September 2008 Archives

I'm having a week off this week. It's a chance to get my head together, have a little R&R with the family and catch up with some jobs around the house. The first two days have been dominated by DIY, specifically (and frustratingly) one job!

On my list there was one job that was one of those "quick wins" and would involve (or so I thought) half an hour of fettling then the chance to satisfyingly cross it off the list. However, never work with Children, animals or cupboard doors!

My list said, "Re-hang airing cupboard sliding doors!" (they kept jamming)
No problem, just whip off the doors, adjust the wheel mounts, apply a dab of grease, re-hang and all done!
However, this is progress to date:

1. Remove doors, adjust and re-hang but find they still don't work
2. Remove doors again, adjust, rehang, test and they still don't work
3. Remove doors, remove wheel mounts, relocate, re-hang and find they still don't work
4. Several more attempts before realising that the track the wheels run on was beyond repair and the actual source of the problem!
5. Remove all the tracking, then go and buy hinges to convert airing cupboard to conventionally hinged doors.
6. Realise that the doors are designed to overlap and thus hinging them will mean they cannot close, doh!
7. Locate smaller doors, fit with hinges, NICE! However as they do not meet in the middle I need to find a piece of wood EXACTLY 6.5 inches in width that will fill gap.
8. Go to builders merchants, obviously I cannot find a piece of wood that size so spend an hour planing a piece to the correct width! Clear up insane amounts of wood shavings, discover than my planing is not all that even, doh!
9. Fit the piece of wood between the doors
10. As the doors I now have are full of holes, fill holes and start painting them.
11. Build new fascia for above the doors as the old one would prevent the hinged doors opening.
12. Fit new handles and magnetic catches.

Aaaarrghghghghghghgh! And to make it worse my planned sea kayaking trip tomorrow looks doomed, not just 'cos I NOW have painting to do BUT because there is a 35mph breeze forecast and I suspect the Lifeboat people will take a dim view of an amateur paddler in entirely the wrong equipment taking to the ocean!

Captains Log Supplemental: My daughter appears to be wandering round the house singing an ammended version of "My Boomerang won't come back," her lyrical improvisation of the last verse is rendered as,

"Dad I know the trick and to you I'm going to show it
If you want your plane-ing to be straight, then first you have to mark it!"

Presumably the HTML was etched directly onto the Memory Stick carried by Moses and can now be revealed, The Ten Commandments (of blogging). They are:

Ten commandments for bloggers

10 You shall not covet your neighbour's blog ranking. Be content with your own content

A useful aide memoir I thought, however it's WELL worth reading what the Skinny has to say with much fuller take on the ethics and priorities of christian blogging. The full Times article is here and my thanks to Miz for the link.

Oh, and do keep me accountable!

The I.P.O.D's (Insecure, pressurised, over-taxed and debt ridden) .... read the report here!

At the consultation on Wednesday Simo (the Rural Yoofwurk Meister) was wearing a 'T' Shirt with a Steven Wright quote on, "Anywhere is walking distance ..... if you've got the time!"

I hadn't listened to Steven Wright in years and so I hit Youtube last night to catch up with his surreal sideways observations on life and his odd persona, fab! So operation "Make a Youth worker laugh on Friday" would involve you watching this ... or reading some of his classic lines:

"I put instant coffee in a microwave oven and almost went back in time"

"You know how it is when you're walking up the stairs, and you get to the top, and you think there's one more step, but there isn't? That's how I feel all the time"

This just in ......

Guildford, October 21st ... Young People and Spirituality
Wherever you are, now ... Christian Aid Tea Party
Reading, October 8th ... Bob Hartman, an evening with the story teller. bob poster.doc
Oxford, December 6th ... Vertigo Youth Event
Oxford, November 5th ... Taize promotional meeting with Bishop John and Brother Paulo (free lunch!) TAIZEnov5thflyer.doc

Other Dates that could be useful:

November 7th, 11 Million Take Over day
November 14th, Children in Need day
December 1st, Next Network day for Youth Ministers/workers in the Diocese

I didn't realise how serious it was losing the party nomination until I spotted Hilary on a poster this morning, reduced to selling toothpaste!

Stonkingly good stuff, review to follow!

On local radio today "the truth is, to be perfectly honest, that ........................."

made me smile 'cos if it was the truth why would you need to invoke honesty! (I was pleased to note though that a travel report was subject to double assurance of integrity)

My colleague Yvonne and I had the privilige of leading a consultation today that will feed into the writing of the new Youth and Children's strategy. Eleven practicioners got together (thanks everyone) and we were asked (I actually caught myself using the word 'tasked' today *shudder*) to look at the five marks of mission, namely:

To Proclaim, the good news of the kingdom
To Teach, baptise and nurture new believers
To Respond, to human need by loving service
To Seek, to transform the unjust structures of society
To Strive, to safeguard the integrity of creation & sustain & renew the life of the earth.

We then flagged up (on stick-it notes) examples of mission and young people that we had experienced or seen in each of these five arenas.
We then seperated them into three columns of 'To/for' or 'With' or 'By'
The group then added to these columns (on different coloured stick-its) other opportunities along the lines of, things we should be doing and things we could be doing.
Finally each participant was given 5 stickers* to indicate which examples or ideas were the priorities as they perceived them.

It was a good process and garnered some good discussion, as well as demonstrating that the group represented a range of theologies and practices. It was also the first outing for the "Throw and Tell Ball"

* Amusingly we only had stars that would require glue so we switched to Plan B and used the only available stickers we could find ..... which were animals. The Oxford consultation therefore is presenting it's priorities with slugs, cats, fish and Octopi! (made me laugh)

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

"The Summer Day" by Mary Oliver

I'm back (did you miss me?). The reasons for not blogging yet this week are thusly:

1. My long suffering laptop has displayed some worrying symptoms, or rather the display is a worrying symptom. For the last few days the bottom third of the display has been a flickering series of lines showing a blurry image at a different resolution to the rest of the screen. I have now discovered that I cannot blog with only two thirds of the screen. However, a small G Clamp applied to the left hand side of the screen has cured the problem (although rendered the folding away of the lap top impossible!)

2. I was away at the weekend with a GREAT bunch of friends and had no time for blogging as I was busy walking, cycling, laughing, playing silly games, eating and enjoying the collective humour and stories of friendships that have existed for a quarter of a century. I am at this moment proudly wearing the "Top Gun" sweatshirt they bought me, for organising said shindig, even as I blog.

3. I have been away at Douai Abbey for the last 24 hours on a staff residential. As I am one of the deputy directors of the department and our boss is leaving, I needed to focus. Added to that was the challenge of only being able to blog from upstairs and then only with two thirds of the screen!

But I'm back (I know, you hadn't noticed I'd gone)

Captains Log Supplemental: The lovely people at Dell despatched an operative who performed open case surgery and successfully completed a complete screen transplant!

Marko and friends have been trawling through the annuls of the history of Christian Music and unearthed some 'priceless' archive material. I hope this piece of Ska doesn't scar you for life

And for the truly brave, click here!

Back in the day (when I were a lad) there were only two Christian 'bands' in the UK really. You could go and see 'Phil and John' or 'Martyn Joesph!' The gigs were always church halls, furthermore the act would always be welcomed by an old geezer from the church who had attempted to "get with it" a bit by putting the tour T Shirt on OVER his shirt and tie!
The set, vibe and atmosphere lacked somewhat BUT you could buy Coca Cola and Crisps at the back of the hall. I recall these gigs with both horror and a mild affection.

Anyway, regardless of your sense of whether there should be a Christian Music scene or not, we are now in a much better position. There are actually a range of genre's, gigs no longer have an off-the-scale embarrassment factor and a decent mosh is possible.

However, being a little bit of a dinosaur, when asked about what bands are good to book I have no idea and can only mumble randomly. Here's where you come in! What I need is current Christian bands and a review from you on genre, style, popularity etc. (I know there is a MAHOOSIVE list on Cross Rhythmns but I've no idea who is around and UK based at the moment)

I thank you

Details here

One of the things that has been puzzling me for a few days about the channel tunnel fire is this:

My car is not allowed to be taken through the tunnel as it is powered by LPG. Fifty litres of liquid petroleum gas is considered too risky and hence me and my Butane burning bretheren are banned from accessing this mode of travel. However a wacking great lorry load of volatile and highly combustible chemicals is permissable and as a result there was a major fire and the tunnel is severely damaged.

Not much to do with a youthwork but I'll use my usual excuse of hey, maybe there is a great metaphor in here somewhere. (Or maybe it's not only the channel tunnel that's a massive bore!)

"The voluntary youth workforce is facing radical reforms as part of a strategy to improve youth services in England"

Article here!

If you are involved with young people in Oxfordshire and you fancy meeting up with like minded others, then George is hosting a get together on Saturday. Click continue

A recent case where a man who had thousands of indecent images of children on his computer has not featured as predominantly in the media as I would have thought .... it does however raise HUGE concerns in my mind!

Phillip Carmichael, the defendant, who had 7000 indecent images of children has Parkinson's disease. The medication he was on can have some bizarre side effects including 'hypersexuality,' it was this that the defence argued successfully that was the cause of his behaviour and the downloading of these images. So successful was this argument that Carmichael was given an absolute discharge.

While I have sympathy for Carmichael in terms of the disease that he has and the undoubtedly weird side effects of the medication, the case does raise questions in my mind.

1. Concerns about medication becoming a legitimate defence for abuse.
2. Concern for young people who are/have been abused and the message this sends.
3. BUT the biggest worry for me is it seems to be a legitimizing children being sexual objects. The medication creates 'hypersexuality' and I'm wondering whether this means the removing of all sexual taboo or morals or rather that it gives vent to existing sexuality?
I found a 2006 report on impulse control disorders in Parkinsons treatment that talks about medication leading to "disinhibited behaviours"

"disinhibited behaviors, things that patients "have had some interest in but suddenly [it] becomes a passion or addiction, like gambling, Internet card-playing, or various kinds of sexual activity -- even shopping."

There definitely appears to be a worrying question hanging here about hypersexuality.

I'm not sure why I wrote all this, I think that having read about this case in the newspaper I felt uncomfortable about it and wanted to further explore why that was?

PRESS RELEASE READS:

Nine months of research into the future of Christian Youth Work in England

has culminated in a urgent appeal to Government Ministers to take youth work more seriously and to Denominational heads to motive their Churches to action.

FYT is calling for Churches and Christian organisations to commit 25% of their income on working with young people, particularly marginalised young people, in order to take the needs of those outside of the church more seriously.

'With the media tending to demonise young people with such negative reporting , many of the general public are afraid to be in conversation with them. Christians need to sloth off their fears and engage with a generation that will soon give up entirely on the church if we are not careful,' says Dave Wiles, Chief Executive of FYT.

Working in partnership with '2009: Year of The Child ', Frontier Youth Trust is currently developing a FREE resource to assist Churches in celebrating young people in their communities and empowering them to reach their potential. Entitled, Young People's Sunday, the resource will offer material and tools to help churches celebrate young people throughout 2009.

Church leaders are asked to pledge their commitment to working towards these objectives and specifically respond to the challenges with a firm undertaking to take appropriate action. Churches are also being prompted to lobby politicians to implement a commitment to long term funding of Christian faith based youth work by writing to MPs and Government ministers.

For further information, or to receive a resource pack for Young People's Sunday, please email for details.

Nothing to do with youth work BUT this may make you smile! Five of Americas top voice over artists in one car creating a tribute and possibly a satire of their work, fab!

ht to ST

Oddly this morning I'm feeling spiritually and emotionally energized BUT rather sleepy. The reason for this odd state of affairs is that we have a week of 24-7 prayer happening in Newbury and I was filling the 06:00 slot this morning, a decision I was questioning as I wandered bleary eyed through the rainy darkness of town at five ugh something. Arriving at the 24-7 venue though was great though, the prayer baton was (metaphorically) passed to me by the Baptist Minister and I found myself in a comfortable prayer room with various prayer stations set up and a bit of ambient music playing.

The interesting thing I found was how much difference it made to have a great 'place' to pray as well as the space, the hour flew by! I can't point to any deeply spiritual experience within the hour but I definitely felt different when I left, Sleepy, yes! Energized at a deeper level, yes! Outcome of praying, we'll see!

Quench have a gig in Oxford coming up and Mark Cox has send me a load of info (click continue reading), October 3rd!

A film about youth work and developing youth workers by Peter Cutts, it's a bit of an advert for Rank but no less valuable despite being routed in one organisation.

Greetings to anyone who is visiting because of the CYM 'Safeguarding' seminar, thanks for make it such an interesting and earthed session :-)

As promised here are the powerpoint slides: Safeguarding'.pdf
The documents from the Oxford Diocese that I mentioned can all be found here and I particularly recommend from there, 'Protecting Children in the Diocese of Oxford' which is our overall policy.

Regarding Risk assessment, here's something useful, here's an interesting document and here's something flippant.

Here's the flip chart list of issues/questions that you articulated at the beginning of the seminar:

Are bureaucratic requirements going to get worse?

To cuddle or not / Is it possible to be professional and relationally human?

How quick does [Safeguarding] stuff change? 

Electronic media   (txt, e-mail, MSN, Social Networking etc)

How does this stuff work in detached settings

Is it true that lots of activity games are now banned

Contact details? What can we keep, what should we keep?

Consent Forms, Are they actually important?

Peer leaders, Boundaries, appropriate and inappropriate relationships?

What is our Legal Liability?

Passing info on, when, what and how do we make referrals?

Compassion vs. Professionalism?

If you are looking for anything else there is a search box in the right hand column, failing that e-mail me.

If you live in Bucks please note this training event on Nov 15th. I don't know whether this is an incentive or a disincentive but I'll be there! Training Day Flyer - November 2008.pdf

On Sunday afternoon the rain was taking a brief break (presumably to re-charge ready for it's next onslaught) and I decided there was chance to launch another skirmish in the battle, Macdonald vs Garden.

My garden pretty much goes uphill from the back door. I had begun digging into the slope to extend the small patio, creating a hole that has filled with muddy water, above which is the remaining slope on up to the sheds at the top. However as everything down at the house end of the slope was waterlogged, I busied myself creating a path up by the sheds. All the preparation went fine and I was soon in the position to be adding a top layer of 20mm* gravel. So I fetched a wheelbarrow load of the stones from in front of the house and returrned to just outside the back door ready for the uphill task (literally) of getting them to the sheds.

Getting the wheelbarrow up the slope is a challenging task which involves accelerating rapidly on the small patio area and using that momentum to swerve around the water filled hole and with a few well delivered steps continue on up to a more level and stable area. (I don't really need to write the rest do I?

The takeoff went well, myself and the heavily loaded barrow hit the slope at a brisk pace. I was carrying sufficient forward momentum to round the hole and still be upward bound. However with only a few inches to go I discovered that the grass was too sodden to inject the extra boost required to reach safety ..... and thus I stopped. There was no way I could get the barrow moving again and at this point gravity coughed and gently revealed it's presence by edging myself and the barrow backwards down the slope. Not too much of a problem UNTIL it became obvious that the barrow was going to complete its' return rather faster than I was. The barrow pitched me over, dumped me into the hole and thankfully fell over, meaning that I didn't get run over, merely coated with gravel.

So if you wondered how I spent my weekend, I spent some of it in a water filled mud hole covered in gravel and laughing.

The reason I write this is I thought it could be a great metaphor for something! (I just don't know what)

* I know you didn't need to know the size of the gravel!

I'm always amused by the esoteric jargon used in our different 'industries' and youth work is not immune from this by any means. My favourite ecclectic language is that of the dentist BUT I was quite amused to be following this van through a traffic jam and wondering what 'Manhole Rehabilitation' might be? (Good to know that people are doing redemptive work among the fertile mission field of street ironwork though eh!)

I am just writing a session on "safeguarding" for the new CYM (Centre for youth ministry) students. If you have any useful handouts, exercises, policies, statistics or stories then I would be very grateful for the use thereof ............. will swap for the stuff I have written thus far (and a bag of marbles).

I read this article, The Hidden Offenders, a couple of days ago and it is as useful as it is disturbing.

I noticed these on Darren's blog and thought they were a great idea! Throw and Tell balls for discussion starting etc (there's lots of different ones). I e-mailed the U.S of A based company to find if I could order but didn't get a reply.

Oh, have found they are available from Eden and I've ordered some :-)
Review will follow some time soon!

Dear All,

Yvonne (Childrens officer) and I are seeking some willing volunteers to join us for a discussion that will be fed into the national review of Children and Youth Strategies for the Church of England. If you are a volunteer or an employed worker, lay or clergy then we'd love to hear from you!

The event will take place at St Matthew's Church in Oxford on WEDNESDAY 24th SEPTEMBER from 10.30am - 12.30 followed by lunch (provided).

It's really important for us to get involved with this to help inform national thinking about how the church does and doesn't engage with children and young people - and to do this we need your help!
We'll spend some time sharing stories and thinking about the five marks of mission set out in 'Mission-Shaped Church' and the challenge to be a people of mission rather than people who do mission. We want to consider how the Church's engagement with children and young people might look in the light of this. (N.B. You do not need to read 'Mission-Shaped Church' beforehand!!! We'll take you through the 5 marks of mission in an easy kind of way on day, gathering feedback as we go).

Travel expenses will be covered and lunch will be provided (I think I already said that but it seems a good selling point).

For those who might be TOMTOM* assisted St Matthew's Church address is Marlborough Rd, Oxford, OX1 4LW.

Parking options as follows; Redbridge Park and Ride, Hinksey Park Car Park, local road parking in Whitehouse Rd is restricted to two hours for non-residents.

A map can be found here

Apologies for the really short notice and praying that some folks have space available on Wednesday mornings... Let me know if you are keen and able to make it plus any dietary requirements and all that.

* Other brands of Sat Nav are available

Strolling past the changing rooms on the way to the water at our local outdoor pool, I was amused at how difficult they felt it was to supervise 5-7's! If you are in charge of an under 4 then there only needs to be one of you in the responsible adult role. However if they are between 5 and 7 then this would seem to indicate that it takes 2 adults to ensure safety!
Assuming of course that they have not made a mistake ;-)

Oh happy days that in Youthwork we can work with one adult to every eight young people, Children's work it seems may be a LOT more labour intensive!

Funding of £30m is being made available to third-sector organisations whose work supports disadvantaged and vulnerable young people in finding their pathway to success.

The Youth Sector Development Fund (YSDF) will help organisations to grow their capacity, support them to compete for local contracts and become fully sustainable.

Applications are welcome from organisations which provide services to society's most vulnerable young people, and particularly those whose work has a focus on preventing young people from committing crime, or becoming involved in anti-social behaviour, and those that, through the provision of positive activities, provide engaging and constructive alternatives for young people.

The deadline for applications is 3 October.

A friend sent me a link to a site entitled, Cops and Robbers. It's run by a former Policeman who came to faith and he uses cartoons to help tell the stories of other people he has met who have encountered Christ.