The Grove Is On Fire

Married

Wedding

Turns out I'm getting married tomorrow. I'd like to blame light posting on this awesome fact. I'll be back after the 26th.

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'Lock-in' policy for youth clubs

I link to this, because its incomprehensibility tells you a lot about the way secular youth work is run across different councils.

Doug Nicholls, general secretary of the Community and Youth Workers' Union, has seen the draft policy and believes the move represents the work of someone "with no understanding of youth work". He argued that it goes against the professional principles of youth work, whereby staff make their own rules. "It's the first time I'm aware of any policy like this ever being attempted in youth centres from the top in this way, and it won't work," he said...

One youth worker from Somerset said: "We don't want to get into a situation where we're policing the building. We're youth workers and that's what we should be doing."

It also brings out a lot of the tension that currently exists among the secular youth work trade about youth workers losing their identity and being rebranded and repackaged by people who don't understand them.

Theological Principles Behind Intergenerational Youth Ministry

Good stuff on intergenerational youth ministry. A pretty decent handling of Deuteronomy 6:4-9 from a youth work perspective.

Mayor Announces 'Time For Action' on Youth Crime

Mayor Boris Johnson today called for a radical new approach to the rehabilitation of first time young offenders and teenagers on remand at the launch of his youth action plan consultation paper.

As he stood proudly atop Buckingham Palace, cape flapping bolding in the wind and feet firmly placed, staring down at the press crew.

Boris Johnson has announced a new action plan for youth crime. It contains five points, which vary on which part of the press release you read. The action plan itself contains six points some of which have been given ominous sounding names, further reassuring us that the Greater London Authority building really will slide back to launch thousands of robo-police to take over the capital.

AND THEN THE WORLD.

Anyway, those six points:

* Supporting young people who are in custody for the first time (Project
Daedalus);
* Keeping young people in education (Project Brodie);
* Mayor's Scholars, London Academies and Apprentices;
* developing character and responsibility (Project Titan);
* expanding sport and music opportunities; and
* establishing and disseminating what works best (Project Oracle).

Some of it seems pretty sensible, based upon solving root problems, not just dealing with causes, but as this is just an action plan and a call to do stuff, who knows how it's going to actually turn out in real life (or if it even will). You can read the whole action plan here if you want (pdf).

Restorative Justice

This would be a review of the Grove Booklet Restorative Justice if I believed in reviews. Oh wait, bother, I do. Right. Then this would definitely be a review of the Grove Booklet Restorative Justice if only I had the emotional detachment to write a review. Do you need emotional detachment to write a review? Probably that's a bad thing actually. So scratch all that. This is a semi-review of the Grove Booklet "Restorative Justice" with more probably more ranting than reviewing.

The discussion about the content of this essay out of the way, let's look at the content of the booklet. The problem outlined is this: Young people from tougher backgrounds don't like to keep rules. They actually like breaking them. This is for all sorts of reasons but essentially breaking the rules has become something they do, so they may as well do it with aplomb, and just banning them doesn't work, because they're always banned. Banning is the norm. On top of that, revenge is seen as a good and righteous thing, whereas forgiveness is for the weak. So conventional justice with it's emphasis on crime and punishment just isn't, on its own, working. 

This, as I see it, is an accurate critique. But accurate critiques are easy, anyone with a passing knowledge of anything can do an accurate critique after a few beers. The trick is doing something with the accurate critique, not just letting it kinda stand there for everyone to stare at it¹. Full respect to the authors then, that they do set out to do something with this problem.

And so, to combat this problem enters the idea of Restorative Justice. Restorative Justice is defined as something like, 'all the parties with a stake in the conflict or offence come together to decide collectively how to deal with the aftermath of the conflict or offence and its implications for the future'. The point being made is that unlike some youth work and justice approaches, Restorative Justice allows for reconciliation and forgiveness while not being light on the fact that someone has done wrong (necessarily). Young people are brought together with all the various injured people and everyone explains why they think the actions of the young person were wrong and why they should ask for forgiveness, hopefully shaming them into realising their guilt when they can ask for forgiveness and then . Shame is a big deal in the process, it's the process by which people realise that what they've done wrong is wrong, as opposed to the old system which gets them to feel the wrong by punishing them for it.

And you know what, all this theory isn't that bad. I fully expected to loath this booklet, because I thought it would be hippy clap-trap, telling us that young people don't do wrong, they just do things that might not be accepted by the group and all we need do is talk about it until we work something out and then when we all see eye-to-eye we can all go off and drink decaf tea and make daisy chains, but not from real daisy's because that would be mean to environment, and no I don't see anything wrong with making people feel guilty about picking flowers but not about picking fights. But actually, the process isn't like that at all, it's actually quite hot on saying "hey this is wrong" which is important. I guess you could run this process without that aspect if you wanted to by forbidding people to assign moral values to their statements (and people do, at least from people's explanations to me of the "no blame" system that seems to be frequently used in schools), but the authors don't say that's how it should be done.

I'm just going to gloss over the chapter that tries to provide a theological basis for restorative justice.

So, switching entirely from a review of the booklet (which I was never too good at anyway) to a review of the process, is it a good idea or not? I reckon so. The way I see it is this, discipline and justice inside a youth club are primarily evangelistic tools. You're telling people about the coming judgement on their sin in a tangible manner. The problem is that people don't often feel the weight of their sin just as we don't often feel the weight of our sin when people talk about our sins. They're just being banned (or whatever) which as mentioned above isn't much punishment. If we use people to help show the shame of what they have done so they feel the weight of their sins more, great. After all, one of the first thing that happens in conversion —or rather that happens before conversion— is the weight of their sin and the shame of their sin hits upon people, and so they cry out to God. God causes them to realise their guilt and the shame that comes with that is great. So if you can teach to your young people, that as well as being punished for their sin, they should feel a shame for sin and realise how badly it affects other people, it's only going to help your evangelism.

Of course, the obvious challenge to all this is how to put it into practice. It's easy to write accurate critique, it's setting out to do something about it that's the challenge.

¹ Tangentially not at all thought-through observation; this is why most MA dissertations are rubbish. They go "hey, here's what's wrong with the current state of play" and then they prove it. People like to moan, they generally notice when something is wrong, so it almost certainly doesn't need proving, what it needs is for someone to say "hey good point, how about we do this instead".

Repentance

Repentance is the vomit of the soul; and of all physic, none so difficult and hard as it is to vomit.

Thomas Brooks - Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices

Residential Tiredness

I came back from a residential weekend on Sunday PM and today spent the day in Oxford after taking young people there to meet old leaders who are now at vicar school. All great, but I'm now near dead for energy. Also in its rudeness the internet didn't stop updating itself while I've been gone, so I've declared internet bankrupty and marked as read all my RSS feeds. If anyone wrote anything good about youth work, e-mail me and I'll link to it. Other than that, I'm going to bed.

Rebuilding The Galaxy

Regarding last Saturday's rant about real youth workers telling the gospel I draw your attention to this quote:

"I would think the position that [LA] Galaxy are in, that we're rebuilding our team and trying to have a successful year, it would seem very odd to me to be loaning out our top players."

That's coming from LA Galaxy general manager and head coach Bruce Arena. This season LA Galaxy finished one up from bottom in the MLS league.

Repeat after me: "Real football teams win matches. Real youth workers tell the gospel".

One Point Calvinism

This is a good summary of why Calvin was right. Essentially, if you believe that man cannot save himself, and so God saves him (which is the position the Bible holds) then you're either thinking as a Calvinist, or you will be soon. (via")

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