Youth Work Resource

Deborah 13: Servant of God

Posted by Mark Tiddy in Articles - (0 Comments)

I don’t know how many of you readers caught ‘Deborah 13: Servant of God’ on BBC Three last night…I know I didn’t. I did however watch it on iPlayer last night.

I read about the documentary on Saturday and made a point of making a note that it was on. The documentary followed 13 year old Deborah and her family of 10 brothers/sisters.

The family are all evangelical Christians and live in a very remote place in Dorset. All the children are home-schooled and don’t really mix with anyone other than their siblings.

I have to admit I made a note of the documentary expecting to be annoyed by ‘bad Chrstian press’ and I’m sure had the documentary been on Channel 4 I would have been, however I was pleasently surprised and think the family pose a challenge for Christians across the board!

Firstly God is centainly on the agenda in their household! The day begins and ends with bible study as a family, every meal is accompanied by grace and at the end of the programme when their eldest son returns to university they pray for a safe journey. I loved that in their family prayer and looking at God’s word was right out there in the open and I only wish that more Christian families included that… I don’t think I’d ever thought of the idea of family bible study but I shall certainly think of it again!

Secondly the children didn’t care about looks! Right at the start of the documentary Deborah was asked if she knew who Britney or Victoria Beckham were and she didn’t know! Deborah had no interest in fashion or reservations about her looks which in my opinion was a great thing because her self worth was based on something other than our ridiculous culture!

The not so good…

Although generally I think the children were in a good family atmosphere and that the older brother being at university shows that perhaps their Christian bubble upbringing isn’t a bad thing there were a few things that I raised an eye-brow at…

Firstly the family were t-total and of the belief that alcohol shouldn’t be consumed by Christians…to which I’d probably enquire about Jesus’ first miricle of water to wine!

Secondly Deborah seemed to be very focused on the idea of people going to hell which although is technically true it seemed like she had a very negative view of the world rather than looking at the positives within it.

All in all though I thought it was a positive reflection of Christianity in todays culture and a real challenge to think about how seriously we (as Christians) take our faith

To watch it on iplayer click here

Finding God in unusual places

Posted by Mark Tiddy in Articles - (0 Comments)

The last year I’d say I’ve been on a journey, I’ve discovered that actually feelings towards sung worship change

I’ve found that worship songs don’t always hit the nail on the head for me…

I’ve found that I’m left wanting something more from worship

at the same time I acknowledge that worship thankfully isn’t about pleasing Mark but pleasing God

as a result of this I think I’ve been learning two things…

firstly learning to worship God even when I’m not in the mood…acknowledging that God is more important than grumpy Mark

SECONDLY I’M LEARNING TO FIND GOD IN UNUSUAL PLACES

(and to stop doing a Rob Bell and doing 1 line paragraphs!)

I was watching an interview with Paramore on youtube at a church in America and the very lovely lead singer Hayley Williams was talking about how when you’re on tour and you can’t get to church every Sunday you learn to find God in other places…and actually when you work for a church or find that church doesn’t always work for you or perhaps if you happen to be super-spiritual you learn to find God in unusual places too.

I’m a massive fan of music and so often the finding of God has been in songs from artists whether Christian or not….back when I was in year 10 and I bought New Found Glory’s ‘Sticks & Stones’ the song Sonny spoke to me, a while back I posted on a Five Iron Frenzy song that got me thinking about God, I wear a hoodie with the Relient K lyric ‘It’s the beauty of grace that makes life not fair’ on the back and more recently I’ve even found God in sections of Lily Allen’s new album (which is surprisingly good!).

It’s interesting to find God in places outside of church because you get a different perspective of things, you find that people who don’t talk the church-lingo often have some interesting things to say about God whether you agree or not but they get you thinking about Him and I heard someone say that ‘whenever your mind turns back to God it’s an act of worship’

So don’t rely on church to provide you with God (even if you get the manufactured lights & smoke version of the almighty one) but go fishing…or rather searching for Him…you never know God may be behind the sofa all along…or in that new CD from Blink 182 when they release it in the summer!

Communion & Young People

Posted by Mark Tiddy in Articles - (0 Comments)

Originally published on himynameismark.co.uk

The topic of Holy Communion/ The Lord’s Supper has been playing on my mind for a while now for several reasons and not entirely positively.

One young person remarked to me a while ago ‘Why do we have to go up (into church) for communion, it’s just for the adults’, this remark prompted agreement from the others in the group who didn’t see the point of communion.

Let’s set the scene though…the church these young people are part of is a Baptist church and in the baptist church communion is given out, so the minister will read the appropriate bible bits, break the bread and the deacons will serve the church members with the bread. After this the minister talks about the wine and the deacons distribute small cups (like shot glasses) to the congregation who keep them until a given moment when the whole church drinks as a sign of unity.

Now in theory there’s nothing wrong with this however if you don’t take communion turning down the bread/wine can seem tricky and not partaking can leave you feeling left out and so a young person taking communion for the first time may feel watched but equally by not taking it they may feel the same.

Over Christmas I attended midnight mass at St Andrew’s Church in Gorleston and I was reminded of the way the Anglicans do communion. In the Anglican church people go up, kneel down at the alter and the minister or a member of the lay team will serve the bread and wine, everyone drinks the wine from the same cup too!

If you don’t want to take communion you don’t hold your hands open and the minister will pray for you, children are often encouraged to kneel next to the adults taking communion and be prayed for, there’s no pressure about taking communion but at the same time the concept isn’t alien to them.

The way the Baptist church does communion (although some may do it very differently) risks alienating a generation of young people from communion. We risk bringing up children who don’t understand the meaning of communion and just see it as ‘something the adults do’, this saddens me because communion can be and should be a spiritual experience whether you take the bread and wine whether you receive a blessing.

So if anyone has any suggestions for how we can make it more relevant let me know! How does your church do communion?

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Facebook & Youth Work: Good Practice

Posted by Mark Tiddy in Articles | christianity - (1 Comments)

 

One of the big topics in Youth Work at the moment (other than porn which is Youth Work magazines focus point this month – blog to follow) is that of Social Networking and levels of appropriateness.

One person I know suggests that Facebook for Youth Workers is a no, no with his argument largely based on the use of the word ‘friend’ but also based on the boundary issues.

To an extent this friend of mine (and I can call him that as he isn’t a young person!) is right, perhaps having young people on a list titled friends does change the boundaries…for some workers. In my experience though Facebook has become a useful tool in Youth Work allowing me to remind young people of events, create events and groups to help them socialise outside of our regular church youth group and it also provides a place where, if they need to they can contact me hassle free.

Another friend disagrees with friend 1 and sides more towards my view, during a discussion yesterday we chewed over Facebook and the positives it has in Youth Work, particularly with those young people who you don’t see that often.

However although Facebook can become an essential tool for youth work there are also risks involved. For starters some functions on Facebook are private which leaves potential for inappropriate behaviour on the part of a worker, time and time again we read in the newspapers of young people being groomed through Social Networking sites.

Another risk is where you draw the boundary with a young person (some would draw it at the line whereby they don’t add young people to their Facebook).

The final risk that I see is the risk of your friends, many people I know have friends who love to post inappropriate things on their wall, risqué comments and embarrassing photos.

So to help any youth workers who read this I would like to suggest some good practice guidelines for the use of Facebook (and other social networking) in Youth Work.

Don’t Message!

The biggest risk of Facebook is the private functions, messages cannot be seen by anyone but yourself and the recipient, so if you can avoid sending messages I would recommend it.

If sending a message is essential then you can send messages to multiple people on Facebook so include one of your other leaders in the message, if something is too private or personal for that then I’d suggest abandoning Facebook for the conversation and suggesting you meet the young person for a chat over coffee.

Privacy Exists

If you’re concerned about your friends writing things on your wall or that photo of you when you were 16, drunk and naked with nothing but a pot-plant to hide your modesty then I suggest that you check out the privacy settings under account. 

Facebook allows you to put your friends in ‘lists’ and from that in privacy settings you can choose certain settings for lists, so you can, for instance ban a list from viewing your photos.

Wall Is The Way Forward

The best way to communicate with a young person individually is through the wall system, it’s a public thing and it’s perhaps the safest way to communicate with them. Avoid using abbreviations such as ‘LOL’ which can be open to misinterpretation too, just keep it plain and simple…I always sign off with ‘Mark’.

Bare in mind though that what you write on the wall of your non-youth friends is also public so be a good role model!

Your Private Details

Facebook has a habit of posting anything you change on your profile to the feed you see when you login, once again if you go to privacy you can change these settings so that the whole world won’t know when you change relationship status.

You can also tell facebook not to display certain parts of your profile to lists so if you don’t want your young people to know your address, relationship status or that your favourite music includes ‘Take That’ then change your settings to hide them.

Finally Use Groups & Events!

Groups and Events on Facebook can be a brilliant way to remind young people of things going on, build up some excitement for an event and get young people interacting with each other between events, those with less friends can make new virtual friends before attending an event, I remember the Norwich Youth For Christ forum meant that I knew more people at their youth services before I attended…it also meant there’s a lot of people who I only know as their forum usernames!

At the end of the day Facebook is a tool which can be used and abused but perhaps more dangerously open to misinterpretation so just like good practice guidelines for face to face youth work it’s important we have some for Facebook, I hope this post provides just that and will help you to safely use Facebook for youth work.

More on social networking and youth work can be found on YouthBlog - click here

Are we going wrong?

Posted by Mark Tiddy in Articles | christianity - (4 Comments)

Some of the conversations I had over Christmas with people surprised me, I heard things about young people I used to work with in a church youth group that surprised me and it’s got me thinking.

Just before Christmas I read a book called ‘Practicing Passion’ by Kenda Creasy Dean and she suggests that the church has watered down the message of Jesus we no longer have anything to offer young people. She suggests that young people are looking for something to be passionate about, something worth dying for and that Jesus should fit that criteria but more often than not in churches He doesn’t.

This has led me to thinking about my own youth work and youth work in general. Is church youth work watered down to the point where we tread carefully so we don’t scare off young people rather than it being something immensly challenging?

Is the reason for the church being so apathetic and inactive because for generations we’ve presented a simple, risk-free Christianity rather than the demmanding, challenging Christianity that we are presented with by the bible?

I wonder if all too often we under estimate young people, perhaps we forget how passionate they can become about things, perhaps the actions of young people I heard about over Christmas were because they wanted a way to express passion and the church just didn’t provide that.

If gun, knife and gang crime can teach us anything perhaps it teaches us that young people have passion, a passion for something worth dying for. For them this passion is their friends or other gang members or even family members and is channelled in a fairly negative way through crime but what if the church actually presented a gospel that required that passion rather than a hymn book?

Maybe we’d see young people turning to Jesus rather than gangs, maybe we’d see young people being passionate about Jesus rather than drink, drugs or sex.

So where does this all start?

I think in order for us to present a gospel like this we need a church and its leaders/deacons & youth workers to have that passion and the confidence to preach a challenging gospel over a nice fluffy ‘Jesus can be your girlfriend’ style gospel.

The challenge for Christian youth workers and church volunteers is to think again about the way we explain things to young people and the Jesus we present them with.

Comments and thoughts would be apreciated

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Prayer – Who Do You Pray To?

Posted by Mark Tiddy in Articles | christianity - (0 Comments)

I found this quote written by the editor of PostSecret.com on this weeks secrets

My mother has brain cancer. She was diagnosed during the holiday season last year. They told her she probably had two months to live. My mother is sitting in the room next to me, and will be here for the holidays this year.

I don’t believe in god, but I am praying for a miracle for your father. My mom got one.

I find it an interesting quote and it leaves me wondering who he is actually praying to if he doesn’t believe in God. The majority of definitions of prayer at dictionary.com talk use the word petition i.e. ‘to petition for something’ now all this is very well but who are you actually petitioning?

I guess those who don’t pray to God could have an open prayer, not directed at anyone in particular but prayed that in the emptiness surrounding there is someone or something listening out for these prayers of petition and prepared to answer them. I don’t know if I believe God answers prayers not directed at anyone particular but I suspect the answer is similar to the answer to the ‘Does God answer prayer?’ question.

Perhaps God does answer the prayer sent out into emptiness by the athiest in desparation, who knows but either way the PostSecret founder who I quoted at the beginning obviously had a undirected prayer answered whether it’s luck or God I don’t know but it’s an interesting thought…