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.

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!

If you haven’t seen it then the chances are as you watch it you’ll suddenly feel like you’ve become Jeremy Kyle and be shocked at it…that or you’ll wonder why your teenage life wasn’t like that!

Statistics

The statistics on the show feel very biased. As a youth worker I know that a lot of the stats they use have probably been produced by asking a very select group of young people. To top that off if you apply the American Pie ‘rule of 3′ to the statistics then I suspect you’re far closer to the facts.

Approach Of The Show

To an extent I think it’s important that we’re coming out and saying ‘yes teenagers are having sex’ and addressing some of the issues in the show such as being uncomfortable with aspects of your body and practicing safe sex…addressing the issue of drugs and alcohol in sex are also important however I can’t help but feel the show is a little to flippant and casual.

The general feeling of the show is that young people are taking part in sex…but not just sex but in drugs and alcohol around sex and also having multiple partners, threesomes etc. My problem with this is that it feels like it’s just too accepting and in particular for ordinary teenagers watching I think it can create an unrealistic expectation of sex and also encourage young people to feel pressured into having sex earlier on and with more people.

Teen Journalist ‘Billie’

One aspect of the show which I think has been positive is features with teen journalist Billie who whilst isn’t a gifted interviewer (or especially engaging for that matter) is very honest and perhaps more realistic in her approach. For example Billie has explored glamor modeling, pole dancing and drugs, alcohol and sex. Unlike the rest of the show the young journalist has talked to people who use them, had some experiences (where appropriate) and made a very honest and open opinion about them…often saying that she wouldn’t do it or just doesn’t get it and in my opinion for young people watching the show this is the most useful section…Billie makes it acceptable to not like what everyone else is doing.

Overall…

Overall I think ‘The Joy of Teen Sex’ is a scary programme. I think it’s a risky and potentially damaging programme for young people to watch and probably scary for parents. As a youth worker it does make me aware of some issues facing young people and is certainly worth watching from an informative perspective but the attitude it promotes towards sex is just that little bit too accepting and encouraging for my liking.

Have you seen it? Thoughts? Comments?

So…what does 2011 hold!

Youth Work Resource

My first real aim of 2011 was to give my other website (youthworkresource.com) a much needed overhall and content update. I last did some work to it early in 2010 and just haven’t had the motivation to update it but I committed chunks of last week to it and most of today and finally have loads of new stuff on there including sessions, games and video plus I have the new template working (oh and a twitter account too) – You can visit Youth Work Resource here.

I’m also going to try and make it more of an ongoing project…so I’m going to actually update the blog and add resources on a regular basis!

Music

Just after Christmas I managed to accidentally buy a stage piano which I’m trying to improve with…my piano skills aren’t bad but I’m by no means a Benny Fingers, so in 2011 I’m hoping for a lot of time with hammers and strings (all be they digital!).

On top of that my 1 and only new years resolution is to play at least 1 gig, which might not sound much but for me it’s huge…considering 5 years ago I wouldn’t go near a microphone and the amount of takes vocals on ‘Escape This Town’ took it should be a good but challenging challenge!

Writing

Finally and perhaps more on a musical note I have a new project going on called ’13 months’…the concept is simple…for this year (last December counts) I will write at least 1 song a month with the aim to recording them in January 2012 onwards…it’s an interesting challenge but I love the concept and the idea of capturing a year in music is awesome!

So that’s me and 2011 lined up….let’s begin 2011 week 2!

I have since watched series 1 and 2 as well and I find that with Skins I become more attached to the characters than with other series. Skins has this trend of focusing an episode on a character and whilst the other characters appear in that episode it gives you a chance to get to know that character and it’s always struck me as clever that whilst you focus on a character a wider storyline is going on.

Having said that I’ve felt disappointed with series 4 as it’s aired over the last 6 weeks, the characters haven’t developed much and whilst the writers have aimed for a darker side they seem to have lost the merging of characters within the episodes. However my urge to blog on Skins comes from watching episode 7 where the series have suddenly got good and back to how Skins should be.

So who’s watching this series of Skins? What are your thoughts so far?

Anyway today has been good and I have thoughts to blog on it but a brain of mush so crazy day post it is and tomorrow there’s some serious stuff coming! Stay tuned!

Over the last few months I’ve managed to put together quite a nice keynote presentation for the trust which works as a way of reminding me what to say and although I didn’t use it tonight I did print off the presentation as notes for myself.

The thing I like about having to do plugs for HCYT is every time I use the presentation I find that I need to move things off my ‘in the future’ slide onto the ‘what we do slide’ which is really nice….reflecting on tonight’s presentation it’s also nice to be in a position where I actually haven’t filled my hours yet because it means there’s space for new things!

All in all it’s nice visiting places and talking about HCYT

This afternoon I taught my first lesson in South Hunsley…whilst I am not a teacher I’d been hoping for some RE opportunities and today the first of 2 opportunities came to pass.

I had the pleasure of teaching year 13 RS on the Amish Christians…a bit of a bizarre topic for a schools worker but it was funny how it came about. I’d spent a while trying to gain contact with the RS department with no real fruit and then happened to bump into the right person at the right time, met them for lunch and happened to mention that I was reading ‘Amish Grace’ and it turned out that the sixth formers were going to be looking at fundamentalism.

So a couple of months on I’m here at the end of a week have spent the majority of my time planning lesson 1 of 2, trying to make it vaguely engaging and nicking videos off YouTube and all in all the lesson seemed to go well. A nice small group and some good discussion so all in all other than a very dry throat afterwards it was a success!

The last retreat I went on was when I was in Peterborough and CROPS organised a day out in the sticks with Paul Wilcox as a retreat and reflection day and I remember finding it a really useful time.

Today was also useful!

It was nice to have a day aside to reflect and think about what’s been going on, reflect upon God both personally and within my context as a youth/schools worker and to spend some time with others who do a similar role to myself. There was also a time of silence which I very rarely have as whenever I’m working itunes is usually on in the background.

Finally on the way out I bumped into Archbishop Sentamu, however sadly I could not have a conversation with him as him and his colleagues were having a silent retreat…maybe next time!

(I have some more retreat thoughts which I’ll blog tomorrow)

A brief guide for what is maybe the dullest blog post ever!

I have my Macbook set up on extended desktop so I have the screen across two monitors giving me a nice large workspace…on the small shelf I have my very beautiful Apple Keyboard and all-singing-all-dancing Apple Magic Mouse.

Also on my desk is my retro e-mac (right hand side), a USB Whack-It game which I got for Christmas and is very amusing, a selection of junk including a gym leaflet, notepad and capo and finally my ‘Joke a day’ calendar which works as a list of things for me to do each day…in case you were interested here is today’s joke:

Two snowmen in a field. One turns to the other and says ‘Can you smell carrots?’

(Suitable joke I feel…serious blog post coming later!)

I very rarely get to go on conferences and things like this and so it’s good to have some time away, the sessions are useful and the food is really good however with so much to take in and a brain close to bursting I’ve decided to take some time out before tea.

Having done bits and pieces of schools work before it’s been interesting to hear what others are doing and also interesting to hear that the sorts of things I’ve been thinking of for Hunsley Christian Youth Trust seem to be along the right lines, it’s also been great to network with other people doing similar things this week.

There’s so many things I could blog on but I feel a blog on schools work perhaps isn’t what I’m aiming to do here…although I don’t think I’m doing anything as such by this post more updating.

On a complete side-note there’s been some really interesting comments on my blog on John Sentamu and Prostitution (link) and the question of ‘is it safer for prostitutes for it to be legal’ has been discussed. I think it’s a very interesting topic to consider, as a Christian I cannot possibly agree that prostitution is ok and in some ways I feel that legalising it would make a statement suggesting that it is ok however on the flip-side legalising would give us a variety of benefits.

The most important of these benefits would be that we would be able to protect the girls who are prostitutes in far greater ways than we can at the moment, police would be able to monitor and visit brothels without being a threat to those who run them and potentially helping the girls out would be far more accessible.

The real question is really one of asking ourselves whether legalising something in order to regulate it and to provide more safety for those involved should happen when the thing we’re legalising is wrong…discuss!

I’ve been in South Cave for over 6 weeks I think and working exactly 1 month tomorrow and it’s been a laid back yet intensive month!

I started off with an induction which became a ‘get my heard around the trust’ day and it’s took up until now to really understand it…it seems that only in explaining to people you’re role do you realise what it is properly!

The three focuses in my first month have been branding, understanding and school.

The Hunsley Christian Youth Trust is new and I am their first and only employee (we’ll have more in a couple of years!!!) and because it’s funded by 4 churches it’s important to brand it and to keep those supporters updated so in the last month a newsletter and website has been produced (you can view the website here and also download the newsletter on it!).

Secondly I’ve been working on understanding what I’m meant to be doing, who’s in charge of what, who’s who and what’s where. This has involved meeting other youth workers in the area, chatting to various people in South Cave church and chatting to those involved from the other churches (my job is half time youth worker at South Cave and half time schools worker).

Finally making contact and meeting with the secondary school has been a massively important part of my first month and other than waiting on a CRB (bringing me up to 9!!!) all is more than good on that front, they’ve been really positive and seem really excited about having me in the school which is a real testimony to God being at work.

Anyway I think that’s a very brief update on the trust, I’m excited about what’s coming up and tonight we had a prayer meeting and about 25 people came along to pray for the trust so it’s always good to be supported!

I’m also at Brough church sunday morning plugging the trust…exciting times!

(Forgot to mention that I’m beginning to learn names and get to know young people!!!)

Next Monday I move to South Cave ready to start my new job as the Youth Facilitator for the Hunsley Christian Youth Trust from September…summer seems to be flying by and I’m feeling a little sad to know that it may be a while before I see everyone I know in Yarmouth but I’m excited about the new job and having a house and being able to moan about bills and council tax!

This week contents insurance is on my to-do list alongside getting some telephone numbers to phone electricity folk next week…today I arranged for the Post Office to re-connect the phone line…and for free…cashback! (If you want a phone line re-connected the Post Office don’t charge and don’t have a contract which makes them way better than BT!).

I haven’t just been packing boxes and avoiding Italy blogs I’ve been busy working on our wedding website which is getting near to being finished (markandjoanna.co.uk) and I have done our first wedding blog on their and in the next few days will update it more as we lay down deposits on venues and churches…how exciting! If you don’t know the Mark/Jo wedding is next year on the 17th July…this time next year I’ll have a wife!!!

I think so far I have 5 friends getting married next year so it seems to be a good year for weddings…2010 makes it easy to work out anniversaries!!! I have also been asked by Dave to be his best man for his wedding two weeks after mine and Jo’s which is pretty awesome and I’m looking forward to that too…all if good!

Street Invasion

Last week I was lucky enough to be involved in Street Invasion in Peterborough. Street Invasion saw 80 young people come together to serve God at 8 bases across the whole of Peterborough, doing social action, training/learning illustrations and inviting young people off the streets into an open youth club. Myself and Simon Campling (who is a genius at Newton Faulkner covers!) headed up the City Centre base and although we had less youth than the other venues what we had was perfect for St Mary’s! In other parts of the city over 50 young people would turn up to just one venue…how crazy is that? God was doing some awesome things in the lives of young people on the streets and those who were street invaders!

Anyway until I remember to blog on Italy later this week…goodnight!