This seems to be hitting the Christian press quite a bit. I find this article by Jayne very interesting, and maybe even prophetic!

I have just returned from an excellent time in Newham. I don’t know what it is about the East End of London but the three times I have visited I have returned full of enthusiasm and a desire to see YFC working in partnership with the local church to reach the thousands of young people that are outside the touch of any of the churches.

I while ago I blogged about Transform Newham and the way that the church leaders had been praying for transformation of the borough for 20 years. That still strikes me as amazing. It would seem that a lot of groundwork has been done through this prayer and I think it’s a good idea of what Kester Brewin means when he talks of waiting on advent rather than rushing into things.

Today I went to the River Church which is an amalgamation and used to be the Mayflower Centre which was set up by David Shepherd many years ago and the Elim Way Fellowship. I even know people in Medway in their 50’s who talk fondly of David Shepherd and the Mayflower centre as a place they used to regularly go when they lived their as kids.

I met with Mercedes who is an incredibly enthusiastic but switched on youth worker in the borough. She sees the need for some partnership work to reach out to the kids of the area. As in many inner city areas the kids have been let down by successive workers (apparently the average post expectancy of church workers has been 12 months!) leaving as she has a desire to both stay and see some rooting of good quality long term youth mission outreach.

One of the church leaders has called together a meeting of youth workers in the borough sometime in January when we can talk about dreams and possibilities of what stuff might be able to happen.

I’m really quite excited. I think this has been my best week yet in this new role. In one week I have spent 2 days in London and we are at least TALKING about how churches can ‘do mission’ with young people. I really hope this one in Newham takes off as the needs are so obviously there – as I drove into the estate I could sense the desire for love in kids faces. These are the sorts of areas that I want to be working and where YFC and the local church could develop innovative forms of mission that see young people being saved!

When I left Newham I was able to pop in on my good friend Nick Shepherd and have a chat. Such a cool guy and great to spend time with him chatting about the issue of YFC and London, and pulling him away for a little while from his PhD writup. He may even have given be a workable idea for inner city boroughs which, if it comes off, will be fully attributed to its ‘birther’!

For about 8 years YFC headquarters has been housed in what we always considered to be a temporary building. We have grown and desperately need to move. Please read about what is happening here and consider buying a window for £500 to enable us to continue and expand our work with the young people of this nation.

In fact, if you are one of those people who thinks ‘I don’t really need anything for Christmas’ and just knows you are going to get loads of nice but pointless things, why not get those people to club together and buy a window for you. If you can’t afford a window, please give something if you are able to.

You will then enable the move from

this (the basement of a church):

to this: (a good office and training facility)

The change in standard and use potential is clear from the pictures. The new facility will enable to continue to grow and break new ground at a time when the young people of this nation are at a time of crisis.

please read more about the new facility and pray for YFC at this key time.

my lovely children being creative with their hair tonight! What was it I was saying about being child-like?!

Yesterday I was able to meet with some great people in Ealing. Initially I met with Dan Haigh and Tim Sweeting from the West London YMCA and then after that grabbed a coffee with Ali Campbell who is the youth worker at St Paul’s Ealing.

After my Premier Online interview I had 4 emails the very next day regarding youth evangelism and youth work. Amazingly they were all from 4 individuals who all live in Ealing. So … I thought I ought to visit.

It was great to meet with people who so obviously knew and loved their area.

It’s always exciting to meet up with new people and learn of what they are doing and what their dreams are. In Ealing there is loads of exciting stuff going on with young people which is great to see. I hope that we can develop some sort of YFC partnership here (I’m paid to say that!) so I am watching and waiting with interest to see what happens next. I think there is loads of potential for us to work together in outreach to young people, and the possibilities of a great partnership with evangelism feeding into the already good youth work set-ups excites me.

As I was on the tube traveling to and from Ealing I thought to myself if I had been organized I could have seen if Jonny was around and drink his coffee – so if you are reading this sorry for not having the type of organised brain I need to think ahead! A YFC centre in Mr Baker’s back garden … now there’s a thought!

Yesterday on my way to Ealing I was able to visit the Tate Modern. I have not been there for years and I only really wandered around two and a half galleries before I had to leave for Ealing, but it was still good to get there.

It has been an aim of mine for this year, so I was glad I managed it, if only for short time. I guess one of the problems of having young children is that when we do go to London they are not yet that keen on wandering around an art gallery!

I was particularly struck by Thomas Hirschorn’s Drift Topography which is a massive cardboard rambling model depicting Iraq. You really had to fight to look in on the model, which is bounded by large cardboard cut-out American soldiers. It showed in a powerful way how trapped in that situation the people of Iraq are.

I was also mesmorised by this work of Christian Boltanski, The Reserve of Dead Swiss The room is darker than it looks in the photo, and walking in was like entering a sacred space given over to the memory of these anonymous people. I just found it quite striking to sit and look at these long forgotten people who in a way, despite their anonymity, are no longer forgotten. That probably only makes sense to me!

I also got a chance to walk on the Millennium Bridge which did not move as much as I thought it would. It’s a great piece of engineering and the views from it are cool too.

They don’t write songs like they used to! Even Bob has mellowed!

Today has been one of those days. At 3 this morning I was turfed out of my bed by my daughter. I then had to sleep in her bed. Before doing that I had to remove what seemed to be a mini library and a mountain of colouring pencils so I could actually see the bed! Then her baby annabel doll started to cry and laugh and I could not find the off switch (who makes these toys!!)

So getting started this morning was a little hard.

I think I had just got my head around what I needed to do and the phone rang. Beth was ill in school and I needed o collect her. I collected a very white looking girl who keeled over during her concert rehearsal. I have since found out she managed to puke all over her teacher as well!

So today I have played ‘Daddy the nurse’ and got some stuff done. I don’t get to do the ‘caring for the sick’ bit often as avoid it. Today was quite special and it’s a shame Beth was too ill to enjoy it.

A major success on the work front was finishing the prayer letter 10 minutes ago (just before 1am). Why do prayer letters take so long to write?

Now I have had time to reflect I wonder whether this has been a very Advent experience. It was as if God was saying, ‘you can plan, plot, prepare all you want … but whether you are ready or not I’ll come when I decide to come’.

Beth disrupted the day and I was not ready for it. Will I be ready when Jesus disrupts the day unexpectedly?

Some parts of the church have spoken out and stated that he above display at Madam Tussauds is offensive and should not have been done. For the last week or so, and for the next, surely nothing any different will be happening in schools and churches up and down the country. By that I mean that children an young people and no doubt others in the community will be standing in as characters in the nativity. Are any of those really any different to the display above?

This really angers me. How does ‘the church’ manage to get in the headlines over something so petty when there are so many things in the world happening that we should be speaking out about yet remain silent.

In a world where last week we heard last week that thousands of children are dying each week in war situations, the church speaks out about offence caused to it by a nativity scene.

In a world where hundreds still lay in chains in Guantanamo Bay without being charged, the church speaks out about offence caused to it by a nativity scene.

In a world where teenage girls are ‘imported’ to supply the sex industry, the church speaks out about offence caused to it by a nativity scene.

In a country where our own children are still living with abuse and poverty as an everyday reality, (1 in 3 children in the UK live in poverty)the church speaks out about offence caused to it by a nativity scene.

In a country where many are crying out for the love of Jesus, the church speaks out about offence caused to it by a nativity scene.

In a time of advent where we should be preparing for the return of the king, the church speaks out about offence caused to it by a nativity scene.

When will ‘the church’ realise the offence caused to others needs to be a higher priority than the offence it may feel against itself.

Which image causes most offence and warrants us speaking out forcefully?

Christmas has definitely come this weekend. We have collected our Christmas tree which is currently in the back garden sitting in a bucket of water ready to be erected and decorated next Saturday.

After collecting the tree we visited a large garden centre in Maidstone with the children to look for some new additions to our decorations. That was a downfall as the children and Sarah decided that they wished to but a fibreoptic skiing snowman which is now tastelessly flashing outside my front door. I suppose I should apply my ‘be like children’ post from a few days ago and smile at ‘Frosty’ as I come home like every other member of my family does.

Sadly it looks like Frosty’s arms have stopped moving so guess who has to return to maidstone tomorrow with a 3 foot snowman under his arm!

In the evening we joined friends, Lucy, Heath, Charlotte and John for a great time, fantastic food (thanks loads Heath) and good red wine. It was good, after such a busy week, to just relax and be with people who you knew you could just be yourself with. It was a great time to end a Saturday.

This afternoon Rachel and Emily joined us for lunch. They are part of D2 which is Gillingham YFC’s creative arts team. They have both become good friends and it was just nice chilling with them on a Sunday afternoon.

So cool to have a weekend where you can just chill with people you like to chill with!

I have just got home from church with the children as they wanted to see the teenage girls group from church, Girls of God, perform a dance, drama and song. I mention is as I am sitting here totally amazed at the bravery of one of the girls in particular.

Sarah is just 18 and her mum recently, in the last few weeks, died of cancer. In a talk she shared how she had felt, how on her birthday she deliberately went out and got drunk and puked in the loo blaming God as she knew mum would die in the next few days. The whole church was close to tears as this young girl honestly and bravely shared her thoughts and struggles. She shared how she did not know how she would have survived without God. She shared how she would not cope without her Christian friends. She shared how she would have found it impossible without her church.

I find it incredible that anyone can show such courage when the emotions must be still so very raw. I was challenged particularly by the importance she placed on her Christian friends and she mentioned particularly little things like a text at a key time. Who would believe something that took 30 seconds to write and send could have such a profound effect. Who could believe 30 seconds could make such a difference to someone’s life? For this young person I am so glad that someone took that brief time to show her love.

This challenged me particularly to think about how I use by time, those odd minutes here and there, and I have to ask myself if there are people I could be encouraging and supporting by using them. I quite often say I want to make a difference in people’s lives – maybe its a lot easier than I have been thinking.

I’m back. I’ve done 500 miles in 24 hours, visited Teignmouth, dropped in on my mum and brother in Weymouth, visited Portsmouth and arrived home safely. Visiting mum was relatively painless, almost a pleasure, which tells me many of you have been praying for me – so thank you.

The journey to Devon was long but I left very excited. Peter (a great guy) is the Director of Teen Bridge project which is a YFC centre. He does stuff in schools and a lot of detached work using a ‘soup kitchen’ on the seafront which loads of young people. There are currently two part time workers, which includes him, and around 15 other volunteers. Between them they do all the above and run Rock Solid Clubs. What is impressive is, although they are only 2 years in existence, schools have welcomed them with open arms and the local nightclub has asked them to run a monthly youth event on a Wednesday night. The first of these starts later this month – which is really exciting.

Staying overnight in Weymouth without Sarah or the children was strange. I awoke in the morning to a knock on the door and a cup of tea to a ‘Rob are you awake’. For nearly whole 5 seconds I thought the last 20 years had been a dream and that I was still 19 and living at home! A very scary experience! Those 5 seconds felt like an eternity!

The evening before I went out for a drink with Steve, my brother and Marcus, one of his friends. It was great catching up with each other in the relaxed surroundings of a decent and quite pub – which served well kept Old Speckled Hen and decent malt whiskies. After 3 ‘Hens’ and a malt we were bound to sleep and natter well! Drinking and chatting about the old times and what we do now, made us both realise how well we get on and, I guess, miss each other in our everyday lives. Families – they ain’t all bad!

I visited Solent YFC on Friday morning and then joined them for lunch (thanks Martin) before traveling back to Gillingham. The Solent team (Martin, Ed and Carly) were fantastic and just great fun to be with. They are having a great time doing schools work, church service and other things and are all dedicated people with a realistic view of their calling. The love they have for each other was incredibly obvious and just cool to see.

When we were talking about time they said something like ‘well its quite busy over these next 2 weeks and we won’t get much time off … but when the work is there and its busy we do as much as we can. We know there will be other times and the work will not be as busy , then we will take more rest and be more relaxed’.

This would raise eyebrows in some quarters but I think I agree with them. When involved in youth ministry it is difficult to apply a 9-5 / 39 hours per week model to something where you are involved with individual lives. I tend to think that if you do then the work is bound to suffer. Many will disagree with me and tell me I work too hard, and maybe I do, but I would reply with that is the cost of my ministry and the sacrifice I choose to make. I also think if I had a different job then I would be giving extra time to my church or a Christian organisation. I work for one being YFC and choose to give my extra hours to YFC too.I think the balance is good and taken years to achieve.

Anyway … being in Portsmouth wearing a Gillingham FC fleece on the day after Harry Redknapp became manager of Southampton was a delight!

The last 2 days have really excited me as it has reinforced how diverse an organistion we are seeing young people in so many different situations and introducing them to Jesus in some radical and innovative, but all very relevant ways. The driving was no fun – but it was well worth it to see and hear how God is blessing what we do. I really do wonder, in all my bias, whether YFC could be the most diverse and largest youth organisation in the country meeting 50 000 young people each week in so many different settings?