Friday, December 30, 2005

I'm loving this page...

Crazy random facts on the BBC website I'm loving this...
100 random facts = my kinda trivia. My favourite is probably about the japanese having a word for "a wish that there were more designer-brnad shops on a given street"!

(chokuegambo in case you're interested!)

Sunday, November 27, 2005

Sunday afternoon...

No snow. how disappointing. in a week where the rest of the UK has seemingly ground to a halt over a few flakes of the white stuff, here in Berko we aint had none. Bah. But I wont go on about it.
(I love the cold mornings though. nothing quite like crisp frost over everything. particularly when my walk to work consists of crossing the living room. Hah)
Ok. Watched wales vs Australia in the rugby yesterday on tv. great stuff. don't understand how Australia only lost by 2 points though. we (wales) were all over them, they score a couple of breakaway tries, and suddenly the last 10 minutes were as tense as anything I've experienced over the last 12 months. (yes, i freely admit I have an easy life!)
Today. church this morning. satisfactory, nothing more. We worked on the nativity play for the squigglets. Nothing to write home about. (although ironically it is apparently worth putting into a blog!)
this evening am doing the talk at sunday@5, over at sunnyside chucrh. just finished writing it up. all about not having a Plan B. about trusting in God entirely. about when Peter walked on the water when Jesus called out to him. Challenged myself as I wrote it, just a bit concerned as to whether it might be a bit too meaty for the service. not quite sure of the level to pitch it at. so might have to adapt it as go along. gonna work in some good stories about sea-sickness though (at first you think you're going to die, then you're afraid you wont - cant find who said it originally, but unfortunately it wasn't me!) so that should be fun. all good.

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Youthwork - the conference 2005 in Eastbourne

Well, been a week or so since I last put anything on here. And even longer since I wrote anything specifically for this, so here's a post.
Just got back from youthwork conference in Eastbourne this weekend (I say just - I mean, of course, some days ago) (just to satisfy the pedants among you!) and want to say how good it was.
May take me some time to unpack every part of it (metaphorically - I was only away from thursday to sunday afternoon, and theres not a huge maount of stuff you need for a trip that long. The actual unpacking of course took place on sunday evening when I arrived home.) but want to make a start here...
Firstly though, and I appreciate the chances of them ever reading this are small to non-existent, I want to thank all the people at youthwork magazine, spring harvest, YFC, Alove (Salvation Army), and Oasis for putting it on. Special quantities of kudos go out to Andy Flannagan for leading the music over the weekend and the early day section. MAjor repsect to him as a worship leader. Musically and technically - superb. Creatively - outstanding (mash ups of Usher and Stevie Wonder with modern worship songs! Excellent). Spiritually - so astute. Nice one Doc.

Ok. so unpacking then... will have to happen another time. the clock has defeated us my friends. Till next time...

Saturday, November 05, 2005

Young people are the future of the church... Grrrr

Time for another bit of youthwork writing…
This is the talk some of the young people will be delivering at church tomorrow morning. Ok, so I wrote it, but we’re trying to get the church to take note of all the capable young people and the life they offer to the church as a whole. Young people aren’t the future of the church, they’re the now as well. I’ll let you know how it goes after the weekend!


In a minute we are going to watch a clip from the cartoon series, The Simpson’s. In this episode Homer, the father of the family, is staying at home while his family are stuck in a cold church. The reasons he stays at home are varied and manifold, but boil down to the fact that its cold outside, he thinks church is boring and his trousers are split…

Video clip from Homer the Heretic, Simpsons series 4, 05:50-08:12mins

In this clip Homer ends up staying at home, and not going to church with his family on a Sunday. The weathers cold, his trousers are too tight, and he would much rather stay in and enjoy himself. It might seem a little controversial to say this in church, but I reckon there probably cant be many people here this morning who have never felt like doing what Homer does…
Maybe on a beautiful sunny day going too church is not too bad, when we’re filled with the joy of spring or summer, and the birds are singing sweetly in the trees, but when its cold and rainy and miserable outside (a little like today maybe!) staying in seems like the better option.

Homer though is of course wrong in this clip. Going to church isn’t about simply doing something to keep God happy once a week. We are not here this morning as part of an unpleasant duty that we MUST do to appease God. True some of us may have some slightly different motivations for being here, some may be here out of a sense of duty, some may be here to accompany a friend or family member – none of these options is a particularly bad thing. A sense of duty is definitely not a bad thing, and coming to accompany someone who otherwise would maybe not come demonstrates great love and affection.
But perhaps the ultimate reason we gather together every Sunday is a point that Homer seems to miss. Namely that we come together to worship God, and to give him praise for what he has done, and continues to do for us. We come to church because God deserves our love and worship, and one of the best ways we can express that is to get together with other people who think the same and do just that.

And it doesn’t matter how old or young you are, what your background or tradition is, we are all part of Gods church. The Sunday school are going to show us some pictures they’ve made later in the service – and this is worship to God. Every week they learn about God, and making these pictures is just one way of expressing that. During communion the young people in the choir are going to sing a Russian children’s prayer, and that is part of our worship too.

The reason that parts of the service this morning is being taken by young people from various groups linked to the church or parish is to make a point – to celebrate that we are all part of Gods church, old and young, lively and less lively, hairy or balding. We are part of the church, not just St Peters and All saints, not just a Berkhamsted church, not just a British church, not just a protestant church, but part of Gods church, which extends across languages, cultures and continents.
We want to celebrate the diversity and life that we have in the church, the life we see here in front of us this morning, the life we experience in all the different ways in which the church reaches out to the people of this town, whether its through the wonderful musical tradition we have here, or through the work with the young people, or maybe the Sunday together lunches, or through the bell ringers, or through the mothers union or the toddlers group, old and young, lively or sedentary, it all is part of our life that we are celebrating this morning.

Christians across this town may express our faith in different ways, but we are all unified by our shared faith in Jesus and what God the father has done for us through him.
Different groups within the church may demonstrate our faith in different ways, but we are all unified by our shared faith in Jesus and what God the father did through him.

Homer may not have understood what church is about, maybe many of the people around us in our jobs, at our schools, our neighbours, do not understand what church is about. But if we continue to demonstrate it, in the way that we are doing here today, with so many different parts of the church involved, then we will surely be able to help them understand. In the end in the Simpson’s episode we saw Homer does begin to understand what church is about. And let us continue in our service this morning reflecting on what our shared faith is, and giving thanks for the many and varied ways that faith is worked out in our community here.  

Thursday, November 03, 2005

I do youthwork as well...

Realised I haven’t put enough stuff about youthwork into this blog, so thought I’d add this little presentation that I prepared for my new boss (more on that as well eventually!) to show the kind of stuff we do round my way…


Jimmy is responsible for a number of regular and ad hoc activities in Berkhamsted and Northchurch.  These are as follows.

Regular Youth groups
  • Wednesday Pathfinders Games Club

  • T.E’s youth club

  • (Friday Niters youth club)

  • (Cell:Plus)

Schools work
Regular Assemblies at
  • Victoria First School

  • Thomas Coram Middle School

  • Ashlyns Secondary School

  • St Mary’s First School

  • Westfield First School

  • Greenway First School

  • Berkhamsted Collegiate School
Occasional Contact (assemblies) with
  • Egerton Rothesay School

  • Bridgewater Middle School
Regular lunchtime clubs
  • St Mary’s First school Bible club

  • Thomas Coram Rock Solid group

  • Ashlyns CU
As well as detached youthwork at lunchtimes at Ashlyns School

Trips away
  • Firm Foundations Festival

  • Soul Survivor Festival

  • Annual Pathfinders Tour

  • Chellington trip (provisionally regular! Only one so far!!)

Sundays
First Sunday of month - ST Peters
Second “     “     “  - St Mary’s
Third     “     “     “  - All Saints’
Fourth “     “     “  -  St Mary’s
Fifth     “     “     “  - Usually St Mary’s, but open to offers…

Other activities including co-ordinating town-wide occasional youth services (aWAKENING), as well as doing a weekly “Footy Alpha” with some of the yr10 and yr11 lads from Ashlyns School also are a regular part of the youthwork that Jimmy is involved in. The basis for all of this work is relational youthwork - building up steady and stable relationships with the young people involved in the different activities, and through that encouraging them in developing and growing faith. The model for this is illustrated below:

Using a model of concentric circles of ever increasing commitment and faith, we seek to draw the young people through and on into ever deeper faith.














Super-size me

Well just to prove that I'm uptodate and in no way at all lagging behind "popular" culture, I finally got round to watching "Super-Size Me" this week. (Thanks to the joy of Sky+, I recorded it about 2 weeks ago, and have only just got round to finishing it. I will extol the wonders of Sky+ some more on another occasion!)
Man, I'm never eating fast-food again. It's a quality piece of film for those of you who are even less with it than me and also have yet to see it. I thoroughly recommend it, although not while you're sitting down eating junk food. You'll feel so disgusted with yourself that you won't be able to finish your food. Or the film, depending on whether you're really determined to munch your way through the grease and additve laden stodge that you've purchased.
My favourite bit of the film (without this sounding like a 10 year olds book review; "I liked this book, and I would give it 8/10. My best bit was...") was the section where Morgan Spurlock (the film maker and "star") had his first super-sized meal from McDonalds, and took 20-odd minutes to finish eating it, immediately followed by his stomach deciding that its contents were too mcuh for it, and expelling the aforementioned, offending, over-sized meal. Apparantly McD's removed the Super-size option from their menus a short while after the film was released, but I was still amazed at the difference in size between American McDonalds meals, and European McDonalds meals (or British at least). It's like the difference between a 2 litre bottle of coke, and a can!!! Unbelievable. No wonder there is so much obesity in America - if all their food outlets think that such gargantuan portions are normal I'm amazed that there are any people over there who aren't over-weight!!
BTW, it feels wrong referring to the McDonalds "menu", I always figure resturants as having menus, and to my mind I never included McD's in that category. Menus are for posh places, McDonalds has a choices board!
Ok. So it's all been said before, and a long time ago, when the film first came out (2003?), but this is my blog, and I'll put what I like in here. Hah. World domination starts here!

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

2 days in a row...

ok. the fact that most of my posts seem to be concerned with the fact that i'm not very good at posting regularly seems to me to be a bit telling.
I either need to think of something interesting to write about regularly, or I should just quit. But I dont want to, so I won't.

Interesting thing of the day...
Actually noticed yesterday, just after posting, that instead of 5 hours worth of good music that i hadnt listened to for a month, it was 5 days worth. Thats more like it!
Really got to crack ona nd do some real work today. so will leve this post here for now.

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Inspiration lacking...

So, like 2 posts in the same month. No really, I’m gonna get going with this bad-boy of a blog anytime soon.
Or not, time will tell.

Ok. Back from weekend away with guys from various of the youth groups around the town. (young people from/with links to All Saints Church, St Peter's church, St Mary’s Northchurch and Sunnyside church – quite a group when you think about it like that!) Was mostly girls actually, but the one lad we took seemed to enjoy it (quellĂ© surprise!) We went to a place called Chellington, an old church that became a residential centre when it closed, and was recently done up. Its fantastic. I thoroughly recommend it to anyone who wants to take a group away. (I should mention Kings Road Church here with grateful thanks for the loan of their minibus. Oh yes, churches working together. There aint nothing else like it. Yeh! John 13:35)

Had a cracking weekend, or at least the leaders did. No, everyone seemed to enjoy it actually. Which is nice.

While writing this am listening to “Favourites that I haven’t heard for a month” apparently I have 5 hours worth lined up. Is that all? Kinda disappointed that that is all. Guess I listen to cd’s on my computer more than I think. Either that or I haven’t set a lot of tracks as favourites. So far have had Prince, Oasis, Daniel Bedingfield, Supergrass, Queen, Stealers Wheel, Violent Femmes, and now it’s playing Switchffot. Dangnabbit, this is all good stuff. (am trying to cut down on casual use of dammit, Good Lord, Jeez, and other words/phrases that can be construed as in anyway-slightly-at-all blasphemous. Which is actually quite tough. Am also trying to read the bible in 3 months. Which is by the by.)

Half-term this week, so no youth groups or schools work. Good opportunity to tidy the office without time pressure, and also to sort out the piles of resources that I tend to dump after an evening group when I'm too tired and fail to sort in the morning cos I’m too lazy! That and an opportunity to meet up with people and go for a Costa™… bliss!

Ok. This is long enough. Till next time. Laters.

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

Testing

Testing this new function, (where I type in M*cr*s*ft W*rd, and it automatically updates my blog, neat huh?) Really should have done more blogging, but just been too busy (read: couldn’t be bothered.)
Ok. This is just a test, so lets see…

Saturday, February 19, 2005

Lets pretend this is the start shall we?

Ok. So this is it. This is my blog. Honestly, I'll be updating it regularly now.


Been thinking though, it needs a new name now given that I'm off coffee... Can't think of one thats funny enough to warrant it though. Shame. Lack of imagination holds me back in soooo many things.


This new beginning thing is starting to look like a bit of a bad habit unfortunately, so my new years resolution (ahem - not late at all) is to try and keep this being updated regualrly - at least once a week if not more! After all, my life is so interesting, and I'm such an engaging writer that... oh, hang on... nevermind. I'm gonna carry on with my evil plan anyhoo...

So,
cups of coffee today = 0
games of football watched = 1 (although man u v everton is on telly later)
productive stuff achieved = 0 hours

Good day so far.

Tuesday, September 21, 2004

2 out of 3 aint bad...

...except that this post makes it 2 out of 5. but still, its a fraction...

ok. cups of coffee - am still on my first of the day, but anticipate a sizeable intake this afternoon.

feelings - tired. one of those days when brain doesnt seem to start.

plans - limited.

HAd a good weekend though, achieved very little of note on saturday, which is a good feeling... watched "Kill Bill vol.2" which was an interesting experience given that i still havent seen vol.1. Guess i dont really need to now, although i still have a hankering to see the seen when the bride kicks the ass of 100 japanese assasins. Guess i'm just a bad person!
Do like Tarantino films, despite agreeing with everything people say about too much unnecessary violence in films, guess that makes me a hypocrite then. Ah, yes, but a hypocrite who could rip your MF head off punk. Hmmm... maybe these films do influence us.

Went to Bristol on sunday as well, that was fun. Good sermon on church, and about how we shouldnt give up on it, because we should rememeber that its Gods Holy temple that hes building using us. Good point, well made.

Journey there and back - good, except for flipping middle lane huggers. nothing on the inside, a cue of 20 cars waiting to overtake them, and still not budging from their lane. Grrr... Had to keep reminding myself that God loves them too, and that they aren't the ones referred to when he talks about the firey pits of hell being reserved for the likes of these...
Maybe theres a worse punishment reserved for them. Hmmm...
Best leave it there for today!

Friday, September 17, 2004

Coffee, feelings, and empty promises...

Cups of coffee today = 1 (lack of milk for coffee making me too lazy) (however this is a good number beneath my daily average methinks!)
Feelings = grey and cloudy outside, therefore slightly lacklustre day. (question have i got SADS?!)
empty promises = intend to get going with this blog regularly. (track record not looking good though. 4 posts in 2 1/2 months? i've known* trappist monks that are more communicative)

So lets see how it goes.

In the meantime, update on summer...It was good. Soul Survivor was wicked, Soulinthecity was outstanding and Passion for your name was just what i needed.

The weather stank though.


* i say "known", i mean of course "havent known, but imagine there may well be, in the whole world..."

Tuesday, July 20, 2004

ahem...

Ok ok, so its been a few weeks since i last published. Holding my hands up on accusations of being rubbish at this.
Get used to it though!
Finally got broadband back now, so should be easier to do!
Schools have broken up last week, so work is a bit quieter - no asemblies or lunchtime clubs and christian unions. On the other hand have got SoulintheCity next week - which will involve a bit of work! Not just that taking some of the young people, but am also being a small team leader.
Will be interesting to see how it works out.
On an entirely unrelated point, just been listening to the Polyphonic Spree's new single - and its a cracker. Listen to it. Also Kanye West's album is pretty cool. Heard it for the first time last night, and enjoyed muchly. Particularly track 7. Go listen.

Friday, July 02, 2004

its been a week

Well, it's been a week since i last blogged (is that the verb I'm looking for? sounds good, even if its not good english!) and its time for an update...
I suppose i should quickly say that i've not updated since last week for two reasons:
One, broadband in my house has been down - and despite only having had it for a week or two, i now cant be bothered to use the net without it - it takes SOOOO long to use it with dial-up!
Two, I've been too busy to be able to sit down and think about life or anything. (note to self - does this mean i need to take more time out, or merely be more effective in what I actually do?)
Ho hum.
Anyhoo - my thoughts for the day... Hows life here?
Well. God wise things are good. Whenever I do stop to think about whats going on here in Berkhamsted with the young people and God, i get really excited. People are growing in faith, they're challenging their friends and family, they're making a difference to the the people around them. Which i guess is what we're trying to do. Which is nice.

Friday, June 25, 2004


Me in a bar in Cape Town

In the beginning...

...was the word, and the word was...
well, actually, the word was - you're going to start a blog. Unleash on the world (or the part of it that uses the web, and reads english) the thoughts, ideas, dreams and visions of a welsh-man in an alien country, of a youthworker, of a single twenty-something.
So here it is.

Ta-da...

More later, as I'm already running late today!!!