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Can’t love, won’t love.

Over the last week, Manchester played host to a load of youth workers attending The Youth Work Summit. The good news for those of us who didn’t manage to get there, is that the talks given have been posted online at youthworksummit.com/inspire.

One such talk is this by Amie Aitken, entitled “Can’t love, won’t love.”, she looks at helping young people with attachment difficulties find a God of relationship:

You can watch the rest here.

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Do We Imagine Enough?

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?

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Daily School Worship?

From the BBC News website:

Children at Mile Oak Primary School near Brighton

Many state schools in England are not providing group worship, despite legislation making it a requirement, a survey suggests.

The Comres survey for BBC local radio found 64% of the 500 parents questioned said their child did not attend daily acts of collective worship.

But 60% of the 1,743 adults asked said the legislation should not be enforced.

Some schools were opting to teach pupils about community rather than religion, said educationalists.

The Department for Education states that all maintained schools in England must provide a daily act of collective worship which must reflect the traditions of this country, which it says are, in the main, broadly Christian.

So it seems that schools are in the firing line again, but not due to failing maths, or English. Its due to some of them not providing a daily act of worship.

Now. I’m not what to think of this. While on one hand I do like the idea of schools and particulary “Christian” schools being open to a Christian message, I’m also very aware of how dull and boring some assemblies were – that I remember sleeping in. Some I simply avoided altogether…  Deciding just to hide around the school.

With that in mind, I did once go to “The Eucharist” to avoid having to go to an assembly…

 

Where do you stand on this?

Should schools do more to have a daily time of worship?

Should Christians be more worried about the worship time being relevant?

Should we simply not care?

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Random Quote Moment

 

“Well, who else is there? I mean you lot, all you do is eat chips, go to bed and watch telly, while all the time underneath you there’s a war going on.”
The Doctor

Taken from “Rose”.

Reminded me of the youth club for some reason…

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A Request For Help…

Prayer from Granger Community Church on Vimeo.

 

Quick request for you all…

One way we’ve found of doing the God slot / talkie bit at youth club is using video in some shape or form as an illustration. Two examples being above and below. We have also used the Soul Trailer to try and provoke discussion.

So is there anyone out there who can recommend other quick videos like these which we can use?

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The Youthclub Diaries: One Year On.

A long ago (9th March 2010)  – on a blog far far away, I wrote down the following comments:

I don’t know…

We rejig youthclub, the overal reaction to a non structured club seems to be well recieved. But it still feels like a battle… and I’m kinda tired of it…

As part of this we somehow seemed to have dropped the bible talk. Tonight I’ve felt quite challenged about this – whats the difference between us and a non-Christian youth club?

So how do we fix it…

I don’t know…

Less then two weeks later… we stopped it.

It was with the idea of relaunching the youthclub for the second half of the Summer Term on a trial basis. We made a few tweaks to the setup, different times, different approach to any spiritual input, different discipline system, and I’m sure a few other bits and pieces. I remember thinking at the time that I didn’t really have a clue what I was doing.

We’re still going after a year  – and by Gods Grace… its fantastic. We have a fantastic relationship with the young people coming along, they’re asking questions about what we believe – the whole thing just (mostly) feels fun.

And I still feel like I’m making it up as I go along….