headwayyouth- phil smith's blog

Questiontime disappointments

I've been building myself up for about a week looking forward to Questiontime last night. I was looking forward to an American style slanging match but instead the three candidates were dealt with seperately... how disappointing! Nevertheless it was worth watching.

I'm still not quite sure who to vote for, and for those of you who share my uncertainty, you might find this useful. It was printed in the last issue of HEadline (Headway's magazine) after being produced by the National Council of Churches USA to help Christian voters consider who to vote for last year, but it seems applicable to our situation too.

Brother Maynard's Musings

This article is admittedly a couple of months old now but these thoughts of Brother Maynard really summarise what i think the emerging church is about. it's not about alt worship or a particular way of doing things, but about a journey, a journey witha few common thoughts which are nicely summarised here.

Church and community

Having posted about a concert it's only fair that i also write something about community. I read this letter in the Guardian on Saturday and as a member of the MEthodist church really felt my heart beat a little faster. It seems to me that we have a really good opportunity to step into the void here. In my circuit in Darlington we have 14 churches so most people who live in Darlington live within walking distance of a Methodist church.

As our countries economic strategy continues to destroy community ammenities in favour of efficiency i wonder how we can step into the gap? I'm not a big fan of church buildings but here i have to conceed that they hold a huge advantage, ideally they could be the thing which holds communities together, if only we new how...

I'm part of this thing called Bluebell Organics (there's a newspaper article about them here) whereby i chip in some money every month and i get a (big) bag of organic veg every week. Katrina who heads up the project is a big believer in organic foods so that is why she does it, but it'd be great if churches did things like this not just as a witness to the local community (that we shouldn't be messing up the environment) but also as a way of recreating some sense of community.

sunday worship???

It's a fairly rare occasion that on a sunday morning i am still grinning about the activities of sunday but this is one of those occasions. I would love to say it involved meeting with other Christians but i'm afraid that's not completely true. Morning worship was good but in the evening i skived church and me and the fiance went to see Faithless at the Metro Arena in Newcastle- if you don't know faithless, don't worry they're not as heathen as they sound!

I haven't been to a gig in quite sometime and certainly not an arena gig and i have to say it put morning worship to shame. I've got all the MAtt Redman albums and i'm quite partial to the old Tim Hughes, but the it seems that the best music seems to be outside the church and i'm not quite sure why. If God is a god who celebrates diversity and empowers creativity then what's with the homogenous worship? At my local church we haven't even broke into the realms of Matt Redman yet, i shudder to think what would happen if i moved my decks into church....

Of course there are rumours of exciting things happening but not enough. We should be at the forefront not permanantly playing catch-up. And for those who have marvellous charismatic worship every sunday and still wonder why young adults aren't attending in their droves, a trip to the next faithless gig might assist your reflections!

Preaching... hmmm

I've just received an email off a good friend of mine in Manchester who has reminded me that i'm supposed to be writing an article on 'my call to preaching' for Headline magazine. I think i agreed to do this about six months ago but now i'm not quite sure what to write. As a methodist preaching has been central to my upbringing and has taught me so much, but the post-modern bit of me is now rebelling (hence the cynical inclussion of a Benny Hinn photo!) and asking whether the didactic model is a) biblical b) effective c) ethical

I found this post on the living room website and although it's a couple of years old it summarises a lot of my thoughts and the discussion is really interested. Increasingly it seems to me that although the bible might support the notion of preaching the word it does not seem to support the idea of a sermon as we know it. Jesus certainly didn't do it and my understanding is that when Paul spoke to the Jews what we have as one long speech will have flowed over a number of days and been way more interactive and involved much more interuption than the text makes out.

I'm looking at taking my youth group to Soul Survivor at the minute and it's interesting that the authoritain model seems to work there (Mike Pilivachi et al preaching for 45 mins+) but i can't help thinking that time goes on and people become more cynical of authority, this becomes a less effect model of discipleship.

When the article is wrote i'll be sure to post it here but until then any advice would be appreciated!

MSN Messanger and all that jazz...

I'm having many musings at the minute re. Microsoft Messenger and not sure whether it's a blessing or a curse to my youth ministry. Pretty much all the young people who i have any pastoral oversight over have it and they all chat away and occasionally they'll chat to me at the minute it's fairly low level, but some of my collagues who are a bit deeper than me would have no problem getting into deep conversations over the internet. I wonder whether that is a good idea. This articles by youth specialties raises some of the issues but with the UK being a bit more sceptical of mainline protestant churches than is generally the case in north america i think i'm going to edge on the side of caution though! Nevertheless if you don't have MSN it probably is worth downloading; it comes in very handy when you need to find someone but don't want to or can't phone (particularly relevant for those of you who work stupid hours!)

Regional Prayer Meetings

Last week i was invited to a Youth For Christ prayer meeting, which i went to this morning and it was quality! Before I came to Darlo I'd never really had much to do with YFC but we now use their rock solid material and finding that good and as I said their regional prayer days seem quality. I don't know if they happen elsewhere in the country but if they're as good as the one this morning it's well worth hunting out. Your regional YFC website should have details.

Calling all schools workers!

For those involved in schools work Send My Friend is an initiative well worth checking out. It's linked in with Make Poverty History and raises issues of global access to education as well as helping kids to lobby world leaders. If you sign up you get a free video featuring Konnie from Blue Peter- how exciting!!!

I'm doing some lessons in schools later this term, i'll let you know how they go!

What the chuff...

emergingchurch.info have just released a new load of articles including this fine piece by guy from a methodist church in leiecester. i like it. i hear/read so many reflections on arty forms of emerging church it's nice to read something really different. like so much in the emerging church it obviously raises issues about what church really is, but it certainly relates which is something which is often forsaken by sticking to the default position (in my tradition ye olde hymn sandwich).

Well, this is bizarre! This is the new Headway Youth blog! The general idea of this is that it will hopefully, somehow, maybe (probably not) assist Christian youthworkers out there; pointing you to some handy resources and hopefully creating a forum where those difficult issues can be aired!