilda's and Most Angels here in Lower Snitherington. As you'll appreciate one of the things you will have to have is a good sense of humour!" *Laughs!*

So for this part of the interview we'd like to offer you a picture and ask you to devise a witty caption before we go onto to explore your eschatological position and show you around the village!

A few bloggy things that have appeared on the radar screen and I wanted to mention.

If you are an anonymous blogger then there's some good words of wisdom from Dave reflecting on his observations and experience. I particular liked this line:

"If you blog about your job and your employer doesn’t know about it you could be in dangerous waters. Trust me, I have been there and bought the goggles / swimming cap"

The legendary Dotster is MAKING her students blog (lol) as part of their Christian Youth Work course at Chester University! This is the blog that draws them together and the links are on the right hand side, check them out! (Oh and if any of the Chesterblogsters pick this up, Welcome and I highly recommend checking out TSKs blogger prayer as a great guide to the spiritual opportunities and dangers of blogging)

And lastly, I am doing a workshop thing at the Matrix conference. It was to be on blogging but it's suddenly become an 'All Tech in General' one taking in video, blogging, powerpoint and more *EEK!* I think I'm going to reign it back in though 'cos potentially that's going to disappoint everyone who comes as:
a) It's too much to cover and
b) I'm not so hot on the video side.
So I'm thinking of something along the lines of "How can blogging serve youth ministry?" What do you think? What would you want to see/hear? What would make it REALLY useful? NEED INPUT (rsvp)

It's Monday and here is the splurge of news, info and clergy gossip (not really) that has been sucked into the Black Hole of Youth Adviserdom and is now available in your galaxy:

First of all. VERTIGO 4 is this coming Saturday (14th) and it's looking GOOD. I reckon there'll be around 500 teenagers there and once again I'm heading up the cafe team, actually that's only partially true: I would be heading up a Cafe team if they hadn't all gone off to university and short term mission agencies. SO if you are within a Lightweek of Oxford and would love to join the team, be in touch!

Marlborough are looking for an employed person to join the team. You'll have to be very versatile AND have large pockets to put business cards in because the the job title is long and all encompasssing. If you feel called to be a:

"Part-time Children and Families Worker/Office Manager for Christchurch Methodist/URC Marlborough"

then let me know and I'll put you in touch!

Matrix publicity is out now, e-mail for details. Youthwork the conference is imminent. I hope all the female youth workers who will be at "More than Surviving" this week have a blast (and don't dis' us blokey workers too much). Greenbelt have announced their theme for 2007, Heaven in Ordinary. I can't find it on the Soul Survivor web site but the Soulnet conference is running March 2-4th 2007.

A couple of people asked about how I (legally) do wi-fi when I'm out and about? I pay £11 a month to BTopenzone and can log onto shed loads of hot spots around the place. They are offering me some 'carrots' if I can persuade anyone else, so if you want to know more, let me know eh ;-)

And finally, if you need a reminder that risk assesment and planiing are a good idea. then learn from this less than uplifting scenario! Download file
(Caution, 600k Powerpoint show)

I was in Wheatley last night for the launch of a new 'Youth Service' called Live@6. It was a great evening that a good number of Tweens and Teens participated in.

Live@6 was the vision of the curate, she'd networked and communicated the event well and drawn in lots of people from other churches, organisations and the local theological training college. The result was a good team who were enthusiastic about the event, it also meant there was a critical mass of young people.

The format was a good balance of the relaxed and the structured with a clear idea of what was happening. The church enviroment was welcoming, both because of the team and the funky warm lighting/candles. A couple of fun icebreakers were followed by doughnuts and then everyone assembled on the carpetted area at the front of the Nave. There was a good explanation as to what Live@6 was and how it would work. The worship was explained and worked well. A fun shared activity led into the discussion/learning on values and what Jesus had to say, followed by some time at various prayer stations that had been put together. This was all drawn together with a particpatory version of the Lords prayer and some final worship.

There was then hot chocolate and discussion about where the young people could be involved in Live@6.

Regular readers of the blog (Hi both) will know that my laptop keyboard started to lose letters faster than the Post Office. Despite an attempted repair it was never quite right and it was pot luck at whether the "w" appeared or not (if you've wondered why 'ho' has featured a lot in the blog recently, it's not an RNB lyric, it's a 'How' or a 'Who' without the 'W!' ). Anyway those nice people at Dell 'Exploding Batteries' Computers have sent me a new keyboard!

Captains log supplemental: I.T have just told me that they've forwarded this post onto our DELL account manager, Doh! (I love my DELL Laptop, honestly).
Oh and if you want to see the disected guts of my laptop and aren't squeamish about the sight of silicone, read on!

I'm trying to do a whole bunch of reflecting on the meaning of Confirmation at the moment! (Baptists are excused from reading this post). I want to explore a theology of confirmation* and then look at what that might mean for the way we approach confirmation preparation as well as how confirmation fits into the life of the church.

I see quite a lot of stuff around confirmation that is done badly (imho) There is good stuff happening too BUT here's the not so good stuff that I see and want to explore:

1.Young People are often confirmed too young.
Now I know that young people vary enormously in their spiritual maturity and I do hold to the "stage not age" philosophy BUT it seems to me that young people going forward for confirmation before adolescence is not a good thing. During adolescence EVERYTHING is re-evaluated, the process of exploring, owning or rejecting happens at this stage, confiming young people before this therefore means that faith can be assigned to childhood. I also find that groups that have run confirmation preperation with younger tweens have not devloped the discussion and exploration in the same way.

2. Confirmation groups often focus on 'knowing about'
For some preparation groups the focus is "Teaching about" christianity rather than exploring faith together. A 'what you should know' approach is not a shared journey of spirituality, learning and action. Confirmation prep' is an enormously exciting opportunity to experience christianity in action, worship and in understanding. It's vital to understand what Christians believe but it must be linked to experiencing and living faith. I guess I'm saying there needs to be acts not just facts (wow I can be cheesy sometimes).
Young people have also told me that there was little about the connection between faith and their everyday lives.

3. Confirmation automatically follows confirmation preperation.
I think confirmation prep' should be a place to reflect, think, explore, pray and to find whether it is the right time for a young person to confirm their faith. In other words the group should be a place to discern a 'not yet' or a 'no' as well as the place to discover that it's the right time to confirm a real and owned faith. I've had lots of conversations with young people who felt that their confirmation was a process they were put through and that actually, it had little value to them at that time.

*I said you were excused from reading this if you were a Baptist so don't be arguing with me about the idea of 'a theology of confirmation' ;-)

I've noticed a weird phenomena whereby the moment I blog-roll someone they stop posting. I'm sure this is some sort of bizarre coincidence rather than any sinister blog limiting power, well reasonably sure?
So, an experiment: I've blog-rolled the following people and I hope their blogs will go from strength tio strength, if not I could find myself in the weird position where people specifically ask me NOT to link to them.

Chris' random thoughts
Every little thing
Random voice in the wilderness
Rethinking youth ministry

Oh and welcome back Andy, who was one of several bods who stopped posting immediately after I listed him BUT seems to be back :-)

“Do not try to call them back to where they were, and do not try to call them to where you are, beautiful as that place may seem to you. You must have the courage to go with them to a place that neither you nor they have been before”
Vincent Donovan

All sorts of stuff lands on the slightly untidy desk of the Diocesan Youth Adviser and here it is AND without negatively impacting the surface of your workstation :-) Don't say I didn't tell you!

National Stuff

JAM 12 is now out, great magazine to give to the youth group.
Alton Towers 2007 will be on May 5th. More details from Ultimate Events
Life. Live it Campaign from the Red Cross, get young people First Aid prepared.

Diocesan Stuff

Engage Youth Leader Training: Core Values 4th Nov,Understanding Learning 24th Feb, Management of work and self 19th May, Models of Youth work 14th July. Details here
Hope 2008: Open meeting that Roy Crowne will be at, looking at how Churches across Oxfordshire can make HOPE 2008 happen in their community. 23rd October 10:30 at the Kings Centre, RSVP or questions to OYW please.

At our staff residential yesterday we had a really good session with Ian Adams from the MayBE community in Oxford.

What I really liked about MayBe is that around their focus of Christ Centred Community they have identified core values, each of which has a guardian entrusted to protect and nuture these elements of their community and worshipping life. These values are:

GRACE

SPACE

WONDER

GRIT

RESISTANCE

LAUGHTER

PRESENCE

PLAY

I really like this list and what it represents, I've found that Grit, Wonder and Play have really stuck with me since our time talking yesterday, I especially love the fact that a 'Church' holds Play as a core value.

I'm left reflecting on underlying values in the ministry I have through the Diocese, both the consciously communicated values and the ones that are implied through actions and attitudes.

Having been in Ministry for a lot of years I reckon I've stayed in nearly all the christian conference centres in England. There's a huge variety, although they do all have in common the edict, "Thou Shall strip the bed and placeth the sheets outsideth thine door!"
At the moment however I'm at one I have not stayed at before, it's Windmill Farm Conference Centre. I'm really impressed with the place, it's well laid out, friendly, has good food and a great location ..... oh and Wi-fi!

Excuse me though ..... I've got to go and strip the bed!

Via comments today, bad habits of christian conference centres? (without naming and shaming the individual centres)

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