September 2011 Archives

and you know who you are ;-)

For reasons I am now struggling to recall I said yes to doing the All Age Harvest Talk this coming Sunday.

Last year our Youth Worker did this one and used a liturgical T shirt of his own construction ... the "R Vest"

This year I want to talk about our societal loss of wonder. Then use a re look at the wonder of harvest to make the connection to thanks, praise and grattitude.
I am trying to re-write "We Plough the Fields and Scatter" as a kind of 'laugh at ourselves' hymn that starts "We buy our food in Sainsburys!"

Would love any visual ideas that people can think of or anything creative around these ideas.

Filed under: Help!

CYM Oxford and I have been having some useful reflective chats over the last few months about upping the support, training and recognition for the volunteers who work with young people in and through churches. There is a real need it seems to be developing the support and development for people who have this vital Ministry (that seems to rarely be spoken of as a ministry).

I'm delighted that Oxford CYM are going to be running these evenings of support, fellowship and learning. I commend the idea to the house!

I bought a lovely piece of new vinyl flooring for the mid section of "Charlie" bus to replaced the age'd carpet.

The plan to only do the mid section of just the top layer of actual floor covering has backfired though. There is a certain inevitably with any DIY that the task will escalate, and so it has ... big time. (Why does this ALWAYS happen?)

Removing the carpet revealed extensive deterioration of the plywood and polystyrene insulation. Peeling back of this has revealed some rusting to the floor (nothing serious as V-dubs manage to equip the metal with rust hating tenacity). So a simple 'replace a bit of carpet' type job has necessitated the stripping out of all fixtures and fittings right back to bare floor. I now have a very expensive delivery van with windows.

Huge relief though that Charlie is only 20 years old and in relatively good nick. Some buyers of T2 vans start peeling stuff back and have the unfortunate experience of finding the whole thing is held together by habit, gaffa tape and filler.

So this weekend I need to:

Treat and paint the floor
Apply a new insulation layer to the floor
Shape a mahoosive piece of plywood, locating and drilling the 17 holes in exactly the right places.
Cut and fit new flooring
Place and bolt all fixtures back in and re connect wiring.
(Gives me a chance to run some speaker wiring to the back of the bus though)

Should keep me out of mischief methinks.

The latest Slant is up and the question posed was "How do we decide what to teach?"

My slant beginneth thus:

"This is the one Slant question I've not felt comfortable with. I wondered whether it is the right question, kind of like the classic piece of dialogue that leads to Inspector Clouseau getting bitten by a dog in the Pink Panther:

What should we teach? is a question I get asked a lot in the UK context, but it is often the wrong question. What I mean by that is that it can flow from a theology that equates faith and spiritual growth with knowledge and further assumes that if we have taught something, people have learnt it. In other words, the question is limited by a particular theology and further weakened by an assumption ....... "

To read the rest and other perspectives on the question click here or just randomly in the middle of this sentence

If you watch Outnumbered you'll be familiar with the anarchic but wonderfully imaginative Ben.

I couldn't help thinking of him yesterday when the vicar told me that my eleven year old, although exchanging "The Peace" ahead of communion enthusiastically around the church, had blessed everyone with the alternative greeting, "May the Force be with you"

It was the first of our post "Mend the Gap" follow up sessions on Saturday with Sam Richards (CYM) and myself hosted the above titled day. It was a wonderfully enthusiastic group of leaders who came ... and for the first of a series of 'experiments' it went well.
(If you were there, thank you for engaging so wonderfully and for your contribution to shaping future sessions)

As promised: I'm uploading the powerpoint slides.
Microsoft PowerPoint - Mend the Gap teenage follow up day.pdf

I also wanted to flag up some of the key links. This is a really useful rendering of the Frank Lake Acceptance Cycle. The two key books we were referring to were Contemplative Youth Ministry and Practicing Passion.

If there is other stuff you are after, the chances are that you can type the subject into the search (top of the right hand column) and I'll have scribbled something .... or just ask.

The three R's sessions that CYM will now be running ... "Refresh Review Receive" ... to support and enable volunteer ministry can be found here

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One of the themes that emerged was the need to help the whole church understand and embrace young people. Musing on how to help this process in our Parishes.

Had the pleasure of being at a Taize style service at Dorchester Abbey last night which was a great blessing (and a beautiful setting). We sang, amongst others, 'Ube Caritas' which always makes me smile. The reason being, it reminds me of this particular Taize meal which in the mix up and ab-use various languages dialect of Taize .... became affectionately known as Uber Carrotes:

Tonight sees be back in the pool and in a kayak and yet more attempts at persuading my upside down kayak to return to downside - up. I can readily create the immersion and inversion (surely half the task) but still cannot hold my head up as an upright member of the kayaking fraternity. (puns intentional).

But I have found this diagram which I shall laminate and stick to the front of my kayak, it's got to help to have a bit more of a formula for the experience surely. Joking aside though, the web site it is from is brilliant and hence I'm linking to it so I can find it again.

Here's the first part of my most recent 'slant' for slant 33, click through to get the rest of it and the other slants' on this or other subjects: (posting here as blog readers and FB friends contributed to the thinking, thank YOU)

What time and expectation boundaries should be non-negotiables for youth pastors

"The creators of Slant 33 have a particular genius, it seems to me, for posting wise but fiendishly difficult questions; questions easy to relate to but difficult to answer.

As I muse and type, I'm thinking of one particular church I nearly worked for, but at the interview, we agreed to disagree on boundaries and requirements.

The church leadership was very clear that each work week should be the normal work week (45 hours, in their book) plus matching the best of their volunteers, at that time a 20-hour commitment. I decided that a church that set the minimum requirement at 65 hours was a dangerous place to be, for my spiritual health and for my family.

The above experience illustrates the difficulty of answering the question. I don't have a problem with doing a 65-hour week when needed; it is not a clear nonnegotiable. At the same time, a church that expects and demands that every week is nonnegotiable.

The role of youth pastor, it seems to me, exists at an intersection of two contradictory sets of boundary expectations ....... " continue reading

I have a couple of "I'm looking for someone" type things to flag up and would be grateful if you'd read, digest, network or respond (delete as appropriate)

The first is a Church would are having a weekend away in February and are looking for two people to run a youth programme. It sounds like fun, it's the weekend of 17th - 19th Feb and I can put you in touch.

The second is a youth project in a village west of Oxford (15 minutes as the crow drives) that is looking for a sessional paid worker two nights a week. Again I can make the link

Thank you

Been there done that ..... well for some really creative thinking then, do it backwards!
The Reverse Brainstorm

Rather enjoyed this article from The Telegraph and particularly liked the quote below:

I understand this was shown at 'New Wine' this summer. Great piece of video, enjoy!

This is a day conference happening in Reading on October 15th and is aiming to be ALL AGE in terms of input and audience. The organisers would love YOU to be there and are especially looking for some young people who would like to share their stories of where they are making a difference.

This could be a GREAT day for your youth group to engage with.

"Faith is not a conclusion you reach...it's a journey you live."

AW Tozer

I'm back from a couple of days away at a Leadership consultation. My brain is somewhat zonked but it was a brilliantly creative and useful time.

It was a residential event at the centre that is home to Wycliffe Bible Translation, a rather fun place to stay in fact with GOOD food and funky wooden (but modern interior) huts.

One of my favourite things though was the fish pond, and especially the sign:

It would seem that after a hard day battling with Biblical Idiom and wrestling that into a dialectic dynamic equivalent, the translators used to let off steam by throwing each other in the pond. (As least this was the scenario in my mind) before this signage put and end to this post linguistic pond languishing.

I just got this error message on a website I was attempting to use

I thought it was fabulous in terms of gravitas and lending serious justification to the failure. So inspired am I by this techno poetry that I am thinking of trying to find some freelance work as an error-message author.

Attempts so far (and these as obviously now copyright!)

Error: Incongruent request at nodal intersection

Error: Discombobulatory data alignment input

Open to others though ...........

One of the groups that came to the training on Saturday morning were telling me a bit more about the group that they run, a midweek outreach group for 11-14's. In the course of the chat they were giving examples of the sort of things they have done and I LOVED this particular idea:

All the team wrote one paragraph as a brief story of their journey to and in faith. All of these were then read out and the young people had to guess who was who.

Simple, creative, brilliant ........ and led to some great conversations (I should add that this is also a group that are really great at listening to young people)

The wonderful Asbo Jesus

Please don't link to my post but to here on Asbo's site if you want to refer to this.

Whilst moseying through the resources tent at Soul Survivor I came across this, "Drive Time Worship" and it struck me as intrinsically humorous. I have been musing on and off since of hymns and choruses that either have automotive resonance or can be made so with a small tweek to the the wording BUT am not doing very well! Suggestions please for a play list?

(On that same browse I also spotted (and I quote) "The best Taize album in the world ever" ... which sounded so u-Taize like that it made me shudder)

Really need some help though to put together a fun list of drive-time worship 'cos I admit I have come up with nothing!

It was great to have such an enthusiastic and fun session on Tweenagers this morning at Church House in Oxford. BIG thanks to everyone who made it fun and interactive.

A pdf of the Powerpoint slides is available for Download: Microsoft PowerPoint - tween powerpoint 2010 for Guildford.pdf

Oh and here's the the booklet I demi-authored :-)

Suggested Homework

Watch School of Rock with the following questions in mind:
1. Where is our approach like the school, where is it like Dewey's (Mr Schneebly)?
2. How does Dewey engage and enable the young people?
3. How does Dewey share his passion and allow others to experience and participate in this?
4. What from the film would you critique and what would you absorb for your approach?

Hope you have fun working with your tweens, remember it's a B.L.A.S.T :-)

Any other questions that you have please e-mail me (address on the right hand column), leave a question in the comments or type a key word into the 'Search' (also to the right)

I'm doing some 'spring cleaning' today and finally dusting, tidying and having a clear out on the blog roll. I made a start this morning and have taken the first load to the recycling facility. Suggestions for useful Youth Ministry links, or what needs to be retired/amended are very welcome.

Making me smile, a really nicely done trick

and also extremely well done, this race start

I haven't updated my Gap-Year list since 2009 and am aware the landscape has radically changed. I am now therefore revising it and would welcome inclusions, deletions, opportunities, internships, short term opportunities and new Gap Years.

I thank you

Any fans of "I'm sorry I haven't a clue" will be very familiar with the round, One song to the tune of another, which has been 'simply' explained over the years in ways such as this:

"The teams have in front of them the words but not the music of a song which is different to another song of which they have neither the music nor the words. The tune of this second song, which is quite unlike the first song both in words and music, will be played but without the words to which the teams will substitute the other words they have from the first song which obviously will have no tune because that's made way for the tune from the other song without its words.
Et voila - one song to the tune of another!"

The most memorable example of which was 'Bat out of Hell' sung to the tune of 'Postman Pat!'

Back in 2007 we had a discussion on the blog about which christian songs can be sung to other tunes, but this summer I discovered perhaps the most wonderful example yet, and it still makes me laugh just thinking about it:

'Immortal Invisible, God only wise' ....... to the tune of 'The Wombles'
(and vice versa)

It works so so so well, wonderful.

Perhaps the stage at next years 'Let God Spring into acts of Royal Harvest Growth' could look like this:

The next gathering of employed Youth Ministers/Workers in the Oxford Diocese will be on October 19th at the Kings Centre Oxford.

Come along for some conviviality, encouragement, FOOD, professional development and prayer ..... all served with a healthy side order of fun.

ht Marko

I've been turning my hand to a little writing outside of Youthblog and attempting to make sense in a place where I am not known ..... and hence need to punctuate, apply logic and the like. It's proving great fun, but a steep learning curve. It is requiring a whole heap more work too as I try and find how Youthblogesque scribbling can be meaningfully translated/developed onto a 'proper' Youthwork site. Writing for a place where you are not 'known' is definitely harder, as is musing on what phrases and expressions may not work for an American based site given how idiomatic my wittering normally is.

The site is called Slant 33. The idea (and execution) is really creative. A question is posed and three people present three views on that question/issue. I'd really encourage you to link, bookmark or RSS .... and read it.

I'm really not sure I've got the hang of the writing required yet but I'm thrilled that Mark Oestreicher invited me to contribute.

I'm also really enjoying (in a being brutally stretched) sort of a way the fiendishly brilliant open questions that Slant 33 set.

The first two questions that I got were:

1. How do you pursue personal skill growth?
2. What time and expectation boundaries should be non-negotiables for Youth Pastors?

I'm about to start work on, "How do you decide what to teach?"

So check out Slant 33 and if you have any musings or reflections for the above question I'd be delighted if you'd bung a comment this way. Shalom :-)

Rob Bell in his own words:

A great day looking at Living Faith Worldwide .... a day for ALL ages

More details: Living Faith Worldwide Youth Poster.pdf

"Tasting God's joy, however fleetingly, turns us into women and men of communion. Individualism as a route to happiness is an illusion"

Quote that struck me at Taize this summer. (not literally you understand as there is no actual formal quotation throwing element to the ecumenical worship)

With apologies to Gloria Gaynor

And so I'm back from outer space
I just walked in to find the blog (but no html in its' virtual place)
I've undone the comments lock
I've re-enabled en-ter-ies
I'll write some of the stuff I've reckoned
to see if you're here to challenge me.

Go on now go ... I'm giving you the floor
to turn this blog back on now -
discussing youth ministry once more.
I know I was the one that went (hurt you with Goodbye)
Caused you all to grumble,
A Summer where I didn't try.
Oh no, oh my
but now I will re-try
I will retry
And as long as you join in too, the blog will stay alive.
The blog will stay alive.