The Grove Is Still On Fire
It was, a year ago to the more or less day that I launched this website, for better or for worse haphazardly firing out words about youth work and other such stuff. This is what I promised last year.
They'll be no 'resourcing' here, no informative sessions plans or curriculum built around self-esteem and the book of Judges, just links to things that might be helpful and tirades into the ether.
So, this is what this is then; a weblog about doing Christian ministry with young people from me, a youth worker from a reasonably reformed evangelical background.
Apart from the incorrect use of the Oxford comma, I'd like to think I've very irregularly kept to what I stated there, though at some point I'm sure we could all do with a few articles on how we can learn how absolutely amazing we are from the book of Judges. Irregular is the correct word though, it turns out the website I want to write takes more time than the website I can write. It also turns out that being married takes up a lot of time, and it's probably the wiser and more joyful investment. All that said it's been quite fun writing this and shall hopefully carry on that way, and as I reflect back on the year that's been and slip into rose-tinted rhetoric mode, I can't help but... oh whatever. Here's stuff I'm particularly proud of over the last year:
- An Open Letter Of Complaint To Nandos. Or where Mark has a strop about the heat of Nando's food (still relevant, I went there yesterday and extra hot couldn't set fire to a dried out pyromaniac).
- Preaching and Not. Or where Mark complains about the lack of people using the word unction when it comes to small groups.
- Translating the Qu'ran. Or where Mark points out how it's apparently alright to translate the Qu'ran to fit what people want to here now.
- Kids, Here Is How To Use A Condom. Or where Mark doesn't actually explain how to use a condom, but does talk about legalism
- 1 Thesstians. Or where Mark rewrites the Bible current youth work methodology.
The archives are over here as always if you want to plough through some of that stuff, or you can wait for the made for TV adaption to come out some time next year where Brad Pitt will be playing everyone not me, so that even when they get a big name star to play me I'll still look appropriately mundane.