.::Ignatius::.

This week has brought lots of stuff including my final Annual Review & Assessment (which I passed!). Two girls from Arizona stayed here over the last weekend and it was fun travelling around Scotland a bit, especially to places I hadn’t been in a while like Loch Lomond. Spring is here and Easter is less than a week away! This week I am journeying to Belfast in Northen Ireland as well as Dublin in Eire for a few days and it should be good banter (or I think the Irish word would be ‘craic!’ I’m probably wrong though lol0.

Anyway the topic of this post is…youth workers! I’ve talked to a few over the past few years that maybe feel a bit out of place with young people or ‘not cool enough’ as a friend put it. I mean, I’m sure that thought has drifted through my head before but at the end of the day, I know I’m doing what God’s called me to do and it’s been a good experience overall, in fact quite the adventure!

I stumbled across this video however, about ‘Ignatius’, a fictional youth pastor. Well, maybe he’s not so fictional after all, after watching the video, I was reminded of a few people a bit like him, and some of the stuff that came up in the video, I’ve heard in real life. It’s really really good and well worth ten minutes to watch it (it goes by fast and is quite encouraging). We don’t need nice haircuts (ok, maybe I do sometimes haha, I don’t spent more than £15 ever – I promise), amazing technology, a Bible college degree, or cool clothes to be a ‘cool’ effective youth minister. We need a love and passion for young people, a desire to see them grow and develop into all that they can be and reach their full potential which includes discovering their identity in Christ. I think that there is a foundation for a great youth minister. There’s probably more to it, but I’m a bit tired right now, so I’ll leave you to watch the video, it’s really well done, and quite satirical. It reminded me slightly of ‘the office’.

So is this really off the mark? I found it quite hilarious – but a bit freaky as there are those type of people out there. Someone I know from Arizona recently remarked online that a pastor friend of his met with a highly influential youth minister / development guy to ask him a few questions over lunch and the fee for the consultation was to be nearly $8000 (approx £6500). I found that appalling (and I’m sure the pastor did too! I liked Ryan G’s comment about the minister putting a ‘Saddle’ on his ‘Back’ to ride him out into the ‘Fields’ if you get the joke…ICC people should anyway lol). Anyway, let’s be the change. As we are. As an ordinary messy person, the Ignatius video makes me feel much better! Hope you were encouraged too.

Lent & The Big Ten

This week I have had many thoughts. Some of the young people have been participating in Lent, but recently the idea of Lent has got on my nerves. A Catholic friend told me the point of lent is to give something up to focus on meditation and prayer, which I thought sounded like a good idea. But the young people in question had given up sweets/junk food, etc and really didn’t know why, and when they had a sweet by accident, remarked that God was displeased with them and they’d have to add two weeks onto lent. Also, apparently mints and fruit juice don’t count as sweets even though they have as much sugar as a chocolate bar or can of fizzy juice…

Earlier on, the topic of swearing came up. A young person claimed that there were only 3 Christians in his school and I challenged him on that, as I know of more than that. But he said “they’re not real Chrsitians because the swear”. That s**^3&£”&!!!! Fair enough swearing probably isn’t the best witness or whatever, but I know heaps of Christians who swear (though I’ve been better about it lol).

So I decided to tie some grace into Sunday’s message. I asked what rules Christians need to follow. Some of the top answers were:

-Follow the 10 commandments
-Read your Bible every day
- Pray and do a ‘devotional’ every day (or more)
- Go to church every week
-Don’t swear

This sounded like a set of rules to me. So many Christians harp on the “it’s not a religion, its about a relationship” but these things certainly sound like a set of rules to me. Throughout my Christian life (6 years) I have heard so many sermons on following the 10 commandments. When people are struggling with sin, more law seems to be preached in the organised church, not grace and the fact that we are forgiven. In my talk, I stressed the importance of motivation behind what we do. Like do we need to do good deeds and address sin in our life? I would say yes, but not to ‘please God’ but because we ‘love God’, there’s a huge difference there! I was reading through a book at our grace book study tonight and we had a great discussion, I felt really challenged on this thing about the 10 Commandments and the Law.

Do we need to follow the Ten Commandments? Are they relevant?

I would say they are definately relevant – but perhaps not in the way that the organised church preaches them. The Law (including the 10 Commandments) shows us how we can’t reach God’s standards, it’s what the Bible calls the ‘ministry of death’ in 2 Corinthians 3.7 and while that Law is glorious in sentencing people, the finished work of Christ is more glorious and liberating. Jesus fulfilled the Law. There’s a NEW covenant. So why are we still living under the old (unless we’ve become Jewish? If that’s the case we should start celebrating passover, wearing hats, circumcising, etc…).? When the Law was given, 3000 people died at Mt Sinai. When the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost, 3000 people were saved. I think we need to filter the 10 Commandments through the Cross and Jesus gave us two ‘new commandments’, being Love God, and love our neighbour as ourself.

So the ten commandments show us our need for a saviour then…so do we need to preach that we must ‘obey the big ten?’. I think they are great rules, but impossible to follow, Jesus set the bar higher on three of them.

This bothered me, because this changes everything I’ve been told and taught. We sang a song at camp last year called ‘10 Rules, 1 God’. I memorised the ten commandments, I’ve spoken about them.

This grace stuff seems too easy, it could give people a licence to sin. But have they really experienced all the forgiveness entails if they use that as a licence to sin? Maybe not, but these people don’t need more Law, they need more forgiveness preached. Jesus’s work is finished. Why are we still acting and instructing people on what to do to please God? He loves us and has accepted us. Sure I think he could get disappointed in us, but it doesn’t change the fact he loves us.

Maybe this is why so many in the church are sad/depressed a lot? That’s what Joseph Prince writes anyway. This New Covenant is LIBERATING, it sets us free, Jesus has fulfilled the law. The church in the United Kingdom (and the USA and the world) needs this message, I’m sure it would attarct thousands because its what people need, what Jesus died for, to set people free, not bind them to the Ten Commandments and Mosaic Law!

Eating sweets or a piece of junk food during Lent isn’t going to piss God off.

I mean, I could be a heretic (get the stake ready lol), what do you guys think? Is this a new way of thinking all together? I think if I go back to the US I’ll be labelled as a liberal for thinking outside the box in some circles Anyway, give 2 Corinthains, Chapt. 3 a read.

I’ve been challenged, and changed.

I feel liberated.

How about you?

…Thinking…

Today I had the pleasure of leading the youth work seminar group at college. The topic I chose to discuss centred around the implications of teaching young people to think critically about theological issues. I feel that God’s given us a brain, why don’t we use it? So often in church, I see people who listen to a sermon, nod their head, and leave…forgetting the sermon and not thinking or interacting with it. I don’t approach a sermon from a stance of attack, but I do interact with it and think through the issues raised and how the minister came to the conclusion.

Using an example: The Bible doesn’t specifically state “don’t do cocaine” or “don’t have sex before marriage”, in those terms, though many people claim that it does. When people find out it doesn’t, it rocks the boat a wee bit. We know these things are not desirable for God’s people because of what the Bible has to say in other areas and the conclusion is the same but the process of getting to that conclusion is different.

When I do lessons at church, I strive to have the young people think about the issues for themselves. Often I will give them my opinion on grey-area issues, and verses from the Bible and let them make up their own minds. But some may respond better to being told something. What do you think?

A tragic example occured on a programme BBC3 aired last week entitled ‘Deborah 13: Servant of God’. This television programme was about a 13 year old girl named Deborah who lived with her family in a rural part of England. The family were close knit, she had little interaction with the community around her, but she was clearly zealous about her faith. The tragedy was, she never thought through things theologically and came across as being indoctrinated by her parents. She did not know anything about culture and was so starkly different it seemed she was from another planet. The family’s idea of summer holiday was going to a caravan park near the beach and doing puppet shows for the children on holiday there…about Judgement Day! They encouraged 4-year olds to “think about all the bad stuff they did” during the night. Deborah went to Buxton to visit her brother at university and ended up at a party, but couldn’t communicate the Gospel in a culturally relevant way, instead sticking to her main point that a white lie would condemn people to Hell. In a postmodern British context, people are fine with others having faith or no faith, but to put it across in a way Deborah did may have worked a century ago, but will no longer thankfully.

At the party, the way she came across w was really offputting for most, though two girls wanted to discuss things further. My problem with Deborah is that though she was a sweet girl, she was speaking a language people didn’t understand and accepted everything that was said to her by her parents without thinking about the issues. She was socially incapable of having a normal conversation without trying to make people realise they were Hell-bound for lying and didn’t respect where they came from. While Deborah is not a mainstream Christian (her parents belonged to a sect where they ‘bless the womb’ and have loads of kids and she borders on fundamentalist) and she was homeschooled, the documentary was facinating, and she was British, not American as people presume when they hear her story. Check it out on BBCi Player: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00j6l77/Deborah_13_Servant_of_God/

So can we communicate the Gospel in a culturally relevant way allowing people to think for themselves without diluting its message and urgecncy? What are some ways we can do that? And…is it important to teach young people to think theologically? Discuss!

Anyone Want a ‘Snuggie’ ?

Has anyone recently seen an infomercial?

I used to stay up late and watch them…seeing Ronco’s Rotisserie that also baked cakes, the juicer which let a 81 year old man bench 2,000lbs, and the Gerorge Foreman Grill! Well I have to share these – my friend Amaris recently told me about a product called the ‘Snuggie’, which is a blanket with sleeves - what an amazing idea. Maybe some guy put his dressing gown on backwards and thought it was a great idea and now is probably a millionaire. Another favourite infomercial of mine was Miss Cleo’s, Miss Cleo was a fake Jamaican psycic that got arrested for fraud. The Hawaii Chair looks so unreal but its not…and the motivational CD is maybe the most depressing infomercial product ever.

THE SNUGGIE:

ok is it just me or do these people look like they’re either monks or joined a weird cult? I really wanted a Snuggie but they’re not available in the UK yet…sigh.

MISS CLEO:

THE HAWAII CHAIR

CHEERS TO YOU

Thought I would post those for a laugh, surely even I can do better marketing than the infomercial!

Hello world!

Hello World!

So…I’m back in the blogosphere and I am really excited about this new venture. I couldn’t really think of a reason to blog (just like I can’t think of a good reason to use my Twitter account) but this blog will focus on my random life and all things youthwork, so please feel free to interact and comment on my musings, I want the blog to be informal and participatory!