01/31/09

Jack’s Mannequin, Trains and C905′s…

So I’m sat on a national express train on the way back to Peterborough just passing through Newark North Gate and realised that once again my blogging life has been on the quiet side this week.

On Wednesday I learnt that Jack’s Mannequin are playing their first 2 UK dates in March so now have tickets to see them on March the 15th in Manchester which I’m pretty excited about. If you’ve never heard of them Jack’s Mannequin are the new band from the lead singer of Something Corporate, their first album ‘Everything in Transit’ stayed in my CD player for months and their new album ‘The Glass Passenger’ is in my car!

Once again there’s a grand piano involved in Jack’s Mannequin so it’s kinda piano rock on a similar lines to Something Corporate.

Secondly on tuesday Orange sent me a new phone, the Sony Ericsson C905, having been using a Samsung for 18 months I thought it was time to go back to Sony Ericsson because although the Samsung G600 is a good phone there were a lot of things I missed compared to my old Sony and so having the c905 has been great, it’s easy to use and worked straight out the box with my Mac with a simple download from the Sony Ericsson website!

I’ve hoped this week to have a chance to test the 8 megapixel camera on the phone however I’ve been busy and the weather’s been less than good so other than a few photos of Jo doing a smartie puzzle I don’t have any photos but the BBC informs me that Wednesday is a good day so I shall take a walk around Central Park and upload some photos then!

Finally I’m leading both services at church tomorrow morning, the All Age and our Evening Service, I’m looking forward to both as I haven’t led in a while but there’s so much to think about for tomorrow.

01/27/09

Facebook & Youth Work

One of the big topics in Youth Work at the moment (other than porn which is Youth Work magazines focus point this month – blog to follow) is that of Social Networking and levels of appropriateness.

One person I know suggests that Facebook for Youth Workers is a no, no with his argument largely based on the use of the word ‘friend’ but also based on the boundary issues.

To an extent this friend of mine (and I can call him that as he isn’t a young person!) is right, perhaps having young people on a list titled friends does change the boundaries…for some workers. In my experience though Facebook has become a useful tool in Youth Work allowing me to remind young people of events, create events and groups to help them socialise outside of our regular church youth group and it also provides a place where, if they need to they can contact me hassle free.

Another friend disagrees with friend 1 and sides more towards my view, during a discussion yesterday we chewed over Facebook and the positives it has in Youth Work, particularly with those young people who you don’t see that often.

However although Facebook can become an essential tool for youth work there are also risks involved. For starters some functions on Facebook are private which leaves potential for inappropriate behaviour on the part of a worker, time and time again we read in the newspapers of young people being groomed through Social Networking sites.

Another risk is where you draw the boundary with a young person (some would draw it at the line whereby they don’t add young people to their Facebook).

The final risk that I see is the risk of your friends, many people I know have friends who love to post inappropriate things on their wall, risqué comments and embarrassing photos.

So to help any youth workers who read this I would like to suggest some good practice guidelines for the use of Facebook (and other social networking) in Youth Work.

Don’t Message!

The biggest risk of Facebook is the private functions, messages cannot be seen by anyone but yourself and the recipient, so if you can avoid sending messages I would recommend it.

If sending a message is essential then you can send messages to multiple people on Facebook so include one of your other leaders in the message, if something is too private or personal for that then I’d suggest abandoning Facebook for the conversation and suggesting you meet the young person for a chat over coffee.

Privacy Exists

If you’re concerned about your friends writing things on your wall or that photo of you when you were 16, drunk and naked with nothing but a pot-plant to hide your modesty then I suggest that you check out the privacy settings under account.

Facebook allows you to put your friends in ‘lists’ and from that in privacy settings you can choose certain settings for lists, so you can, for instance ban a list from viewing your photos.

Wall Is The Way Forward

The best way to communicate with a young person individually is through the wall system, it’s a public thing and it’s perhaps the safest way to communicate with them. Avoid using abbreviations such as ‘LOL’ which can be open to misinterpretation too, just keep it plain and simple…I always sign off with ‘Mark’.

Bare in mind though that what you write on the wall of your non-youth friends is also public so be a good role model!

Your Private Details

Facebook has a habit of posting anything you change on your profile to the feed you see when you login, once again if you go to privacy you can change these settings so that the whole world won’t know when you change relationship status.

You can also tell facebook not to display certain parts of your profile to lists so if you don’t want your young people to know your address, relationship status or that your favourite music includes ‘Take That’ then change your settings to hide them.

Finally Use Groups & Events!

Groups and Events on Facebook can be a brilliant way to remind young people of things going on, build up some excitement for an event and get young people interacting with each other between events, those with less friends can make new virtual friends before attending an event, I remember the Norwich Youth For Christ forum meant that I knew more people at their youth services before I attended…it also meant there’s a lot of people who I only know as their forum usernames!

At the end of the day Facebook is a tool which can be used and abused but perhaps more dangerously open to misinterpretation so just like good practice guidelines for face to face youth work it’s important we have some for Facebook, I hope this post provides just that and will help you to safely use Facebook for youth work.

More on social networking and youth work can be found on YouthBlog – click here

01/25/09

Churches Together

Tonight’s church service was a slightly different church service, for starters we had a bishop present, several methodists, some Anglicans, some Catholics (including nuns!), some baptists and probably some like me who prefer to avoid this denomination nonsense and call themselves Christian!

All these representatives were gathered together from all the city centre churches in Peterborough to sign a declaration of intent all related to working together…basically churches in the city centre already work together fairly well (or at least have lots of meetings) but this was a further step in the direction of committing to work together more seriously.

The timing of churches working together seems to be pretty good. Back in June I e-mailed a load of city centre church leaders trying to carry out a audit (for want of a better word) of youth work within the city centre churches hoping to find ways we could work together more.

From the few replies I received we had a meeting, arranged a one-off youth service and ‘Deeper’ was born and is now a bi-monthly event (we’re coming up to number 3!), we’ve just had funding approved for a P.A syetem and churches seem to be getting onboard with it, so it seems that all this churches together stuff ties in nicely…it’s almost like God’s doing something somewhere along the line!

In completely off-topic news I renewed my Orange contact the other day and will now pay £5 less a month and get a shiny new phone with a whopping 8 megapixel camera (review to follow when it arrives!).

I also have more serious blog post in the pipeline which will hopefully appear in the next few days.

Finally the new version of Stand For Christ is online (link) with new session plans, new games and a sexy new look!

01/22/09

Web Design

Apologies for the blog being on a go slow the last few weeks, I’m not entirely sure why…there’s been exams at uni and youth work to do but I don’t think any of them are real reasons.

However the time I usually spend blogging I’ve spent putting together a new website for Park Road Baptist Church, which started off as a side-project from the youth work website which I already run for the church and in the last week I’ve finally finished the design and content.

Whilst playing with that alongside a new ‘Stand For Christ’ design which may be online in a few days if I finish it I figured I might as well see if churches want websites…so for now I’ve set up a page on here and Stand for Christ offering church/Christian organisation website design and this post is pretty much shameless advertising!

I promise I’ll blog something worth reading in the next couple of days!

01/16/09

Correspondance with Tesco: 2nd Response

The Tesco saga continues, a couple of days ago I received a response to my second letter to Tesco. If you don’t have a clue what my Tesco battle is all about I suggest you read the book Tescopoly and read the posts in my ‘Ethical Living’ category.

So here is my second letter from Tesco (click to enlarge)

It’s nice that he acknowledged that the first letter was badly presented, however all he has really commented on within this letter is what he had effectively stated on the first letter. The comments he shared about suppliers and Tesco were very vague and the webpage he directed me too is fairly bog standard company jargon and as numerous recent reports on the ethics of Primark show it doesn’t matter what a company states on their website or what Ethical schemes they’ve signed up to because ultimately they can do whatever they like.

I don’t think I’m surprised there was no comment on the way they bully local councils because if I’m honest I don’t think there’s much they can say to justify their underhand techniques used to gain planning permission.

Since I wrote to them the second time they have applied to double the size of the Stallham store in Norfolk, the store has almost practically gutted the town centre and made it a ghost town, doubling the size of the store (which will ultimately happen as they bully the council) will finish off the town completely.

I do not intend on replying to Tesco, I don’t think they will share anything more than is publically available on their website and I very much doubt that John Leiper really knows what the company gets up to, I suspect he is just another customer services employee, there to quieten dissatisfied customers.

However this doesn’t mean that my writings to Tesco have been a waste of time, letting companies know your annoyance with them is always worth doing and you almost certainly get a reply because the appearance of good customer service is important to them although in practice companies like Tesco’s can afford to lose customers.

I am quite happily boycotting Tesco at the moment and intend on continuing to do so and I hope that more people will take this incentive with time.

01/6/09

Woolworths – The End Is Here

Peterborough Woolworths

Today is the day that the final 200 Woolworths stores that remain open in the UK finally close their doors and the above picture shows the scene of Peterborough’s Woolworths this morning.

It’s almost surreal to see signs on a chain store using the phrase ‘Last Day Today’ but wandering inside you see how real it really is. Only the front half of the two floor store remains open to the public with what’s left of the stock scattered randomly, signs on the wall inform you how much you can buy the office chairs, fans and any other shop fittings for and the empty shelves you can see in the closed-off sections of the store show you the scale of events that led from a massive chain store becoming nothing more than a jumble sale in it’s last few days.

I know I described Woolworths as ‘an overpriced store with no clear purpose‘ but it’s still sad to see it leave our highstreets. My first album, cassette single and CD single more than likely all came from Woolworths. Growing up in Sussex it was the only music shop in Bexhill-on-sea so in many ways my love for music started in Woolworths.

All that remains now is to see what happens to the empty stores scattered in our highstreets

BLOG NEWS: I have updated the template to hopefully cause less confusion in navigating so the ‘Featured Article’ section has become a list of links to the right below my mini-profile

01/5/09

Are we going wrong?

Some of the conversations I had over Christmas with people surprised me, I heard things about young people I used to work with in a church youth group that surprised me and it’s got me thinking.

Just before Christmas I read a book called ‘Practicing Passion’ by Kenda Creasy Dean and she suggests that the church has watered down the message of Jesus we no longer have anything to offer young people. She suggests that young people are looking for something to be passionate about, something worth dying for and that Jesus should fit that criteria but more often than not in churches He doesn’t.

This has led me to thinking about my own youth work and youth work in general. Is church youth work watered down to the point where we tread carefully so we don’t scare off young people rather than it being something immensly challenging?

Is the reason for the church being so apathetic and inactive because for generations we’ve presented a simple, risk-free Christianity rather than the demmanding, challenging Christianity that we are presented with by the bible?

I wonder if all too often we under estimate young people, perhaps we forget how passionate they can become about things, perhaps the actions of young people I heard about over Christmas were because they wanted a way to express passion and the church just didn’t provide that.

If gun, knife and gang crime can teach us anything perhaps it teaches us that young people have passion, a passion for something worth dying for. For them this passion is their friends or other gang members or even family members and is channelled in a fairly negative way through crime but what if the church actually presented a gospel that required that passion rather than a hymn book?

Maybe we’d see young people turning to Jesus rather than gangs, maybe we’d see young people being passionate about Jesus rather than drink, drugs or sex.

So where does this all start?

I think in order for us to present a gospel like this we need a church and its leaders/deacons & youth workers to have that passion and the confidence to preach a challenging gospel over a nice fluffy ‘Jesus can be your girlfriend’ style gospel.

The challenge for Christian youth workers and church volunteers is to think again about the way we explain things to young people and the Jesus we present them with.

Comments and thoughts would be apreciated

01/4/09

Correspondance with Tesco: My Second Letter

Readers of this blog will know of my on going issues with Tesco which started by reading a book all about their practices and looking into some of their interesting tactics, this then led on to ‘Correspondance with Tesco Part 1‘ in which I wrote to them informing them that I would no longer be shopping at their stores.

Shortly after they responded with a reply to my original letter which I post under the title ‘Correspondance with Tesco: Response’. Finally I have replied to their letter with the following reply, attempting to challenge their silence on the issues with their practices I highlighted in my original letter.

Dear John,

Firstly I would like to thank you for your reply to my original letter dated 17th November. I was glad to read that I have now been taken out of your Tesco.com and Tesco Clubcard schemes.

However in response to your letter dated the 7th December (ref: 8878436) I would firstly like to comment that the concern and disappointment you expressed in your letter would have seemed more genuine had you took the time to proof read the letter, in particular the opening paragraph which informed me that you were disappointed to find that I would be taking my ‘customer’ elsewhere.

I felt that this obvious lack of time over a reply made my comments nothing more than a result of a customer complaint procedure rushed through in the hope of quietening a disappointed customer.

Secondly in my first letter I made reference to your practices including the methods used by yourselves to obtain planning permission and the treatment of your suppliers both in the UK and oversees, I was disappointed that you had merely brushed over these comments and not made any effort to explain your policies and reasons for the exploitation of local councils, suppliers and farmers. I would very much like to hear your side of things on this matter.

I shall look forward to reading your reply and hearing what you have to say on these matters and I hope you can take on board the importance of proof reading.

Yours Sincerely

Mark Tiddy

01/2/09

New Year…New Blog Post…

I’m almost 2 days late but ‘Happy New Year’…2009 has been going on for almost 48 hours and it feels pretty similar to 2008!

New Years are something that I’ve only really celebrated in recent-ish years, when I was younger you’d simply go to sleep in one year and wake up in another, I remember staying up until midnight at the millennium and then most years since.

2 Years ago we were out in Great Yarmouth until 6 in the morning, last year we also ventured into Yarmouth but only to the slightly more sociable hour of 3 and this year I spent New Years Eve with a few good friends relaxing at mine, playing some games and having the occasional beer before watching the London countdown on television and then some Michael Mcintyre eventually getting to bed about half three.

Perhaps it’s a sign of getting older that a more chilled night is better than a night on the town…but anyway New Year’s eve was so last year!

With a New Year comes new beginnings

People kick off a New Year with resolutions to give up smoking, to take up exercise, to fall in love or for those more Christian perhaps to read the whole bible.

Personally I have no resolution because I know I probably won’t keep it! I’d like to read my bible more and spend more time pondering on God from a personal point of view rather than work or educational.

I do know however that 2009 will be full of new beginnings for me. At the end of June I finish at Park Road Baptist Church so the job search begins…I have no idea where I’ll be working coming August and during the latter part of 2009.

I shall also end my time as a student, get to go to Italy for 2 weeks and possibly drive across France in the process.

I will also quite possibly find that I need to learn about living independently, doing weekly shops, paying bills and doing all those other grown up things!

So 2009 may feel the same as 2008 so far but I know it’s full of changes and events already without even having started!

I hope you all have a brilliant 2009!