All Issues articles – Page 35
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IssuesThe Big Picture – Flame 2017
The Catholic Youth Ministry Federation’s (CYMfed) Flame Congress 2017 saw almost 10,000 young Catholics from across the country gather at Wembley’s SSE Arena in March. The theme for the day was ‘10,000 reasons’, inspiring each young attendee be a part of 10,000 reasons to believe, hope and pray.
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IssuesLearner Turner: The science of pioneering
I remember the first experiment I ever tried. I was 8 years old at a burger place with my dad, and there was a bank of fizzy drink dispensers on the counter where you could fill up your cup with your choice of beverage. As I headed to the counter the world slowed to a stop as a thought hit my brain. What if I didn’t just get one flavour? What if I got… ALL the flavours? My mind virtually exploded as I considered the possibilities. I calculated quickly. If I only got the drinks that I liked and combined them together, then I would be guaranteed to like the flavour of my new drink. It was logical. It was risky. I was on the edge! With a full body of glee, I filled my cup with no less than four different types of fizzy drink and headed back to my dad, barely able to contain my excitement. That first taste was magic. It was unlike anything else I had ever had before: root beer, Fanta, Dr Pepper and Coke. Exquisite. From then on, I tried everything in pursuit of the best drink in the world. There were a lot of terrible combinations, but 29 years later it is a thing of perfection.
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IssuesGames: Residential games
Whether you are going away for a morning, a weekend or even longer, here are some great games to get everyone involved. The first few games take up more time but the ones at the end are some quick and easy games for use in any situation!
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IssuesSamewise: Fun house
Every now and again children’s ministry throws you a curve ball. I’m not talking about the usual stuff that disrupts, like the family who always arrive once you’ve started a key activity or the unreliable nature of attendance which means you really have no way to know how many children will come and what age they are likely to be. Over time we become pretty adept at making last-minute tweaks to accommodate this stuff but still every now again something new happens. I had a new one recently when I arrived on a Sunday morning to set the rooms up, running late as ever, to discover that all the usual furniture was gone and had been replaced with a horseshoe shape of non-stackable chairs centred around a flip chart. Clearly there was a conference due in on Monday morning and the centre we hire for meetings had decided that they wanted to get everything ready on Friday and had forgotten we exist!
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IssuesIf God forgives everything, does it matter what I do?
Why do we need forgiveness? Christians talk about ‘sin’, which is a bit of a confusing, old-fashioned word. It makes more sense if we look at its original meaning: the Greek word for ‘sin’ came from an archery term meaning ‘to miss the mark’. Sin isn’t just the obvious stuff like murder or stealing, it’s anything that ‘misses the mark’, that falls short of God’s perfect standard. A standard none of us can meet.
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Issues
Schools’ Work: Storytelling
Dream: think strategically and with vision about our work in schools.
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Issues
The Lab: Support and self-care
Being tired all the time, but not sleeping well. Unexplained headaches. Finding yourself forgetting things… While these could be linked to getting older (or parenting, as I’m finding out), it’s also possible that they are signs that your body is telling you that you’re stressed and you need to pay attention. Our work is often underpaid and undervalued with high amounts of stress, especially when working with young people with chaotic lives.
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IssuesMark My Words: Improving our relationships with parents
I took a group of young teens to Mexico on a mission trip to build a little house for a family. After painting the house, we had to clean our brushes. Our logistics person had picked up some paint thinner or something of that sort, and two girls did the work, getting it all over themselves in the process. However, whatever we used was not the same as the stuff I was used to in the States. I should have had them wear gloves (though it probably wouldn’t have made a difference, since they got it everywhere). But whatever was in that clear liquid dried out the skin on their hands and arms to the point where they were quite panicked, and in mild pain. We soaked their arms and did what we could in terms of care, and within about five or ten minutes, they were fine.
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IssuesFast but not least
Has fasting become the forgotten spiritual discipline? It appears front and centre in Jesus’ ministry but has dropped off our radars in youth and children’s ministry. As we enter Lent, Martin Saunders thinks it’s time it made a comeback...
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IssuesWhat do you do when you realise you’ve built the ministry around you?
Rich was a brilliant youth worker. When he arrived at the church, teenagers, parents and volunteers alike were dazzled by his charisma and bowled over by his range of skills. He could preach, he could sing, he could play the guitar. He instantly built rapport with the core members of the youth group, and watched as they rushed to invite their friends to church as a result. Within nine months, the group had almost doubled in size, and the weekly youth congregations which formed the centre-piece of the church’s programme for teenagers were attracting over 150 young people. Rich was, apparently, smashing it.
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IssuesMeeting guide 3: Digital relationships
Meeting aim: To begin to explore our sexualised digital culture, including sexting and pornography, from a faith perspective
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IssuesMeeting guide 2: Blurred lines
Meeting aim: To explore the age-old question, ‘where is the line?’ within sexual boundaries.
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IssuesMeeting guide 1: Bae-sics
Meeting aim: To explore a set of key values that help form healthy foundations for relationships, and to explore the values Jesus demonstrated in his own relationships.
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IssuesLoving our Muslim neighbours
Recently, my wife and I had to buy a new car seat for our two-year-old son. I thought this would be a fairly straightforward, with the biggest decision being how much we would spend. But oh no, this was something else. We weighed up rear or forward facing, isofix, buckle crunch, the limitations of our make of car, weight of the child, and ended up testing almost all the car seats in the store, as well as the patience of the kind sales assistant.
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IssuesYCW Investigates: Homelessness
Jack came into contact with Christian youth charity XLP when he was just 14. His relationship with his mum had broken down to the extent where he wasn’t allowed back into the house. He slept at friends’ houses but had no long-term solution. After his mum refused to engage, staff at XLP made an emergency referral but social services wouldn’t intervene. As a last resort they had to leave Jack at a police station for officers to contact social services which resulted in emergency accommodation for one night being secured for Jack. The following day social services still refused to help and encouraged Jack to reconnect with his mum. When she refused, XLP staff escalated the situation and contacted chief police officers and the head of the social service department, as well as speaking to local churches that might have influence. Consequently, social services finally arranged a meeting, which Jack’s mum attended, and the result was that his mum’s ex-partner agreed to house Jack long term. This meant he had to move to a new home over two hours away to live in an area with limited friends and support. XLP is still in touch with Jack, trying to be a constant during a time of incredibly difficult change.
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IssuesYou can’t hurry Lent: it’s a game of give (up) and take (up)
March 1st ushers in a period of attempted abstinence and holy reflection (until we buckle and stuff our faces with chocolate!) but what should children’s and youth workers give or take up this Lent?
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IssuesEditorial - March 2017
It didn’t feel like the session was going that well. Our usual game to kick off the group had been ignored by the majority of the kids, the video showing Jesus’ feeding of the 5,000 was shouted over and our attempt to recover by acting out the story had been sunk by everyone wanting to play the part of the fish offered to Jesus. Sure, we’d had fun talking about our favourite foods and what we’d offer in our lunchbox to Jesus, but that hardly felt like the kind of profound spiritual nourishment I was hoping for.
