Archives For Youth Work

Well. In the past we have presented: The Church Sofa Guide To Church: How To Survive A Boring Sermon. While that list contains many nuggets of useful advice, since “Mini Sofa” joined us in the world, I’ve wondered if there is specific advice to help children survive a boring sermon.

Hopefully she’ll find the following useful at somepoint:

  1. Crawl under the seats, and between the legs of the people sitting in them, until you reach the back and freedom!
  2. Chop the bottom out the push chair… Drive it out Flintstones style
  3. Be so hungry you could eat a bible…
  4. When no one is looking… Check if the fire extinguisher really works! (Based on true story)
  5. Do something smelly… See what your parent does.
  6. Make faces at the kids worker during the service. They’ll love it
  7. Is your parent leading the service? Make sure they don’t misbehave by going up front and keeping them company.
  8. Does your church have pews? Bring a car in… those little ledges behind each pew makes a great race track.
  9. Is your parent the hugging, needy type? Demand a hug. When they pick you up… open your mouth and give them back your last meal.
  10. You and a friend, see who can run around the Church hall the fastest! See what happens…

Any we’ve missed?

housemates

image available from 12 Baskets

So.

Heres a little something for those that have ever been involved with youth clubs.

It seems to be a staple of evangelical church youth clubs that every evening features a “God Slot”… or whatever you want to call it. If you’re not sure what I mean, its the part of the youth club wheres theres normally some sort of Christian input, bible study, or short preach of some kind.

The thing is… What do you do if you have the sort of group that doesn’t want to listen? Do you shout “Shut up, and listen to me. God loves you!

Is having some sort of Christian input a useful expectation on youth group leaders?

Is having a “God Slot” each week helpful?

Welcome to this weeks edition of the weekly round up:

 

Most Annoying youthworker ever?

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Death of Youth

…of youth…

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Well its a nice day out there, if you fancy taking a break from the March sun, here’s this weeks round up:

 

*blatant plug of the week

This is the part of the service in which attention is directed towards the kids*, and the person giving the childrens talk tries to use some amazing idea to illustrate an great truth from the Bible.

This can go really very well, and if the person leading the Children’s talk is feeling confident, they may even step it up a gear. They may even try and engage the children (adults are pretending not to listen), by asking questions about a Bible passage.

This has its risks.

Like this one time at a church: After reading the story of Jonah and the whale, the person trying to engage with the kids asks a seemingly simple question :

“Who was thrown from the ship, and into the giant fish”

Silence

“His name starts with a J…”

It’s at this point, that an excitable and keen voice pips up:

“Jesus???”

 

*Not forgetting the adults who may secretly prefer the children’s talk to the main sermon…

Do We Imagine Enough?

ThatAndy —  February 24, 2012 — 1 Comment

Caught this the other night:

As both myself and Mrs Sofa muchly enjoyed the above, I couldn’t but wonder at the imagination that went into taking every day objects, and finding space for them in the above 60 second epic.

I couldn’t help but compare this to a lot of church work.

How many times do we wonder about the things we could have, and apply a “If only we had…” way of thinking, dreaming of resources we dont have?

Do we give ourselves enough time to imagine what we could do with the resources we have?

Welcome to Jesus Camp

ThatAndy —  February 17, 2012 — Leave a comment

What do you reckon?