October 2007 Archives

“Much education today is monumentally ineffective. All too often we are giving young people cut flowers when we should be teaching them to grow their own plants.”

John W. Gardner

I need to confess that I have been Gizmo'd once again and have ventured even further into Geekdom. The Diocese are trying to standardise the I.T and were not happy with me operating a PDA on the margins of their control and outside of the Network. In order to bring me in from the 'cold' though they have had to issue me with approved equipment so I now have a wi-fi enabled IPAQ that synchs with the work Network whenever I walk thorogh the door at Church House or pass through somewhere that's wireless enabled, Huzzah.

* Karlov was by Palm machine from 2002
** The background to the picture is a screensaver of an OLD PC

All Credit to Marko for flagging up this report. Like him I was struck by (and intend to use) the five characteristics present in those who most effectively work with young people:

- they see genuine potential in youth.
- They put youth at the center of their programs.
- They believe they can make a difference with youth.
- They feel they are contributing to the community something they owe.
- They are “unyieldingly authentic.”

I really liked the phrase "unyieldingly authentic!" I also liked this sentence that contrasted those who see a challenging bunch of young people as: loud, nosy, naïve, undiplomatic, stubborn, or unrealistic.
with those who see them as: energetic, curious, idealistic, honest, confident, and optimistic.

Apologies for the lack of scribbling over the last couple of days, I've been having a couple of days off for some R&R with the family, catching up on jobs around the homestead and fixing the car. I'm pleased to announce that these aims were accomplished on all three fronts and I'm especially pleased that the Youthblog mobile is now the same shape as other Astra Estates. Some of you may have noticed the concave front bumper and various other scratches, bashes, cracks and blemishes, which are no more! I have developed green-fingers but sadly rather than this being a new found gift for gardening, it is in fact just car paint, hey ho!

Another success was making it to the cinema to see Ratatouille which I thoroughly enjoyed. The art work was amazing and it was an affectionate tribute to Paris and to good food. The story was witty and original, the characterisation was fun and it's a definite thumbs up from me. My youngest however got a bit bored, I suspect that it's too gentle a storyline for a 7 year old and the film is more of an endearing one than a grippingly engaging one, but I thought this was a strength not a weakness.

I had also (rather optimistically) planned to read a whole bunch of youth ministry books but didn't manage anything heavier than the news paper!

I took part in a Halloween Podcast on Monday. The recording was of a half hour discussion but it's been edited down to 16 minutes. I haven't plucked up the courage to listen to it yet but it's here if you are made of sterner stuff, and If not, you need to know that I radically championed both sides of the Christian vs Halloween divide! (well, kind of).

*ht to Darren who has very graciously allowed me to use his artwork (above)

It's another one of these random notice sheets where i just chuck stuff onto a virtual youth ministry notice board and see whether anyone feels the need to scribble some info onto their pda/diary/hand 'cos it looks useful!
So ...... The World of Youth Ministry!

I wanted to flag up again the ASBO certificate, it's genius, USE IT! MENCAP are running an anti bullying campaign that's around the experience of young people with learning disabilities. Issue 15 of JAM Magazine is now available! James e-mailed me with a Christian Web browser he's designed, you may want to take a look. Worth noting that Children in Need is the 16th November, great opportunity for fundraising for a good cause while a lot of fun-raising too :-)

Within the Diocese:

12th November, High Wycombe: Enthusing Young People for Mission (see extended entry)
24th November, Youth Focus training day is full
Christmas, Wayne Dixon (Slough) invites you to see the work they do with ALL the primary schools in the area. Download file

And finally: If you would like to bring some income in for the youth group 'we need a Wii fund' then you may want to track down this missing pet ....

"A penny for your thoughts*?" you ask
Well. actually you'll get them for free as setting up a PAYPAL system so you could contribute a penny wouldn't be practical and you might then want your money back if you felt my thoughts were offered at a vastly over inflated price.

Anyway, I've been thinking about ethics as over the last few days I've encountered things that I think are ethically dubious and I wonder how we engage with these things AND how we meaningfully help young people to critique culture and practice in this area. I know these are not the worst examples but these are the three that have entered my radar coverage in the last few days.

Dell Computers have an add in the paper today boldly declaring that it's the last day of their "Buy now, pay October 2008 offer!" however they ran a similar add a week or two ago. Interestingly too if you phone up they tell you (or at least told me) it's like an interest free offer. However a bit later in the process you discover there is a substantial administration fee that is also collected alongside the payment. Ehtically, should you run an ad' that is either not true or makes a previous claim untrue? Also should you sneak in additional charges?

Someone I met over the weekend had just bought a new car and the dealership had told them to lie to the insurance company to get the most advantage from the free insurance deal?

And this is the one that really wound me up. A well known national double glazing company quoted someone I know (a pensioner) £22,000 for Double Glazing (it's a big house). Wisely they didn't take up the offer but kept stalling and also got other quotes before the very same glazing company finally agreed to fit the glazing for £7800. If a cowboy builder was filmed for an undercover TV programme inflating the price of a job by around 300% then they'd be prosecuted. But a legitimate company can charge whatever they can get away with?

I think this is probably just a rant but I think there is an ethical debate that needs to happen and companies do need to be kept accountable? It's also be a great youth session to debate, check out and campaign against unethical practice!

(*Penny for your thoughts is a British expression that has been around for a long time and never moved with inflation)

This is a FANTASTIC idea from FYT. In response to the ever present media demonisation of young people and the idea that somehow this is an ASBO* generation, FYT have produced a positive 'ASBO' (alright, sensational, beautiful, original) recognising the achievements and contribution of young people.

So if you've know a young person who deserves recognition, download one of the certificates here, Fab!

*Anti social behaviour order

Tim Schmoyer has a great blog that's a gateway to SO much useful Youth Ministry stuff, Thanks Tim :-)

Re the images: Check out this fantastic link to where to 100 sources of 'premission to use' images on the blog. Also some downloadable Worship backgrounds for Powerpoint. Nice!

If your youth group has a Wii then you'll be interested in this, A light sabre based game that'll be demo'd next week. There are rumours too that the nunchuck can be used for Jedi 'use the force' type hand pushes, Nice!

"Since the first Star Wars film debut 30 years ago, fans have
longed for the day when they could fight their own light sabre duels,"
said a statement from GameCity's organisers.

Although I suspect the Light Sabre will create more excitement among the youth leaders than the young people ;-)

For the last two mornings my PDA has, and this is very weird, given me a lie in. I don't mean the alarm failed to go off, I don't mean I didn't hear it, I mean that it 'behaved' illogically and let me sleep for an extra 24 minutes. There is of course a glorious tradition of computers coming to life and loyally befriending their owners (see Electric Dreams and Short Circuit) but I'm still a little fazed by my IPAQ knowing that I'm tired and letting me catch extra zzzzz's!

The Scenario is this. For the last two mornings the alarm (and the only alarm set) on my PDA is demonstrably and clearly '06:50!' However it has failed to go off at this time and has on both occasions sprung into life at 07:14 while the screen reveals 'Alarm 06:50' and offers me a Snooze or Dismiss choice!

Anyone offer a technically plausible answer or should I just accept that I have a computerised friend whose internal logic is no longer logical? (Please keep in mind though that the PDA is hooked up here and may well be reading your response, so any talk of dis*****asse****mbl****y may produce an adverse reaction)

Those of you who know me are aware that I have two offices in Oxford. One is Church House, the other is the wonderful Combibos Cafe.

After work last night I went over to Combibos where they were hosting an evening with their coffee supplier, Union Hand Roasted. It was a great evening as the shop and the supplier have a passion for THE best coffee and have a great relationship. Union work in partnership with farms and co-operatives in 17 countries and focus on only purchasing from the finest 2% of coffee production, which is then hand roasted in this country. They also work with their suppliers to pay a premium price, improve working conditions and help to develop the local economy. Last night we tasted coffees from Yemen, South America and Ethiopia, even more interestingly each of the four coffees was paired with a specific food to highlight the differences. I learned a LOT and enjoyed the coffee enormously!

Combibos is just such a cool place. Great Ambiance, amazing coffee, a warm welcome and a community feel, free wi-fi, delicious pastries and food AND still at below the prices of The StarCostaNero-Republicesque clones. Nice!

If you are in Oxford you should check out Combibos.
If you are in the market for some GREAT coffee then check out Union

Oh and if you want to meet to talk about Youth work/ministry, let me know a date and time (you already have the venue)

| View | Upload your own

ht to D. Scott Miller

I found this series of responses from children who were asked, "What does love mean?" I've been trawling the web to try and find (and authenticate) the original source of this work BUT have had no success, in the meantime ht to Ben and Tim.

"When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different.
You just know that your name is safe in their mouth."

"Love is when you go out to eat and give somebody most of your French fries without making them give you any of theirs."

"Love is when you kiss all the time. Then when you get tired of kissing, you still want to be together and you talk more. My Mommy and Daddy are like that. They look gross when they kiss"

Hope they make you smile as much as they did me!

Loving this idea for a game, check out Tim's guide to mattress surfing!

Greeting my wise and spiritual friends, I want to pick your brains! When you get invited to speak at something, how do you work out whether to accept or not? Obviously I pray about stuff BUT it's not always clear whether I should be going or not! I guess I assume that an invitation is not necessarily a 'Call' ... and as the Principal of my Bible School used to say (in an appalling abuse of Grammar), "If you aren't sent, don't went!"
The danger is of course that you accept stuff on the basis of how much fun it will be or how important it looks, neither of which are good criteria. Ho hum?

For example:
I'm speaking this weekend at a Youth residential (bit late to be wrestling with my attendance on this one)
I've been invited to speak on a Ski trip
I've got the chance to lead a confirmation prep' weekend for a Private School
I've got invites to speak at various Family Services

So, seriously. How do you discern and/or decide? What is a God given ministry opportunity and what isn't? How are you accountable for these choices?

Halloween is fast approaching. It's easy to tell as in between the shop's Christmas displays are racks of 'Freddy Kruger' and 'Scream' outfits for 5 year olds, bleugh! I'm not a huge fan of Halloween and/or Trick or Treating (which is massive on our estate) and I'm still wrestling with what we as a family are going to do!
Adding to this pressure this year is that on Monday I am taking part in a Discussion Podcast on a Christian response to Halloween.

I've been trawling around the web without much success (in terms of good content) but have picked up on the campaign to introduce some lighter and more diverse stuff into the shops. I've read up on light parties and re-claiming all hallows eve but quite a bit is too American, to work here, in it's approach.

So, has anyone got any meaningful advice on how to do Halloween counter culturally without just coming across as sad and twee (and a complete kill joy)?

This site looks like a pretty good way of setting up a youth group network outside of the usual MySpace et al contenders. Anyone used it?

The Guardian today has part of the front page given over to This study that identifies levels of stress in 7-11 year olds. The Guardian article is here. I've been talking about this through my Tweenager stuff but this covers even pre-Tweens.

*The F Word*

Advance notice of a photo-journalistic exhibition which the University of Reading Chaplaincy Centre is holding in February 2008.The subject of this thought provoking and moving exhibition is forgiveness. The exhibition consists of stories and photographs from around the world of people who have had cause to consider their attitudes to forgiveness. More info here

The exhibition will be free-to-view between Monday 11 -Saturday 23 February 2008 and we welcome visits from individuals and groups to reflect on the nature of forgiveness. It will be staged at the Palmer Building, Whiteknights campus which is easily accessible and open to all.

I have found a name for my mid life crisis, it is called Kayaking.

Ever since inheriting a mahoosive fibre glass double kayak in the summer I've noticed that I am being inexorably drawn deeper into the world of paddling. I think I realised I'd crossed a line at the weekend when I insisted on taking said boat with me to our Church men's weekend in Studland. Mind you I'm glad I did as my first decent taste of sea kayaking (apart from hiring sit-on Surf canoes at the beach) was so cool. I launched out into the blue three times including one time right out to Old Harry Rocks where the combination of encountering staggering isolated beauty and of scary myself silly, was truly exhilarating. (Surviving was also pretty cool). I learnt lots including the fact that lardy 16 ft double kayaks with limited manouverability and with no weight in the front struggle in surf! But I'm definitely hooked.

Mind you, for it to be a proper mid life cris maybe I should buy a VW Camper van to carry the Kayak eh?

There are some great situations where the blog saves me lots of time! One of the ways is that I am actually able to find stuff that I would otherwise of lost, forgotten or so mentally mis-attributed that I'd never been able to track it down. The other way is when people do creative stuff with my scribblings that I then get to use!
For example, I wrote a piece on recruiting volunteers and bunged it on the blog. A colleague of mine in Canterbury wanted to use this for some training so asked permission and then Powerpointed it (can you use Microsoft products as verbs?). Last night I was training on "Recruiting volunteers" and so then borrowed the Powerpoint of which the content was borrowed from me (if you see what I mean). Nice!
How cool is that? I'll upload the presentation to here in case it's useful (and to see if there is an onward journey e.g Screenplay, novel or Sculpture exhibition that anyone wants to develop from it! *laughing in a way-too-much-coffee-sort-of-a-way*). Download file

(made me laugh)

Er, a round up of what's what around and about the place. Stuff you should know, stuff you don't need to know and stuff you need to know but until now didn't know you needed to know!

October 13th: The next VERTIGO is this Saturday, see you there (I could still do with one more bod' for the cafe' team if you are up for some hot chocolate ministry).
November 6th: I am driving down to Sussex to meet up with some other youth workers and to hear some input by Pip Wilson. Wanna come for the ride?
November 9th - 11th: Youthwork the Conference 'Church unlimited' at Southport
November 16th-18th: Youthwork the Conference 'Church unlimited' at Eastbourne
November 23rd: (or the weekend of) Takeover day
February 26th-27th: DEPTH Diocesan retreat for children's and youth workers.
July 4th-6th: Yellow Braces Camp
August 22nd-25th: Greenbelt 'Rising Sun'

Gap Years:

Some links here plus a new scheme from the Church army called Xplore

'Fast Forward' is a video piece used at the WC Global summit this summer and it is AWESOME. The clip below really doesn't do it justice but gives you a flavour. As a piece of communication, it Rocks. It's a three screen video montage (in the background) allied to three voices exploring church history that concludes with an inclusive vision for now; justice, venture and unity! If you have a youth service coming up and you're looking for some BIG screen stuff, you should REALLY get hold of this DVD from Willow Creek.

“Every time you forgive someone who hurt you, encourage someone who feels defeated, extend compassion to someone who stands alone, confront someone in love, open your heart to a friend,
reconcile with an enemy, devote time to a child, you align yourself with God’s central purpose in this world.“

John Ortberg

I'm still doing quite a bit of work on 'confirmation' practice, preparation, theology. If you have any papers or recommended reading I'd love to know. Ta Muchly! (I'd also be interested in any reflections on Baptism prep' from any of my friends in pro-dunking denominations)

I'm not fully myself today after an experiment yesterday into how rapid a deceleration the human body can cope with.

Pedaling back across London from a meeting in Westminster yesterday was a joyous experience. The Autumn sun was shining warmly, the leaves on the trees were a feast of colour and the city looked beautiful. Cycling briskly along one of the wide open tourist areas I was taking in this unfolding visual feast and feeling at one with the world. For reasons best understood to city planners there was a short section of iron fencing randomly built into this expanse of sand coloured tarmac. Busy as I was absorbing the vista I made a gentle turn and I failed to notice it and had a considerable shock when the bike instantly stopped. *Ouch!* Thankfully I hit it at an angle rather then head on so I ended up in a crumpled heap next to the bike rather than employing the classic straight ahead superman impression.

Cuts, abrasions, friction burns, road rash, bruising, stiffness, swelling. Nice! But nevertheless laughing at my own stupidity :-) The Bike, meanwhile, has taken a beating and lost some minor appendages but still functions!

Feel free to leave sympathy of mirth in the comments :-)

The McGregors are playing Finchampstead on Friday 12th October (next week). Seeing as how the connection happened through Youthblog I reckon I'll have to go on a fact finding visit. If you're in the area, come and join the party!

(If however you're in Oxford, come along to VERTIGO where they are playing on the Saturday night)

When I wrote my final paper for the 'Methodist Preaching course' I researched and wrote a paper that I think I called, "Is the way we teach in church the way we should teach in church?" That was twelve years ago but the issues are still the same. I remember one of my conclusions was, 'we need to be more visual!'

Twelve years on though the opportunities for being visual have increased ENORMOUSLY! The frustrating thing though is there is often a failure to engage with what this new opportunity means and how a very different media leads to a different communication experience. I read recently an article on Powerpoint, from a church perspective, that framed the arising question as "What do people want to look at while we are preaching?" rather than how we re-imagine what has previously been the sermon?
(This add-on thinking inevitably results in the death by Powerpoint nightmare that we are all too familiar with, no horror stories please!).

It was encouraging therefore to read Leadership Journal and explore what Andy Crouch has termed, 'Visualcy!' I realise that I may be behind the times on this one as digging around it seems to have been written about in May 2005, but I like 'visualcy' as a way off exploring the fact that being visual is not just using our usual torrent of words AND adding pictures, its a whole new skill set.

Crouch talks about a third age of communication. The first being oral communication. The second age being that of written communication, the transition to this age requiring, literacy. Crouch views this third age as visual and sees that visual culture will require a new set of skills, a visualcy!

I wonder how often we (I) think we are operating in a visual currency but are in fact adding pictures to the safety of our oral/written norm? This 'post' being a case in point :-)

Bit of a parochial notice I'm afraid. 'DEPTH' is the youth and children's employer worker retreat that Yvonne and I are running in February. A mailing will be coming out to our mailing lists but I'm uploading the pdf here if you want details/booking info sooner. Download file

(oh and while we are doing the slightly parochial stuff. If anyone wants a copy of "Effective Ministry to Tweenagers" then please send a cheque for £2.95 payable to 'ODBF' to Carolyn Main, Church House, Oxford OX2 0NB with your name and address!)

Nigel Pimlott is doing some research on how(if) youth workers evaluate their work. If you have 5 minutes spare please click on 'continue reading' then cut n paste the questions into an e-mail and fill in the blanks! E-mail to Nigel.

P.S The questions that Nigel has framed link in well with point number 3 on this piece from the blog.

I've just been reading an interview outline from a church who are seeking to appoint a new youth worker. The brief asks for a presentation and helpfully lets candidates know that they have a power point available! I therefore wondered whether they meant:

but it had been written wrong, or whether they meant:

but thought that candidates may not realise they had this facility?