It’s a fantastic 20 minute short film telling the story of hope and redemption and well worth watching.

Here it is..

“If you’re trying to reach un-churched young adults there’s not a worse time than a sunday morning” – Dan Southerland

The other day I finally got around to listening to a CD talk by Dan Southerland on leadership and vision which Tony had leant to me and as I listened the above quote jumped out.

One of my biggest frustrations with the church is that when it comes to people my own age unless you go to a ‘all the hype money can buy’ church they don’t really exist.

Back in October I was involved in organising an event with Lee Kirkby which set out to bring 15-25′s together to talk about how the church needs to change to accommodate more young people. As part of that Lee and myself did a keynote talk as a double act and as I introduced the grim statistics concerning younger people and the church I got to the point in my talk where I said ‘If I’m completely honest if I didn’t work for a church I wouldn’t go’.

At this stage I think it’s important that we distinguish the difference between Christianity and Church. I believe the message that Jesus brings of hope, salvation and forgiveness is more relevant in today’s society than it ever has been…unfortunately so often the church takes that exciting message and makes it the dullest thing in the world!

The talk that Dan Southerland gave was from a leadership conference a few years ago and he talked about the generation gap in the church and also how we ended up where we are in terms of Sunday morning services which can be basically summarised with;

If you want to attract farmers who’ve been out milking their cows to church then 10:30 is the perfect time

Our church service is set at a time which isn’t best for people, the content is often irrelevant and I think congregations are often blissfully unaware of the lack of 20 somethings in their church…for example…

At a recent church meeting the local Archdeacon asked about younger people in our church, to which one retired member of our congregation replied ‘we have lots of young couples get married in church, they come and hear their banns and lots keep on coming’.

As he spoke those words I sat there and thought about young couples in our church and couldn’t think of any because actually Jo and I are the only young couple in the church (and I’m paid to be there)!

Shifting Our Thoughts

Fundamentally if the church is going to attract younger people it needs to take a dramatic shift…it needs to be full of passion and communicate the message of Jesus in a relevant way. On top of that I think church needs to shift aware from Sunday services. Lots of younger people go out on a Saturday night and so is Sunday morning really the right time? (almost certainly not!).

Also in a world where everything for younger people is interactive is a front-led traditional hymn sandwich service appropriate or are relationships key? In a world where people tweet or Facebook on the go…where people comment on TV programmes via twitter in real time is there space for passive church teaching?

Conclusion

To be honest this blog hasn’t really concluded anything beyond the need for the church to change…for more young adults to come to church the whole church needs to get on board because the few younger couples/singles simply can’t do everything.

9 times out of 10 church is irrelevant…I love that our youth group get excited about cafe church because it’s interactive, there’s cake and nice coffee but it also saddens me that this leaves at least 2 out of 4 services branded by people (up to the age of mid-40s in our case) as ‘the boring service’.

I believe there is a place for the church…I think the support, discipleship, growth and challenges Christians receive from other Christians is absolutely essential…the relationship between Jesus and his 12 disciples really strongly backs this up…but that ‘church’ was based on relationships.

It would be interesting to see comments on this both about your experience of church and what we can do!

Fairtrade is an absolutely cracking idea for so many reasons. It pays people properly, invests in communities, treats people fairly, means no child labour and lots more besides.

I urge you to get involved in Fairtrade. Buy Fairtrade tea, coffee, bananas, chocolate, clothing. Pester your local shops to stock more Fairtrade items. Ask your supermarket to make their own brand stuff Fairtrade (Sainsburys is really leading the way in this!).

Check out the 2012 campaign video below and get involved here. I’ll be posting my step for Fairtrade later this week!

Tonight I’m playing an acoustic cover song with Rob as part of Beverley Minster’s Youth Fundraiser event ‘Minster’s Got Talent’. There’s a whole host of other acts and all money goes towards the Minster’s Youth Ministry.

The event starts at 7:30pm and tickets are £5

Come along and have a listen to our cover song!

In other news…

I spent the tail end of this week writing press releases for ‘Escape this Town’ which is pretty much finished and will be released on the 19th March. Watch this space.

I also got to test out the digital SLR I got a couple of months back shooting the HD video on it and taking some photos. I’m pretty happy with how some of the photos came out so here are a few of my favourites.

Five Iron Frenzy had this habit of drawing you into the music and then hitting you with the most profound God-lyric ever! We even had the worship band at our wedding adapt their song ‘World without End’ adapted to be played as a worship song.

Over the last few months the bands website contained a mysterious countdown and their Twitter and Facebook came to life, building hype around something that would happen at 2am this morning (or 7pm in the USA!)…having toyed with the idea of staying up or sleeping through and checking out twitter in the morning I opted in for a 1:55am alarm and hoped that it would be something worth disturbing my sleep for.

And it was!

I’d spent my day telling myself that it would be a greatest hits or rarities album and not a reform or anything new but how wrong was I?

Five Iron Frenzy announced (with a slightly bizarre video of Reese Roper in the desert) that they were getting back together and would be recording a new album (to release in 2013…10 years after their break-up) and possibly playing some shows….oh and they put a new song online!

Now the latter doesn’t excite me as much unless they venture to the UK (I wish!) but the thought of a new album and a chance to hear a new Five Iron song really got me excited. To make this new album the band were asking for pledges in return for a variety of things ranging from a CD of the new album to the band writing you a song…I went for the former and amazingly the band aimed to get $30,000 to make, master and release the album and amazingly they got that within 55 minutes and less than 24 hours later they’re on $80,000.

Turns out I’m not the only one excited about the new Five Iron Frenzy.

I was also pretty excited about the new song titled ‘It was a dark and stormy night’ and it’s so good! It’s like a mix of ‘Electric Boogaloo’ and ‘Our Newest Album Ever’ and I think will please all FIF fans.

So why the blog?

This blog is simply to express my burst of excitement…share the word and tell you to listen to Five Iron Frenzy…they’re amazing and so much fun but also seriously challenging.

Go listen, support and download at: www.fiveironfrenzy.com

Note: I also had a worship blog in mind to write which also included some stuff about FIF so this blog might end up a little FIF obsessed for a week or so!

A few months ago myself and Lee Kirkby (Youth Minister at Beverley Minster) were having a bit of the grumble about church…if I’m honest even though I’ve made it through youth groups, I’ve trained as a youth worker (and explored theology at university) and I work for a church I still often find church irrelevant…alongside this the lack of 20′s and 30′s in our church is frustrating when I know there are some people of that age range in our village.

The outcome of this grumble with Lee was that we both went away and thought ‘hang on…we should really do something about this rather that just moaning’ and so we have!

Next Saturday from 10am until 1pm at Beverley Minster we’re running the East Riding Youth Summit. An event aimed at getting young people aged 15-25 and church leaders (Ministers, PCC Members etc.) together, joined by the Bishop of Hull to spend some time discussing how the church needs to change to welcome in more young people and what both church leaders and young people can do to influence that.

As a follow-up we’re going to write up everything that’s said into a report format and send it to the young people and to their churches’ PCC’s as a way of saying ‘there were young people from your church at this event and this is what they think about bringing more young people into the church’.

Personally I’m really excited about this event and think it can have a big impact…if you’re in the East Riding come along!

Finally…

I know I don’t usually use this blog for work stuff but this seems to combine work and personal passions…also if you’re interested you can click here to hear me talking about the Youth Summit and young people in the church on BBC Radio Humberside this morning.

Not Trying To Say – Live – Written by Mark Tiddy

Mark Tiddy – Not Trying To Say – Live/Acoustic from Mark Tiddy on Vimeo.

Umbrella – Live – Originally by Rihanna

Mark Tiddy – Umbrella (Cover) – Live/Acoustic from Mark Tiddy on Vimeo.

So last night at the youth event I’m involved with running alongside Luke Leighfield who was headlining and a variety of young people performing myself and Rob did a short acoustic set consisting of covers of Plus 44′s ‘When Your Heart Stops Beating’ and Rihanna’s ‘Umbrella’ and we performed an original song called ‘Not Trying To Say’ which I wrote a few months back as part of my ‘Thirteen Months’ project which I wanna start recording next year.

It wasn’t as scary as I expected, we sounded pretty good and hopefully it’ll be the first of many gig-type-things!

Here’s a photo (more here)…there’s also a video someone took which I’ll upload to my YouTube when I get the video

Ethos

The ethos behind the youth club was always to be something run by us as a church and therefore with Christian leaders with the aim of not babysitting but building relationships with the young people we get along. My link in school meant that a lot of the young people recognised me anyway and add into this Christian assemblies which I do and all the young people know I’m a Christian and even ask me why I had an egg smashed on my head (an Easter assembly on sacrifice!).

Bridging the Gap

Of course ultimately it would be fantastic if each of these young people ended up with a relationship with Christ however there is no faith-based input within the youth club other than the occasional conversation based on things that have been left in the hall from church or something I’ve done or said in assembly at school it seems unlikely.

The jump between our unstructured youth club and our faith based groups is huge and so the question that I remain with is:

How will these young people make the jump between coming to a church-run youth club and a relationship with God?

I don’t really have the answers but I do know there are some fantastic inbetween events which I’m hoping to encourage young people along to…by this I mean events which have some Christian input but are perhaps filled with live music or an event at a theme park (such as Alton Tower’s ‘Big Event’ or the Diocese of York and Lightwater Valley’s ‘XLS’). These events seem to provide an opportunity for young people to have a taste of spirituality at the same time as being somewhere exciting and maybe they’re where it’s at (whatever ‘it’ is!).

I guess biblically Jesus didn’t do that much converting just conversing!

Out of the ten guys who Jesus casts demons out of only 1 comes back to say thank you and even then we’re not told that this man gave up his life to Christ and repented of his sins…the woman caught in adultery doesn’t become born-again but is simply told by Jesus to ‘go and sin no-more’.

I wonder if rather than aiming for conversions we should be aiming to build relationships, to show Christ in our own lives, to show love, compassion and care to these young people, to engage them in conversation about faith and to see where their journey leads…I have no doubt from my work in a chaplaincy project in school that young people want to know more about faith and that they’re asking the questions…it’s just a case of whether their asking has to lead to us praying ‘the prayer’ or not?

At a PCC I spoke at for one of the supporting churches of Hunsley Christian Youth Trust I was asked how many people we’d had ‘coming to the LORD’ as a result of the work and the honest answer is none but young people are engaging with questions about faith and hopefully that will ultimately lead somewhere.

I guess the general conclusion might be conversation not conversion!

Anyway those are just some thoughts…comments?

When I tweeted this I didn’t expect anything more than perhaps a few Facebook ‘Likes’ if even that however following a retweet by cartoonist (amongst other things) Dave Walker the response looked like this:

This response for me suggests that it’s not just me and a bunch of York diocese youth workers who feel this way but a variety of church go-ers everywhere (perhaps the majority of the 20′s/30′s age group have already answered my blog title and left) which begs the question.

If so many of us feel disappointed, let down and side-lined by institutionalised church then why do we even bother going?

Obviously the good Christian and theological answer is that church isn’t about getting something from it ourselves but about reaching out to others and giving to God and I completely agree with that principal however if as William Temple said

church is the only organisation that exists for the benefit of it’s non-members

then church massively fails (in the majority of cases).

There are so many stories of people wanting to change the church but failing because the majority of the church want things as they always have been.

The problem is that those radicals in the church who want to see the church dramatically transformed into the welcoming, Jesus-bursting, heart of the community that it should be can easily find themselves just going along with our closed, culturally out-of-date, in-reality-not-that-welcoming church not because their passion has died but because there appears to be no way to change the church. That or these radicals end up burnt out through frustration and inevitably join the huge list of those who’ve lef the church.

Comfortable Church

I guess the route of the problem is that church has become comfortable. We want to go there, have a nice cosy time, sing a few familiar hymns and go home again…we daren’t expect that church is going to change our lives or challenge us. Francis Scott, who preached at the church I went to this morning said (in his sermon) ‘the church has become a cruise ship’ and I guess he’s right.

The problem with this cruise ship church is that we’re stuck with a church that is generally unwilling to change or even afraid to change…we’re just floating along nicely, thank you.

The biggest frustration I have as a youth worker (alongside sadly seeing young people throw their faith away over impulsive temptations) is that whilst it’s fantastic to see young people coming to Christ the fact is that when they hit 18 or leave university and student church at some point they’re going to either drift away or have to find a mainstream church.

Can we change the church?

In short I guess the answer (typed with a huge amount of doubt) is yes. I wholeheartedly believe that many aspects of church aren’t how God wants them, that there are thousands of people out there who’d have a relationship with Jesus were it not for the selfishness of Christians.

If we want to be bringing people into the kingdom our churches shouldn’t be side-lining people. One of the most beautiful experiences of church I’ve been part of was at Park Road in Peterborough where during an evening service a homeless, completely drunk man came and sat in the service and whilst he didn’t remotely fit in with the ‘norm’ and was noisy was allowed to be there and even picked a random hymn after requesting ‘how great thou art’. On top of that St Barnabas’ in Swanland this morning had organised a mini-bus so some disabled members of the community could come to church. Now that’s what I’m talking about!

If church really is about a group of people who have a relationship with Jesus then it shouldn’t be boring. If someone is passionate about something you can hear it in their voice and see it in their hearts as they talk about it and that is exciting. If we’re a church of people genuinely passionate about Christ then church shouldn’t be boring. I can’t help but feel all too often our services are based on tradition and not passion. (More on passion in this post)

Some final thoughts…

So what would happen if everyone who was bored, let down or side-lined by the church stopped coming?

I strongly suspect we’d lose the majority of our congregations and probably a huge chunk of our church leaders (certainly a load of youth workers*). However I don’t know that we should give up and go. One of the responses on Facebook was

Any ideas 4 radical changes then?

and the answer to that is yes!

I can’t tell you how a church should be…I can’t blog a perfect order of service or a list of songs that will make the church perfect but I can come back to that quote I used earlier from William Temple who said ‘church is the only organisation that exists for it’s non-members’ .

Our churches need to be examining ourselves (and I don’t mean a ‘well we’re doing x, y, z so we must be good) completely, honestly and really asking ourselves if that is true for our church because if it’s not then we need to do some re-thinking. If we’re changing a service or introducing something new then the fact that someone is complaining about it shouldn’t matter, we should be asking whether or not it is beneficial for those who don’t already know Christ.

Church shouldn’t feel odd and weird for new comers but should feel like home.

I think those are my thoughts although as always feel free to comment and I may find myself developing my thoughts more.

* this isn’t to say that youth worker’s aren’t whole-heartily passionate about Christ and don’t believe in the cause but to say that that actually they feel that the church doesn’t cut it…there’s a difference!

A couple of years ago I decided to re-write ‘In The Bleak Midwinter’ and actually add some theology to it and so all reference to snow went and keeping 2 original verses I added two more before them.

Since then I’ve used it in worship sets the last couple of years at ‘The Point’ and at ‘SPARK’ and the worship group here in South Cave are using it on Christmas day this year however I’ve never made a recording of it….until today!

This afternoon I went on a massive distraction and made a recording of it…and the result is probably a light stadium rock carol!

I’ve uploaded it here so click to have a listen and download

Here are the lyrics too… (1st 2 verses by me, 2nd 2 originals)

Mysteries surrounding, prophecies come true
Jesus, God incarnate,  God, yet human too
Mary trusted You, O God, always good and true
Giving birth to Jesus, For Him we worship you

For Jesus, God we praise you, died to save our souls
Stepped out into darkness, as it was foretold
Suffered death, was crucified, Jesus took my shame
For Jesus, God we praise you, death He overcame

Our God, heaven can’t hold You, nor the earth sustain
heaven and earth shall flee away, when You come to reign
in the bleak-midwinter, a stable-place sufficed
the lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ

Oh, what can I give Him, woeful as I am
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb
If I were a wiseman, I would do my part
Yet, what can I give You; I will give my heart

As a youth worker for a Christian charity one of my concerns is not that the young people we have going to youth groups now don’t go to church but that they will never go to church (when I say church I don’t mean a Sunday service but a gathering of Christians).

This means that the youth groups I meet with whether it’s our 11-14′s group, Rock Solid group or Christian Union in school are all as much church as a Sunday morning service however what’s next? Maybe they’ll find trendy university churches but sooner or later they probably have to come back to the reality that generally church isn’t exciting.

I had a conversation with someone recently about someone who became a Christian and went to church for a while but always remarked ‘Why does it have to be so boring?’. This wasn’t a young person either and that person eventually gave up.

And along came the emerging Church…

Emerging church is a title is basically thrown at any ‘church’ gathering that isn’t a hymn sandwich.It might refer to cafe church, some kind of family fun day or a whole variety of ‘very slightly off the wall’ church events and whilst I love the idea of proper coffee and a informal church these things often miss the point.

These emerging churches can often become nothing more than a social gathering with the addition of something so watered down it’s barely a Christian message.

The Problem is this…

If church becomes something so boring that people switch off then we lose the ‘life in all its fullness’ that Christ promises. The freedom we’re meant to receive in Christ becomes nothing more than a chore of sitting through an hour of dullness a week.

If church becomes something so irrelevant that the event is nothing more than a social event with a watered-down, half-arsed attempt at proclaiming the greatness of Jesus then it is equally as pointless as the church that is boring.

The Gospel

The message that Jesus brought to people was neither boring or irrelevant. It was a life changing encounter. It caused people to do crazy things like selling their possessions and looking after the poor. It caused people to have a conviction so strong about having Jesus in their lives that they were willing to die for the cause.

A Passionless Church

On Sunday Jo and myself visited Emmanuel Church in Durham for no other reason than googling a church to visit whilst there and the format of the church was pretty similar to most (other than the coffee before the service which gave us a chance to feel welcomed in) however the difference was the passion oozing from the people.

The people at Emmanuel Church genuinely cared about Christ and you could see it in their actions and hear it in their voices.

The problem is that the majority of our churches lack passion.

The word passion comes from the Greek word Pathos and translated means something worth dying for.

Does church present us with a Jesus worth dying for? Does church present us with a Christian life that causes us to be passionate people…people who are so convicted by the gospel message and so filled with the Holy Spiirt that they simply cannot even talk about Jesus without it being obvious that this is something they really care about?

The fact is our churches need passion.

Yes some people express themselves differently but sooner or later with people you can find the buttons to push…for some people I know that button is the word ‘Fairtrade’, for others it’s the mention of homophobia and for some it might even be how dangerous the roads are with the ice at the moment.

Everyone has a button that when you push it they burst into life…passionately telling you about something they’re angered about, or excited about or something that they care so much about they simply can’t stay monotone.

How many people in our churches are like that with Jesus?

How many of our churches repeat liturgy as if their life depends on it?

How many people are so passionate about the gospel that they will do anything to spread it?

I’m not talking about people waving their arms in worship (although it does say passion), I’m not talking about speaking in tongues (although it’s God bubbling up from our very souls), I’m not even talking about people shouting or saying ‘yes Lord’ during prayers (although both say passion)…I’m talking about people being excited!

People being passionate.

And so yes…church is boring and irrelevant (a lot of the time) but it doesn’t have to be turned completely upside down to be appealing to people I think often it’s as simple as people wanting what we’ve got. People looking for something to be passionate about. People finding that passion in Jesus.

Emerging church is fantastic if it’s passionate as is an average Sunday morning service. If church is boring then we’ve really missed the point.

Our word passion comes from the Greek ‘Pathos’ which means ‘Something worth dying for’

She then asked me what I thought would happen at the end of the world to which I responded ‘I think Jesus will return and there will be a new heaven and a new earth’…I also informed her that I was a youth worker for the local church.

She then told me that it’s nice that there will be somewhere with no evil eventually, bid me good day and went on to knock at my next door neighbours…who I knew were out!

I’ve blogged before on where I stand with street preachers and lovely as this lady was (although I don’t really know if she was a Christian of JW!) I’m not convinced it’s relevant and here lies the problem…for many people Christianity is irrelevant. (I sometimes include myself in that category).

I’ve been to a few things on emerging church…I’ve chatted with people about cafe church and pub church…I’ve seen young people take part in social action projects and all these things are great but the church as a whole is stuck!

If you’re not a Christian entering into a church can be a scary prospect…you have to know when to stand and sit, you have to try and work out what phrases such as ‘blood of the lamb’ actually mean and in all of this you have to follow the leader.

Don’t get me wrong…there is a place for sermons but we’re still preaching sermons on lost sheep…Jesus talked about lost sheep because he was surrounded by shepherds who related to it…I have never lost a sheep (although I fully accept that I’m only 24 and still have lots of time to find myself in a sheep-losing situation).

In Acts Paul walks into Athens (from memory) and wanders around and spots a statue labeled ‘to an unknown god’ and so when he gets up to preach later he doesn’t share a story about sheep or a lost coin he tells them who this unknown god actually is….and tells them about Jesus in a way which is relevant!

So what does this look like in the 21st century?

The key thing for our gospel message today is that people are relational. We are in constant contact with people. We check in, we post status’ and we comment on people’s activities on Facebook, we send instant tweets and photos on Twitter, we sign in on 4square, we may even be old school enough to update our myspace!

Our communication is instant and works both ways…there’s even lectures that have twitter feeds running in the background.

This is where cafe church and pub church are such good ideas…because they’re relational…it’s the same with social action…it’s about meeting people’s physical & emotional needs as well as spiritual.

I’ll finish this post with a story that one of my uni lecturers told us;

In the story a young, enthusiastic Christian approaches a tower block with his bible in hand ready to convert some people. The first door he goes to is opened by a woman, cigarette in mouth, grubby baby in the other…he starts his rehearsed talk ‘I’ve come to tell you about the good news of Jes….’ and the door is slammed in his face.

Feeling disgruntled and upset he sits down outside and begins to cry…then suddenly an idea comes to him. So he gets up, goes to the local shop and buys a packet of cigarettes and a pack of nappies. He goes back to the lady’s house, knocks on the door again and simply says ‘I’ve come to help you’.

That afternoon he changes the baby, helps tidy and smokes (having never smoked in his life) and it’s when he turns to leave that the lady says ‘Why have you done this?’ and he tells her about Jesus.

We need a church that’s relevant to people…I’m not convinced that church as we know it really works anymore for those outside the Christian bubble and I certainly don’t believe it’s right to mold them into our church mold.

It’s amazing what thoughts a Saturday morning door knocker can have!

Funny Job Titles!

We had various discussions about church building and grounds stuff and some classic characters involved in helping with these (subcontractors…professionals of the trade I believe) involved one man with the job title Tree Officer and another titled Door Opener Person!

Funny Quotes!

Secondly there were a couple of classic quotes…the last is slightly out of context but was said as a lone sentence across the meeting, the others are pretty much self explanitory

The Door Opener Person says ‘Church door now works’ (Note: Good to get a professional opinion on our church door)

Next up…

‘The door needs to be re-adjusted so it closes’

(I should add at this point that at every meeting I’ve been to the church door has been a matter of discussion

Finally…

‘Do you think we could get together at the cupboard?’

Church Hymnbook Alternatives

Finally as the tattyness of the church own printed service books was discussed I pondered to myself whether it was time to start issuing people with a Kindle or iPad upon arrival…these devices could also connect to the church WiFi (which doesn’t yet exist) allowing parishioners to post their live thoughts on the sermon to Twitter

Anyway I hope you’ve enjoyed my thoughts from the meeting