Saturday, 25 June 2011
This is a review of the coffee shop, Scandinavian Kitchen. I don't normal review coffee shops on this website but then coffee shops aren't normally the best coffee shop in Central London. Also Becca Dean normally reviews coffee shops, but she's away, so I'm doing one. Here is my review: YES. That is my full review of it, because my review of it can only be entirely positive and that is one word that Is entirely positive, unless it is answering the question "this is bad news isn't it?" but it's not, it's answering the question "is this the best coffee shop in London?". That written, it is not above criticism, and so I have helpfully outlined some pros and cons of the Scandinavian Kitchen. To make this list especially authentic I outlined them while sitting in the Scandinavian Kitchen procrastinating from trying to write something for this blog. Ironically this is now something I wrote from a blog and "why your open drop-in youth club sucks" will have to wait for some other time.
Pros
- Great Scandinavian contemporary indie-pop music playing on the radio. Also a surprising and welcome lack of ABBA and Ace of Base, and an adoption of those Icelandic bands you should like without over playing all the Sigur Ros songs the BBC use to soundtrack their nature programs.
- Good coffee
- Great cake
- Slightly insane lunch menu including lots of smoked and raw fish (this could conceivably be in the Cons list)
- Handy if you work and live where I do.
- You can buy Scandinavian groceries if you're the sort of person who is into that.
- Has war room downstairs, great if your planning to take over Soho and / or Bloomsbury. Also good for reenacting crucial scenes from Dr Strangelove or any Cold War movie.
- Smug satisfaction that you support a local independent coffee shop
Cons
- Ambiguity over Scandinavia. I assumed the argument is whether Denmark is Scandinavian or not but apparently it's over Finland. The Scandi Kitchen doesn't help resolve this question
- Renewal of that embarrassment you normally only get on the continent when you explain you can only speak one language
- High stools slightly wobbly and bad for posture.
- Only one nice sofa
- Arrogant self-satisfaction that you support a local independent coffee shop
Thursday, 23 June 2011
For Christians, caring for the environment can end up all occupying hippy past-time or decried as pointless because it ends up being an all occupying hippy past-time, or not thought about and so done with large amounts of guilt like the rest of the country. There is a better approach though.
The Christian approach [the conservation] is very different: it is celebratory and grateful and hopeful.
Here's an argument though that I've yet seen made. If we take seriously Psalm 19 when it says things like "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands" and passages like Romans 1:20 which says "For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse" then should we not believe that creation does actually speak of God, though it does not use words, and though because of our depravity it's words are no use to us without the Word of God and his Spirit coming to us? So, should we be surprised that humans, who love to hide from God's word and cover it up, deface his glory that is proclaimed in creation? From obvious defacing by digging massive holes in it, or eating all the fish out of it, to subtly defacing by attributing it's glory to someone or thing other than God.
Wednesday, 22 June 2011
Here are some good questions to ask when you're going for a youth ministry job. I particularly like "Why is this position open? Why not hire someone from within to fill it? How long has it been open?" and "Are people coming to know Christ as a direct result of this ministry?" (the latter of these is the great unasked question of most ministries).
Friday, 17 June 2011
As someone was asking about Facebook policies on Twitter I've put our work policy up on the website (pdf). As it was written a couple of years ago now and Facebook redesigns their privacy settings more often than I stay up too late writing weblog posts.
Thursday, 16 June 2011
I'm going to this training lunch thing, run by the good people at Capital Youthworks (who inexplicably think youth work is one word). You should come too. Blurb below:
Partnering with Parents: How to honour Jesus while working with the parents we face
Friday 17th June in St Andrews Church, Central London
(How to find St Andrews )
This term we'll be joined by Alan Withchalls who is going to help us think through the issue of working with parents.
We all know that we should work with parents to help them pastor their children. However, while some of them are dynamite parents who weave the grace and good news of Jesus throughout their family lives, others are simply a drain on our energy and a constant source of frustration... and even criticism or scorn. In this seminar at the youth worker lunch we'll be looking at how we can honour Jesus and effectively work with these parents in our ministry to young people.
Alan serves as the Youth & Children's Minister for the Parish of High Ongar, located in semi-rural Essex, where he oversees a team of 14 leaders and a youth and children's ministry made up of 30 children and young people. Alan is married to Kirsten and has a 3 year old son called Joshua and a 10 month old daughter called Leoni.
The timings for the morning/lunch are as follows:
10.30am Coffee and Doughnuts
11am Seminar - Alan Witchalls
12.45pm Lunch (provided)
2.00pm Close
Feel free to RSVP to the Capital Youthworks team if you're coming, but don't feel you have to.
Thursday, 9 June 2011
Anything that shows that the answer to all things to is look and hold onto the God and Father of Jesus Christ is a great thing.
The thing is, if I'm discontent and disgruntled then there's probably a good reason. I'm not looking to the one who satisfies, quenches, cleanses, and if all else fails, gives hope that surpasses the current situation.
Thursday, 9 June 2011
If when you think of God, your mind has a tendency to slip towards a cold, authoritarian, removed God, then this talk on the Trinitarian God of Christianity (mp3) by a guy called Mike Reeves is great stuff.
Thursday, 9 June 2011
People often say to me "Mark, what's the best book on youth work?" and I often reply "that's easy, it's a book written in 1912 that never mentions the word 'youth work'". And then I pause to build up some tension and fix them with a steely gaze and tell them "it's called Missionary Methods: St Paul's or Ours and it's by a man named Roland Allen and it's great". And it is. But how can it be so crucial to a ministry that hadn't really been invented yet? Let me explain.
The book is written in this context. Allen has just come back from being a missionary in China, he's returned due to ill health, but he's frustrated with the missionary societies and the missionaries they are sending. Too often the missionary societies' goals seemed to be making quaint English parish churches, with a English morality, in the heart of China, or India, or wherever. Allen saw this as not just a cultural problem though, it went much deeper than that, there was a problem with how the foreign missionaries were treating the converts —as people second under the missionary— and how they we treating the church they planted —as the missionary's church to order and direct as he saw fit.
Allen writes Missionary Methods into this context. And it's brilliant. His point is essentially this; see how the Apostle Paul planted churches? See what you're doing? See how they don't match up even slightly? Paul arrives in a new place proclaims the gospel, plants a church, and then leaves —the longest he stays anywhere is two years and he stays a lot of places for a lot less time. And yet, when he leaves, there's a fully fledged church there, a church which Paul is content with. When Paul writes Romans (at which point he's been a Christian for around thirty-forty years) he can say there is no place left for him in the Eastern Mediterranean because it's been all evangelised. Yet how come when we undertake a mission, says Allen, we don't really plant churches, and when we do we expect them to take decades to get even remotely safe sustaining.
Allen's over-arcing thesis is that Paul was successful because he trusted in the Holy Spirit and trusted that the Spirit worked just as powerfully in the heathen converts as He did in him. We fail, because we try and do everything in our power, because we try to protect the newly converted heathen and we try to do everything for them. We don't trust God that His gospel will work that effectively in these people or that His Spirit will truly reside in them.
Lesslie Newbigin in the introduction to one of my copies of the book says that "methodology" is perhaps a misleading word in the title, the book isn't so much about replicable methods (things like "learn the language, build a school, reach the mums") but more about a dependency on Christ to secure and build his church and a trusting that the Spirit works just as powerfully in the lives of new Christians as He does old believers.
But, what has this got to do with youth work? Well, while foreign missionaries have probably learnt from Allen, youth workers haven't. We still expect the young people to depend entirely on the youth worker for their sustenance, strength, and advice on what to do in their day to day life. We operate as the superior, greater, more powerful figure coming in to show them all how's it done. We mollycoddle them with our advice for seven years and hope they cope when they hit university. This is what Allen was railing against then, and this is what we still do now. You could if you like search and replace Missionary Methods for the phrase missionary and switch it for youth worker, and the word heathen and replace it with young person and the book would make as much sense if not more so. For example: "If the first [converted young people] are taught to depend upon the [youth worker], if all work, evangelistic, educational, social is concentrated in his hands, the infant community learns to rest passively upon the man from whom they receive their first insight into the Gospel."
Every now and again I read through this book with interns or staff or just on my own, and it still hits me. How much of the work do I do where I rely on running and sorting everything out for the young people? Where do I not give young people freedom? Where do I quench the Spirit in them and so lead them into dependency? I'm not sure there is a book on youth work like it.
Thursday, 9 June 2011
Why do people believe in conspiracy theories? The BBC has some suggestions. I think it's more to do with a perversion of God's sovereignty. Instead of believing in a good and loving God who has put his Son ruling over the world, people believe that it's a shadowy secret council. That way there is someone to blame and shirk your responsibility onto, and you can pretend you're a cool rebel against the authorities like Luke Skywalker, not a wicked rebel like Satan.
