The Grove Is On Fire

Just what is average?

Great series of articles on the BBC on how statistics are used to lie to you. This is why whenever someone tells you they are working on the largest estate in Europe, or the most deprived, or with the highest teenage pregnancy rate, they are correct, but meaningless.

The Illogical Studies

I had the misfortune of reading The Metro today (a misfortune I brought upon myself by choosing to pick up a discarded copy on the tube, but never mind). and was somewhat unsurprised to read an interview with a comedian (I forget who and the article isn't up on the Metro website yet) who seemed to have lost her faith following going off to Uni and studying theology. I say somewhat unsurprised because it's not that unusual to happen, there's a reason the UCCF theology website devotes an entire section to it. This comedian's big problem came up when she found her faith in scripture challenged by her professors, the quote going something like "I realised God didn't write the bible with a magic silver pen". The unhelpful response of saying "OMGOSH REALLY?" aside, the aforementioned UCCF website has a brilliant article entitled For the Bible tells me so? The roles of faith and evidence in believing the Bible. It's rather good if long. To steal the point, here's the quote:

[T]hrough the work of the Holy Spirit in illuminating the mind to the truths of the gospel, the Bible is accepted as true through faith. We come to accept the truthfulness of the Bible because we have first had our minds enlightened to see the truth of the Gospel, which we embrace by faith. This faith enables us to see that the words of the Bible purport to be God's words and to grasp that God's words are true words.

Where are all the Christian single men?

I'm suggesting down the pub, Adam McClane is suggesting playing XBOX.

Soul Survivor

I'm oft amazed how few people know about the Soul Survivor summer festivals, or who know about the festivals but don't know anything further about them as a Church and general Christian organisation. Or who know about them, but ascribe misconceptions to them in the plentiful. Here's a standard conversation I just made up:

Me: "I just got back from Soul Survivor this year, it was great."
Them: "Really? Isn't it a really charismatic event? I thought you were reformed?"
Me: "Well, that's a remarkably unhelpful dynamic you've interposed there. Actually not only can you be reformed and charismatic, but I'd argue that with certain definitions of both in place you should be reformed and charismatic."
Them: "Sorry, I meant 'I thought you were conservative, white, and British and thus terrified of any sort of emotional response to the Gospel'."
Me: "Oh right, yes, well fair enough. But that doesn't mean it's not a good thing"
Them: "Also, isn't there a tendency to over emphasise the massive corporate event as opposed to the daily Christian walk as part of a local church."
Me: "Gosh, that is a misconception, so much so that I should write a post on my website criticising it."
Them: "I think that's what you're doing now."
Me: "This is getting too surreal, I shall just trail off this sentence and switch back to full paragraphs..."

Two criticisms of Soul Survivor rebuked then:

They're raving charismatics who think it's all about singing songs.

This is actually two criticisms bundled into one, but seeing as that's how people oft perceive it, it's how I'll respond. They are charismatic (in a certain defined sense of it) and they do love singing songs, but neither of these two things is necessarily a bad thing. Sure, if you place spiritual gifts over and above Jesus Christ, then you are made of fail. And if you place the main focus of a corporate meeting on singing songs and not on Jesus, you'll see a similar colossal amount of failure. Fortunately Soul Survivor, as a festival, love Jesus far more than they love singing songs, or spiritual signs, and while I occasionally wince at some things, they are always all about Jesus.

They encourage an unhealthy spirituality with their emphasis on being very large.

Being a big summer festival, their nature is to be very large, and it would be rather easy to get carried away and go "this is what your spirituality should look like every day". Of course, the problem with that is your local church is not 10,000 meeting in a large tent twice a day. And that's an issue that they acknowledge every year from the stage and in seminars. If there's one thing I've heard from the front in the last three or four years, aside from "Jesus is awesome" it's been "love your local church".

(full disclosure, I volunteer every year for Soul Survivor running the stewarding stuff, therefore I know lots of the people involved. I also think they're awesome)

The Resurgence

The Resurgence, a Mars Hill Seattle blog web resource type site has just redesigned. Some of my favourite blogging has happened over there this year.

Boys striving for 'body beautiful'

I'm not sure what I make of this (other than to say, I've seen it), but young men are beefing themselves up so that they look good. Part of me wants to call them sissies but part of me wants to give them a hug. And a pie.

There is pressure on boys to look good now. In the past everyone cared about what girls looked like, how fat or thin they were, but us boys also care

Michael Guglielmucci, Aussie Churches, and Fake Cancer

If you missed this, then your probably don't know who Michael Guglielmucci is, but the news is that he pretended to have aggressive cancer, and then to be healed of it. He wrote a song about it which was being sung lots all over the world including at Soul Survivor this year, and then a few weeks back, he confessed to having faked the whole cancer thing. This is obviously quite shocking, but what's encouraging is how well the Australian churches (especially the Charismatic churches that he's been involved in) have handled it. They immediately forbade him from ministry, told him to go the police, and had the grace and love to tell everyone to pray for him as he seeks support. That's biblical stuff. What would be awesome would be to see the Conservative Evangelicals of Australia supporting them in their decision too.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer slaying church attendance among women, study claims - Telegraph

We interrupt this important holiday (to me anyway) to let you know of a new contender for the multiple interest story overload award of the ever. A former youth work lecturer of mine has published a book about women leaving the Church of England because it's not manly enough for women and has said that Buffy the Vampire slayer is a more taken up interest. Not only that, but it's reported in both they Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail. If only they had mentioned dead theologians, zombies, and actual young people, it'd complete.

Event Follow-Up Acronym Plan

From the purpose driven youth ministry blog community blog; A.C.E. Your Event Follow-Up. Three things you should do after you do an event. You'll read it and think "yeah duh", but apparently the trick is actually doing it.

Cameron targets 'broken society'

With a crossbow.

No wait, that'd be an average punchline, nowhere near as good as the actual quote from the BBC.

Conservative leader David Cameron has said he will be as radical a social reformer as Margaret Thatcher was an economic reformer.

Make of that what you will.

Residential

We're taking seven young people away on a residential this weekend. We're looking at the book of Judges. For those unfamiliar with the book of Judges here's a sample:

Ehud then approached him while he was sitting alone in the upper room of his summer palace and said, "I have a message from God for you." As the king rose from his seat, Ehud reached with his left hand, drew the sword from his right thigh and plunged it into the king's belly. Even the handle sank in after the blade, which came out his back. Ehud did not pull the sword out, and the fat closed in over it. Then Ehud went out to the porch; he shut the doors of the upper room behind him and locked them.

After he had gone, the servants came and found the doors of the upper room locked. They said, "He must be relieving himself in the inner room of the house." They waited to the point of embarrassment, but when he did not open the doors of the room, they took a key and unlocked them. There they saw their Lord fallen to the floor, dead. (Judges 3:12-31;)

In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes. (Judges 21:25)

See also; Judges 19

Discuss?

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What To Do When Less Than 5 Kids Show Up At Youth Group

Or three, or two, or one. Heck, five is a good week.

Look at the 3 teens who are there and be genuinely excited each one of them! With only three 3 kids, you can talk at length about their weeks, what's been going on in their lives, and then use their stories as examples in your Bible study together. In fact, call the parents and tell them you're taking their kids to to Dairy Queen. Teach your Bible study there over ice cream.

Children 'bullied over brands'

From the department of "if we don't make up any research results soon, we'll lose our funding", it turns out that children are being bullied over not having the coolest of stuff. I once read a statistic that said smoking is going down among young people because you no longer need to smoke to be cool, you just have to have an awesome phone. And then I Googled and found said report into mobile phones and smoking which is far more hypothetical than I remembered it, but never mind.

The Capital Community Foundation

The Capital Community Foundation distributes, runs and publicises various smaller grants available for community projects inside the M25. They've cleverly sorted grants by availability per borough, if you're lucky enough to be running a small grassroots charity in the borough of Lewisham, then you've made it. This isn't a definitive list of small grants in London by any measure, but it's a good place to start.

The Big Question: Have we taken child protection measures too far in Britain? - Home News, UK - The Independent

"Have we taken child protection measures too far?" Asks the Independent in a question made only slightly less provocative by them neither answering it nor understanding the question correctly. The question they ask is actually "are people afraid of being branded a paedophile in today's society" which is a question asked in the licensed to hug report which came out a few months back and in which the authors answer the question with a definite "yes! they are!" The conclusion therefore is that a CRB check might be too much. Or not enough.

The big question warrants slightly more thought than that though, something that, alas, the Independent clearly believes is contributing to climate change and so has been conserving for the last few years. I'm re-writing our child protection policy over the next few weeks, I'll let you know about the progress.

That time of year again

We interrupt this youth work related website to bring you this important announcement:

A generation under stress?

A free to download publication about teenage girls mental health. From the report:

This report reveals a generation of girls and young women who are managing a complex spectrum of feelings and emotions everyday.

It shows the importance of creating space, among supportive friends, for difficult issues to be explored and girls to be reassured that their feelings are 'normal' - and others feel as they do.

(via")

Job Opportunities

Due to the advanced network of carrier pigeons I employ, a fair amount of job adverts land at my desk. Some of them I'm happy to post up here, some of them I'm not so sure about, and some of them are illegible because they're carried in by pigeons in London. Claw marks are the least of the problems. But anyway, it's the middle category of jobs I wonder about. If a job comes into my inbox that's lame, because you know, it's a job in a church that talks more about making young people actualise their potential and empower their spirit than it does mention Jesus —which isn't hard because it doesn't mention him— then do I stick it up here anyway and let the reader decide? I think not.

Which is odd because I'm fairly certain I wouldn't object to putting up the same advert if it was for Camden Council or whatever. If a council wants to employ someone to do that sort of thing, then that's there job. It's not a church's job.

So in short, if you have a job that you want sticking up here on this space, then I'll gladly do it. If we get enough regularly I'll hack together a sensible way of searching them all through. However, if you work for a church or a Christian charity don't be terribly surprised if I write you back and say "your job description doesn't mention Jesus, or even imply him in the language, which seems a bit odd, I'm going to assume this is a mistake so I'm not going to post it yet. If it is a mistake hit me back with a correction, if it's not a mistake, then I can't in good conscience advertise it. I don't think the church should be doing anything that doesn't point to Jesus, and so a job without him even implied doesn't seem that great to me." Essentially, if I could read a job description in isolation from the place of work or occupational requirements, and not know whether it is an advert for a Christian charity or a secular charity, I'm not going to put it up.

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Jobs: Lead Youth Worker and Assistant Youth Worker

Two part-time jobs working with the Salvation Army doing youth outreach

Merton, London - Raynes Park Outreach Centre

Full-time, temporary position 35hrs per week
(20th October 2008 - 19th December 2008)

ALOVE UK is The Salvation Army for a new generation. As The Salvation Army's national youth office, we're rolling out an exciting new strategy to serve young people in the UK and Republic of Ireland. We're running youth social inclusion initiatives, developing new expressions of church, training youth workers, delivering dynamic youth events and engaging with the needs of a 21st Century youth generation.

Kizzy: Mum at 14

BBC Documentary about a mum at 14. I was impressed with how good the documentary was, about the girl's feelings, and about the sex education she received. Also interesting the father's reaction to becoming a dad (not that you see it, he legs it).

Counselling the Adopted Child

If I had a penny for every time I've been told that youth workers aren't counsellors I'd be rich (If I'd have to have been awake to claim those pennies, I'd perhaps not be so rich, but enough about my awful attention-span record and arrogance, on with the link.) The Journal of Biblical Counselling have freely given out Counselling the Adopted Child. As good knowledge to read up on for youth workers as counsellors (especially seeing that around 5000 children a year in the UK are adopted (granted this is only .6% of the population, but that's still 1 in every 200 young people you'll work with)). (via)

(And that's today's parenthesises allowance used up).

Hermeneutics and Children's Curriculum

Or, if I wrote this article Top Five Hermeneutical Fallacies in Children's Curriculum. This is why you were surprised when you found out that actually, the gospels don't devote that much time to the donkey that carried Mary to Bethlehem. (via)

Project Pooch

Dogs! Young People! An embarrassingly named youth project! Could this be the best link ever? Project Pooch celebrates 15 years of successfully matching youths and dog. A disappointing lack of photos, I so hope there is a cat version of this.

Holy Ghost

I never thought I'd legitimately be able to link to an xkcd comic on a blog arguably about youth work and Christianity, this then, is a happy day.

Youths warned for car badge theft

The two missing questions from this article are "why did the young people do it" and "why did the BBC report it"? (The answers are probably; they were 14 year old boys and; to give the British TV licence fee payer something to moan about).

Police arrested eight 14-year-old boys who admitted stealing car badges in Gloucestershire. All eight confessed to their thefts and received a formal reprimand from Gloucestershire Police.

Keller and Powlison: Should You Pass on Bad Reports?

Should you pass on bad reports? (Spoiler: The answer is no, but don't let that stop you reading the article.)

Tim Keller and David Powlison recently collaborated to provide some biblical wisdom and guidelines on speech and relationships. Our thinking was that perhaps bloggers would want to adopt these and spread the word about them as a way, in Keller's words, to "spiritually season Christian conversation in cyberspace."

The Only Celebrity

Mike Pilavachi, himself a minor Christian celebrity, on the cult of celebrity in Christianity

When we put some people on pedestals, we do them no favours, we do ourselves no favours and above all we commit the sin of idolatry. We must repent. The only hero in heaven is Jesus. We must make sure he remains the only hero in the church.

(You might need to be signed up to Facebook to view this, but let's face it, you're reading a blog about Christian youth work, you checked Facebook while brushing your teeth this morning.)

Update: I forgot to insert the link first time around but now it's disappeared off open Facebook, so unless you're friends with Mike Pilavachi you can't read it. I'm sticking it all up here for posterity (full text stolen from here).

Our culture is saturated with the cult of celebrity. We are mesmerized by fame. There are a whole group of people who seem to be famous for just being famous! Magazines, newspapers and TV shows know that if they profile certain people their readership, or ratings will automatically go up. Andy Warhol prophesied in the 60's that a time was coming when everyone could be famous for 15 minutes. That bizarre scenario is virtually upon us.

The tragedy is that the celebrity culture seems to have infected large sections of the church. We get so excited if someone even vaguely famous comes anywhere near the kingdom. We not only attempt to co-opt celebrities from the secular world around us. We have learnt to do a great job at creating our own. Hundreds of years ago when I was in my teens the celebrities were the evangelists. Today it is the musicians, particularly the worship leaders. I am finding this increasingly disturbing. Obviously one reason for this is that I am not a worship leader! There is, however, a deeper reason. We will always have people to look up to, respect and trust. That is a natural and good thing. The cult of celebrity goes beyond that. The problem with raising others up and making them into hero's who appear extra ordinary is that it can disenfranchise the rest of the body of Christ. When we talk about this "great man of God" or that "anointed woman of God" we immediately create a distinction in the body of Christ. That has to mean that most of the rest of us exist on a different and lower plane to these "super apostles" as Paul would mockingly characterize them.

The truth is that we are all the same in the Kingdom. God delights to use ordinary, weak and broken people in his ministry. When we build up the few we inevitably disempower the many.

As we grasp this, we stop waiting for the guy with the great healing ministry to come and make us better. We stop depending on the visiting evangelist who comes once a year to save our town. We don't wait for the person with the gifted teaching ministry to hear from God's word and we don't look for the person with the prophetic origami ministry to sort our lives out. We rush to listen to these people at conferences and queue to get the blessing when we should all be sharing in the ministry.

The other problem with the cult of celebrity is that it overlooks the fact that in the Kingdom there is only one celebrity, one hero and his name is Jesus. It really has to be all about him! He will not share his glory with another. We must repent of the idea that "if only so and so is at the meeting then amazing things will happen". No. The only thing we need is His presence. The only person who needs to show up is the Lord Jesus Christ. He and he alone makes the difference.

There's a real danger in us pointing to one person, one place, one church or one event where God's anointing is or through which God will change the world. The truth is the world was changed 2000 years ago by one man on a hill outside Jerusalem and every move of the Spirit since has been led by Him.

Our motto should be that of John the Baptist who said "He must increase, I must decrease". John's mission was not to promote himself but to prepare the way for Jesus. He recognized that the best way to 'promote' Jesus was to in a sense 'demote' himself. In an age of 'self-promotion', Christians are called to live in the opposite spirit. A spirit of 'self-demotion'!

Over the last few years I have become a very minor and low grade christian celebrity. I hate it. It does no good for my pride when people treat me as if I am something. I love and need encouragement. I do not need people to think I am something I am not. Thank goodness because I get to live with me I know the truth. The truth is that I am just a lump of lard trying to serve the God whom I love and has shown unbelievable mercy to me. Some may say I have a poor self image to say that. No. I have a realistic self image.

When we put some people on pedestals, we do them no favours, we do ourselves no favours and above all we commit the sin of idolatry. We must repent. The only hero in heaven is Jesus. We must make sure he remains the only hero in the church.

5 Dangers for Young Men - J.C. Ryle

J.C. Ryle's top 5 dangers for young men. In no particular order

• Pride
• Love of Pleasure
• Thoughtlessness
• Contempt of Religion
• Fear of Man's Opinion

The link has the explanations. If you think these just apply to your young people, then you're clearly wrong. Or not a young male youth worker like I am I guess.

How Many Youth Workers Does It Take To Change A Lightbulb?

Q) How many youth workers does it take to change a lightbulb?

A) I don't know. But as long as they don't do it with a member of the opposite sex in a room with the door shut it doesn't matter.

Q) How many youth workers does it take to change a lightbulb?

A) Two, one to change the lightbulb and one to moan at the PCC over the lack of lightbulb funds.

Q) How many youth workers does it take to change a lightbulb?

A) One. There can only be one youth workers. No-one else can put in the effort or take the responsibility for these young people. No-one else can be trusted with their salvation and growth.

Q) How many youth workers does it take to change a lightbulb?

A) Two, One to change the lightbulb and one to tell the young people not to have sex.

Q) How many youth workers does it take to change a lightbulb?

A) One, however there aren't any lightbulbs left because they were all used in trying to make the biggest tower out of ordinary household objects.

Q) How many youth workers does it take to change a lightbulb?

A) Two, one to change the lightbulb and the other to give a short talk about how once there was only a lightbulb which glowed brighter than any other lightbulb, and it never blew up or was the wrong wattage. And that lightbulb's name was Jesus and he really wants you all to not have sex. I mean have eternal life.

Q) How many youth workers does it take to change a lightbulb?

A) Change! Hooray! Finally we're dragging this place into the 21st century.

Q) How many youth workers does it take to change a lightbulb?

A) Two, one to change the lightbulb and one to hold the ping-pong table they're standing on still.

Q) How many youth workers does it take to change a lightbulb?

A) One, and he does it really quickly, everyone knows being alone in a room with no light is tantamount to a sin. I mean sex. I mean sin.

Q) How many youth workers does it take to fit as many lightbulbs as possible into their own mouth?

Q) How many youth workers does it take to change a lightbulb?

A) Five. Two to start a Friday night discipleship group, one to start a sport's ministry team, one to meet with young people one-to-one and one to do some schools work. With all that in place they can empower a young person to do it for them.

Q) How many youth workers does it take to change a lightbulb?

A) Lightbulbs! Who cares about lightbulbs when some young people might be having sex!?!

(rehashed from a previous website)

Questions That Should Not Be Asked In Interviews

This is the best "What questions are illegal to ask in interviews in the uk" online advice I could find, although if you have genuine occupational requirements in place for the post (say for example there is reason for you to employ a Christian to do the job) then you can get away with asking about them in an interview.

Young Adult Development

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has done a bunch of research into young adult development. They're trying to make out like being 18-25 years old is a separate developmental stage between the teenage years and the mid-adulthood years. Good for them I say! Pages 6-9 are probably the interesting ones, being that the outline the changes. (via.)

UnLtd Sport Relief Funding

As inline with every funding provider ever these days, Sport Relief have set up a young people led funding organisation for between £250 and £5000. If you've got some young people interested in Sports and stuff... Deadlines are on the 1st of October but there's an interim one for the 1st of September if you want to get in early.

Driscoll and Spurgeon

Everyone loves Spurgeon, and Mark Driscoll is no exception. (That's not scientifically tested by the way) and now it seems he loves me too. Which is a concept I'm not entirely comfortable with, but whatever (FACT: how easily you find guessing someone is talking about Spurgeon directly correlates with how cool you find being name checked by Mark Driscoll). I have nothing much more to add to the series of posts on Spurgeon, especially as I don't have any of the books I own of his to hand. Though I can tell you two random Spurgeon facts: One; the guy was all in favour of beards. Apparently beards meant you wouldn't get a cold when you forgot your scarf, therefore you could preach more frequently. Two; The unofficial work policy regarding the Metropolitan Tabernacle Bookshop (Spurgeon's old church) is that you're not allowed to go into it with a credit or debit card. It's cash only, and you let someone know you're going in.

London Diocese Child Protection Guidelines

The Diocese of London has it's child protection guidelines online for the download of. Add this to the list of "things I found useful today that you almost certainly won't".