What a fantastic day!

I went up to London early this morning to start the day by meeting up with a great man, Ashton, and his son Craig from the Kennington/Crystal Palace area of London. We were meeting up to chat around some ideas of how YFC might support them in setting up some youth outreach.

These guys were so great. They had a great mix of passion for their community mixed with a real tangible wisdom. The passion was quite infectious and I found myself getting excited for an area I know nothing about and have been to only a couple of times when we used to pop up to Crystal Palace park to see the dinosaurs.

It was great to hear of Ashton and Craig’s plans and I am excited to think they could be starting something up in this part of London!

After saying bye to these people I met up with the London cluster. Again, a bunch of fantastic people who are all massively involved in excellent, innovative godly work amongst the young people of their communities. I thought how great it was to be associated with these people as each of them shared in turn what was happening and what they were currently involved in. It was all exciting stuff from working in football coaching schemes with young people, training youth leaders, developing projects with Street Pastors, developing schools work and setting up new things like breakfast clubs on estates.

I came away thinking what a ‘healthy’ (well…at least until we ate lunch!) bunch of workers these people are as, in reality, each of them was critically analysing what they were doing and asking that important question; ‘what or where next?’

Too often in youth outreach people avoid that question. It’s even easier to avoid it when, as with this group of workers, you are good at what you do and experience success. When things are going well you don’t want to ask the questions about ‘why’ and ‘should this continue’ and ‘what shall we do to progress’. Hard questions but questions that we always need to ask and answer if we are going to progress in our callings and fully experience our lives as God wants us to experience them.

As I returned on the slow train – deliberately to get ahead in my reading – I thought what a great day, 2 meetings, 2 groups of people sold on reaching young people in their area with the gospel. Amazing!

Actually, I am not sure which is more amazing – the fact that they all do this so well, or the fact that each of them thinks they are doing nothing particularly special or out of the ordinary!

Extraordinary!!!

I thought this would be a nice relaxed weekend!

Towards the end of last week we focused in on the fact that Tom would be on scout camp, Beth would be at a party all day Saturday (go girl!!!) and Joe would be partying all Saturday afternoon. Quiet calm time to ourselves.

That did not seem to happen as Sarah had stuff to sort for next week and burgers to get for a youth BBQ that the Gillingham churches and GYFC did today (cool event by the way… I had loads of reading to catch up on (Bosch is a good read) and a short critical analysis of a mission agency to do.

It was also cool to receive a couple of requests for my essay and some really excellent and helpful feedback on it – now I just have to update it and I’ll be sorted … until tomorrow night when SEITE will no doubt give me load more stuff to do … was this a good idea? mmm jury is out on that one – I’ve only been on the course 1 week and I’ve already missed church this morning to catch up on reading – there must be something wrong there!

The weekend was momentous for other reasons. Gillingham lost 3-0, (what is it about football this week!!)which challenges my belief of immediate promotion. The cricket is tense but it looks like the weather is on our side. This could be real history in the making! I’m in central London all day tomorrow and when we win, or draw … or anything but lose, I hope I can find some Aussies to chat with!

Hello,

Summer may be coming to an end but the campaign to make poverty history certainly is not.

Less than a week from now, hundreds of world leaders will meet in New York for the UN World Summit. It’s a chance for them to build on the progress already made in 2005 and go much further in the fight against poverty.

Take these simple actions now:Email Tony Blair
Urge the Prime Minister to do all he can to put pressure on other countries at the summit and stop world leaders failing the world’s poorest people.
Click here to email Tony Blair

Don’t bin the band!
This Saturday is the second White Band Day. Join millions of people across the world in wearing your white band and encourage all your friends to wear one too.
Click here to get a white band

Picture an end to poverty.
Send us your white band picture – we’ll use it to show world leaders that we are always watching them!
Click here to upload your photo

Some of the world’s most powerful governments are trying to back down on the promises they have made to poor countries. Even the steps agreed at the G8 Summit in Gleneagles look at risk of collapse. This would be a disaster for the world’s poorest people.

Tony Blair has a vital part to play. As holder of the European Union presidency, he will be a powerful player in New York. Now is the time to remind Tony Blair that we are watching and we expect him to do all he can to ensure the summit delivers a real breakthrough. If he fails, one of the most precious opportunities in years will be lost.

Please act now and help bring an end to the extreme poverty that means a child dies every 3 seconds.

Thank you,

The Make Poverty History team

…read wednesdays post regarding my travels looking for petrol …I just realised my Tom Tom GPS on my PDA has a facility to lead me to the nearest garage!!!! AAAGGGHHHHHH!

Now I really do feel like I am back at college. It’s late at night and I have just put the finishing touches to my first assignment. It’s been weird but also quite difficult to get my head around a topic to write about. The problem being that there was no main title as such.

I have joined SEITE in year 2. To show that I ‘have a good grasp’ of Year 1 topics I have to write an essay on church history and visit 3 other churches and write a reflection on different sorts of worship etc.

The essay task was: read a suggested church history book and write about something in church history that interests you referring to early church, medieval church, the reformation and modern church. That’s no real challenge, until you get to the end of the book and realise that, actually, nothing has grabbed you in church history that you really want to write about!

In the end I decided to look at how the church has moved from being persecuted to consistently abusing and persecuting through the centuries, referring to the crusades, excommunications, treatment of black, women, homosexuals and so on. It’s not a great essay, but I really could not be fagged to struggle with an essay on worship styles, the relationship between church and state as they are all done to death.

Well … now I need feedback on the essay which I fear s poorly written and makes a weak argument. I just counted that it has been 18 years since I had to do this! So – anyone out there like a read who will promise to give good honest critical and brutal feedback?

I watched Lost again last night.
It intrigues me.
I wonder what it is all about.
I’m trying to second guess the plot.
I’m trying to work out the characters aendas.
I’m wondering if its real or dream.
I’ve heard lots of rumours an theories.
Will there be a twist at the end?
It’s flipping annoying and frustrating.

But then … its not as flipping frustrating as this lost performance!

The journey back from Luton was not great! I left this morning with only a quarter tank of diesel. No problem I thought as I could fill up in Luton before I come back. The only bad assumption there was that Luton has fuel garages. I saw lots of tankers of aviation fuel. I saw a couple of redundant or closed garages. Luton is just a different country!

I found a garage, but it had not fuel. I eventually did manage to top up, about 10 minutes after the low level light came up on my dashboard. I was getting worried about being stranded in Luton.

If this happens again, maybe I got an early taster today. I say to these guys – don’t blockade – refuse fuel from Esso, BP and Total and let force the price down!

A little rant: Petrol prices went up due to Hurricane Katrina due to oil shortages, so we are told! The price of a barrel of oil has now fallen back to where it was before Katrina, and yet our prices are still rising – why is that? When the price of crude rises the companies put the price up immediately, when the price of crude drops amazingly the pump price stays the same for weeks for the ‘more expensive fuel to get through the system’. How does that work?

Is it ‘cos I is British???

I had a great day today meeting up with people in Luton.

Each year in Luton our volunteer teams undergo 3 weeks of excellent training in Luton before they are let lose on the world; well, on YFC centres at least. It was great to see Rachel and Ems and hear of their plans. Maybe I’m just a big softie, but I always find it great to catch up with young people that I have had some, if only little, work experience with. It’s nice, I think, to know that most of my previous year out workers stay in touch; although I think its more for references and to take the mickey rather than through friendship!

Anyway, I was not in Luton to meet with our year out teams. I had the privilege today to meet with Keith and Gary from Energize and Geoff and Barry from Reflex, which is YFC’s prisons ministry – one project being Locdown which I have spoken of before. Reflex and Energize work together at delivering a project funded by the DfES. For the last couple of months I have been the link person for YFC who is just overseeing the project. Quite a big term really to describe the minimum role I have.

This project is cool, working with pre-offending young people, those in custody, and then a plan to work with post custody with the aim of preventing re-offending. The project is fantastic, the opportunities are massive but we have a recruitment problem. We need both volunteers and paid workers are being advertised too. Have a look at the jobs and if you know anyone with a desire and vision to work in Young Offender Institutes then please let them know. We believe the people must be out there, we just need a bit of help to find them!

Today we packed off a smart blazered 11 year old boy to secondary school. 11 years old … that must mean I am getting old! On and off throughout the day I have wondered what Tom was up to, not actually worrying, but just wondering! At around 3.30 the not so smart boy, tie around his ankles, blazer flapping, returned in a group of blazers, all laughing, all happy with their first day.
Interestingly, we wanted to know all about the events for the day; Tom wanted a drink and then to go out an play – after doing his homework!

Tonight I also felt like being back at school. I embarked on my course with SEITE, my first module being Missio Dei and the mission of Church. I experienced tonight some of the bewilderment that many young people experienced in school – lost, why am I here, what is happening, how am I going to get all this work done…Suddenly a 3 year part time course is not looking such a great idea. Now I have to go and do my homework!