The Gaffer speaks up about Gafcon

Rowan Williams has responded to the statement from GAFCON with a statement of his own. It is a very thoughtful, respectful yet convicted piece of writing. It acknowledges the fair aspects of GafCon's statement, points out its weaknesses and proposes ways forward. It's a statement that demonstrates to me again why this man is where he is:

"I believe that it is wrong to assume we are now so far apart that all those outside the GAFCON network are simply proclaiming another gospel. This is not the case; it is not the experience of millions of faithful and biblically focused Anglicans in every province. What is true is that, on all sides of our controversies, slogans, misrepresentations and caricatures abound. And they need to be challenged in the name of the respect and patience we owe to each other in Jesus Christ.

I have in the past quoted to some in the Communion who would call themselves radical the words of the Apostle in I Cor.11.33: ‘wait for one another’. I would say the same to those in whose name this statement has been issued. An impatience at all costs to clear the Lord’s field of the weeds that may appear among the shoots of true life (Matt.13.29) will put at risk our clarity and effectiveness in communicating just those evangelical and catholic truths which the GAFCON statement presents."

Getting Anime-ted about Jesus

Tim Abbot pointed out a new project to bring the Gospel story to anime. The video below is a taster (not in final version) which they creators would like some comment on here (if English is your first language - there are 30 languages available). As well as the video below they've rendered a still in five different styles for the survey. Anime fans, go comment so they can get it in a way that will appeal to as many as possible. I'd love to see this Gibli-fied! I think the Grave of the Fireflies style would be really good for it.

My own trumpet and the blowing thereof...

Ok, so I thought our new dog Eddie was excited when I came home today after a long but fab day visiting "me colleague" Craig in Blackburn Diocese. Yet his jumping up and down was nothing to my delight when I opened the post and discovered the latest edition of the Journal of Youth and Theology from the IASYM which includes three book reviews by yours truly. Pathetically proud of this small elemnt of being in printness but still smiling (even despite the typos I've spotted which are probably mine not the editor's!)

If you're in full time youth work but not yet a member of the International Association for the Study of Youth Ministry, you should consider it. They produce this publication and host a conference which I am hoping to attend next year in Cambridge (though the current site seems to be stuck in the year 2007!)

YFC

P130608_14.07
Originally uploaded by Sarah Brush

What does YFC mean to you? For those in youthwork it often means Youth for Christ (for those in the southwest it might be Yeovil Football Club!) yet in Worcestershire and other rural areas it is of course the YOUNG FARMERS CLUB.

This display of street art comes from the fabulous tent full of displays from Young Farmers from Worcetsershire, Herefordshire and Gloucestershire. There are some fabuolous flower displays and - a personal favourite, vegetable animals - on my Flickr site. There were also some great "pimp my tractor" entries. I found myself explaining what that was all about to the people with me and a few others who were nearby!

I was also lucky enough to meet the youth worker for the YFC and make links with More Than Sport, a local group working with young people.

That was all after a marvellous morning being taken around the show by some farmers who showed us the cattle lines, lamb carcass inspections, ear tag displays, the blue tongue presentation and answered all our ignorant "townie" questions. I thought I might come away knowing more about the rural community and I have but of course, as Socrates would be proud to hear, I came away realising how LITTLE I knew.

I did learn;

• Bluetongue is going to be very serious for sheep, deer and cow farmers as is African fever which will affect horses.
• Sheep farmers pay more to shearers than they get for the fleece and some have to pay to have the fleeces taken away as hazardous waste
• Many farmers face the choice of selling up in order to get a pension and leaving the farm to their children and having no provision for their retirement.
• The Show used to be midweek and for the rural community but since it moved to the weekend it has become more of a "countryside" show with commercial stalls and the like.
• One of the farmers who led us round has a farm which produces some GORGEOUS icecream and I had a taste when we got to the Bennetts Farm stall.
  

Ready, Eddie, Go!

So yesterday we went to collect our new cohabitor. Eddie is an 8 year old Staffordshire Bull Terrier who has been in a rescue home nearby. We went along to a Happy Staffy open day and met this very happy chappy who really doesn't seem as old as eight but he is very well behaved already and settling down nicely with only a few hiccups here and there. He was a little nervous last night settling into his new home when it came to bed time and he did keep checking we were still there which was rather endearing (at first!). So here are some pics of our gorgeous pup!

If I could talk to the animals..

We had a really WILD weekend. First we tried to tame the garden and discovered not only a blackbird nest in the plant growing over the arch in the garden (yes, I know an ARCH... we inherited it!).













Then we discovered these little tiny heads poking out of the pond. These turned out to be NEWTS! They are so cute. I'm thinking a round of wonky donkey springs to mind... Well it turns out newts are fairly common in Worcestershire and we don't think we have any crested newts but it's hard to tell with the amount of weed in the pond we've inherited. We did still manage to set up our new firepit but it is due for expansion as it is rather smaller than our last one.














Well to crown our explorations into the animal kingdom we went to visit an open day at the local dog shelter and met a little fella called Eddie - a 9 year old Staffy who has been in a loving home with children and cats but for various reasons he's ended up in the kennel. Eddie is going to be joining us soon. This is a new venture for me but M is an established dog owner and long-standing staffy-lover. We're not yet sure how our regular visitor (the 3-legged cat from next door) is going to think about a resident dog!

And in other news... it's tax return time. My lesson from last year is that taking people out to coffee as part of work REALLY ADDS UP over the year!

SO999

50999 was the number on the hit counter this morning. I missed the clock going round to 50000 as it was when I moved house so - wow! past the 50000 mark for Deep Thought!

The number also made me think of a rather less joyful event. Hubby and I were out shopping a little while ago now and came across a rather tragic site of a elderly man who had fallen and was being treated with CPR. I rushed over to assist as I know how tiring CPR is in practice (it's nothing to the real thing, I can tell you!). It turned out the person didn't actually know CPR properly but had been trying what they'd seen once, so I stepped in. Now I'd love this to be a story of great joy and heroism but I did what the training tells you to do. I gave some rescue breaths and proceeded to CPR until another lady came who was from the British Red Cross and then the ambulance came. Sadly, there wasn't much hope. It was a rather shocking experience and one of those things that puts life in perspective.

It's also one of those things that, when reflecting on it, you really wnat to find some great deep wisdom about it that you can pass on. In fact I think the thing I'd pass on is about the reality, value and joy of life and our call to live it to the full, thanking God fort he joys and seeking God's strength in the tough times because the "fullness" of life includes joys and tragedies. Being a Christian doesn't insulate you from life, it calls you to engage with it in all its twists and turns, in those things which bring a joyful resolve as well as in those things which are left hanging.

So often in life we want everything to be sewn up and rounded off, completed, ticked and done. Life doesn't work that way. Again I find myself returning to Paul's Letter to the Philippians

"Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal;
but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own...but
this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what
lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God
in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 3:12-14).

Lambeth and all that jazz

The daily thought on the Taize website today made me think of the Lambeth conference as well as the Church of England's own issue with the consecration of women as bishops:

'In the middle of the twentieth century, there appeared a man named John, born in a humble peasant family in the north of Italy. When he announced the Second Vatican Council, that elderly man, John XXIII, pronounced words that are among the most crystal clear imaginable:

“We will not try to find out who was wrong, we will not try to find out who was right, we will only say: Let us be reconciled!” (Discourse to the Pastors of Rome, February 1959)'

ice-breakers or heart breakers?

I had a great time at the DYO conference last week meeting many of my fellow DYOs* (though not all - missed you guys!). Lots of time for fab discussions and networking as well as setting up discussion groups to meet throughout the coming year.

There was, however one moment which made me reflect on all those youth events where there was an icebreaker. Right near the start we were asked to get ourselves in height order. Now, some readers may not know but I am not the tallest person in the world and, to be honest my heart sank just a little as I made my way to the end of the line (actually I am only the THIRD shortest DYO in the country!). Conversely Youthblog said he made his way to the middle of the line and ended up as officially the SECOND TALLEST DYO in the UK (if we excluded Wales, which we would hate to do, he'd have been the tallest!). It was a great mixer and we all got to chat and, despite my deeply buried comedy fear that they might divide us in to two groups for a game of basketball - tallest v shortest, it worked out fine. The progression of heights, far from being drastic was a really smooth line of increments.

However it did make me think about the impact of what might seem an innocuous activity on someone who's a little sensitive about things. I'm not really hung up about being short anymore but I was when I was younger and it would not have been fun.

It's that important difference between enabling people to laugh at themselves and laughing at other people who might not find it funny.

We also had a caricaturist on the last night who drew each of the DYOs and it had a mixed effect on peopel. Some were very excited but most had a fear in their eyes which was quite unifying. Almost everybody thought that everyone else's was great but their own was hideous/inaccurate/scary/goofy. I haven't yet seen one appear on anyone's site and, despite encouraging words from my best beloved that it looks fine, I don't think mine will be coming up here!!

We were also privileged to hear from Helen Tomblin on the topic of laughter, comedy, depression and the church. It was fabulous. It really opened up discussions about Christians facing tough times and not always being "smiley smiley". Because "God loves us", there's sometimes a temptation to think that we should always be happy but, as Helen said, in John 10.10 Jesus said he came to bring life in all its fulness. That doesn't mean just joy but sorrow too.

During the conference then, we were brought together through laughter and and fellowship and brought together more deeply by talking about less comfortable things. It really was a good few days.


*insert alternate acronym here, DAVE...

Sign of the way forward

There is a petition for lay members of the Church of England in support of the consecration of women as bishops. If you are interested in signing it, the wording is as follows:

We, the lay members of the Church of England, call upon the House of Bishops wholeheartedly to support legislation for women bishops that is free from discrimination.

We are confident that acceptable non-statutory arrangements can be made for those who remain opposed to women's ordained ministries.

We urge the bishops at General Synod strongly to support having women as bishops without further delay.

Social Networking

Panorama had a follow-up programme tonight to their previous programme - One Click from Danger.

I know people, especially parents, worry about the use of social networking especially by young people. I'm also a great fan of social network sites and see the value of them for myself and for teenagers. I love staying in touch with my friends (even if I have only just spent the afternoon with them!) and I know there are young people who feel the same and consider online networking a central part of their lives. Because of this, I think it's really important to balance concerns over safety with staying in contact with friends. We don't keep teenagers safe from road traffic accidents by keeping them of the streets and away from traffic. Instead we teach them safe ways of crossing the road, initially with adult support and later on their own. We also allow them to mature and learn to ride bikes and drive cars safely in time. So what is the equivalent of the green cross code for the internet?

The Panorama programme highlighted the excellent site CEOP (Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre) site.

The site gives guidance for Parents, Teachers/youth leaders and young people themselves. Social networking should be a great tool for young people to chat to their friends but it can have a darker side as the progamme showed. To help keep social networking something wonderful for young people, parents should talk to their children about social networking and consider the following:

• Know what your children are doing online and who they are talking to. Ask them to teach you to use any applications you have never used.
• Help your children to understand that they should never give out personal details to online friends—personal information includes their messenger id, email address, mobile number and any pictures of themselves, their family or friends—if your child publishes a picture or video online—anyone can change it or share it.
• If your child receives spam / junk email & texts, remind them never to believe them, reply to them or use them.
• It's not a good idea for your child to open files that are from people they don't know. They won't know what they contain—it could be a virus, or worse - an inappropriate image or film.
• Help your child to understand that some people lie online and that therefore it's better to keep online mates online. They should never meet up with any strangers without an adult they trust.
• Always keep communication open for a child to know that it's never too late to tell someone if something makes them feel uncomfortable.
• Teach young people how to block someone online and report them if they feel uncomfortable.
• There are people who can help. Report online child abuse, or for more advice and support.

Christian Heroes

I was invited to chat to BBC Hereford and Worcester Radio this morning about our new Spirit Mark award for Child and Youth Friendly churches which we launched on Wednesday with a presentation to the first four churches that have qualified for their bronze awards as part of a pilot scheme and received their first "Worcester Spirit Mark."




They were talking on the programme about heroes in literature, film or TV who were members of the clergy or religious people. People phoned in about Father Brown, Brother Cadfael, Father Dowling, Dom Camillo Paolo Baldi and others (I then found this site dedicated to clerical detectives!). Michael also mentioned Daredevil and Dan Dare was apparently a priest originally. It was interesting that I found myself struggling to think of any overtly fictional Christian characters who were "heroes" as such. Characters like Miss Marple were certainly Christian but not in a very obvious way. Medieval Literature has many religious characters (Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Boccacio's Decameron are chock full of em!) but not always in a flattering light which would make them heroes. More often than not they were ridiculed, caught out in compromising positions with young ladies or drunk. The Nun's Priest and the country Parson in the Canterbury Tales do go against this slightly but they are in the minority I suppose there is Christian in Pilgrim's Progress but I really was struggling.

Of course there is an element that books are often about adventures and murders and this isn't the usual place to find clerical types (except some of those above!!). What is it about holy people that might not make them central characters in novels. In the Middle Ages, the stories of saints were central to literature as they travelled around, preached, healed and performed miracles.

Any ideas people?

On the theme of detectives - I loved Dr Who last night with all the subtle references to Agatha Christie titles (They do it with mirrors, Sparkling Cyanide, The Secret Adversary, Nemesis and best of all Why didn't they ask.. Heavens!). I think I may have to watch it again to spot them all! It reminded me of Shakespeare in Love.

All because you never learnt Latin

Those were the words of Chris Tarrant to a contestant that missed out on £10,000 even after as Catholic nun had told him that the Latin phrase meaning "in a set manner" was Pro Forma (not in toto, ad infinitum or nota bene!)

Just goes to show folks!

Nota bene - you should learn Latin so that you can consider your education, in toto, to be adequate and if you don't - I'll be going on about it ad infinitum!!!

Sorry for whacky post I think it must be the result of being excited to have played croquet in our garden this evening. Predictably Michael won - even though I played mean!

Deskiny

So life has been a little busy lately, what with settling in to my new job. My desk is still all rather tidy (unlike its previous incarnation) and I have the possibility of moving to a desk nearer the window this week as one of my colleagues is moving on. So do I go for the distractions of the river Severn and some rather lovely trees or stick to my old desk? hmmm... tough one I know! Well it will give me a chance to have a look at all the things in the youth office and work out what I no longer need and what we could do with buying and also get a handle on what we can offer to parishes looking for resources. So I shall be thinking this week about where it all goes and taking Dave Walker as the beginning of the inspiration!

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

Taize explained

The Taizé Community has put up a short video explaining the history. Some of you who have been before will recognise the blue bus and maybe even a familiar face on the bus!

Jubilee plus 10

I remember well my mum and a group of ladies from church heading off to Birmingham 10 years ago with their banners and whistles as part of the Jubilee 2000 Drop the Debt campaign. So in honour of my radical social justice hearted mum, especially as she's no longer with us so can't go herself, I invite you all to join the campaign and march in Birmingham on 18th May. Didn't we sort that debt thing??? No. We managed to drop some debt but not all. Take a look at this video and then check out their site.

Me on Breathe, Breath of God

I had the great pleasure of going along to see BREATHE in action at a school last week. This is a FABULOUS opportunity for schools to get young people thinking about spirituality. It's very gentle and yet powerful. I watched two different age groups engaging with it and it was amazing to see them really getting into it very quickly. There are twelve stations some of which deal with the idea of self, the world, others and God. Most of the stations are reallt tactile or visual and others invite some really good personal reflection.

If you're looking for something spiritual rather than "religious" for some schools work I recommend this highly. You can hire it for a day with a host (or several days - at discounted rate for additional days) and timetable it into the school day and if you like it you can even buy in to the package. It takes slightly longer than a standard school period to do all the stations but the experience is not too adversely affected by doing only some. On Friday several of the pupils came back in their break and lunch hour to do some of the stations they hadn't managed. I think that's a pretty good recommendation.

If you want to know more, have a look at the site and you can even download a flier or listen to one of the tracks.

Room to Breathe

Had a fantastic if hectic two days at the cathedral with children from primary schools from across the diocese. I was leading the singing during the services and running a drama workshop which led to a dramatic presentation of a Gospel reading (Feeding of the 5,000). It was fabulous to see the cathedral buzzing with children dancing, drumming, making banners, singing and acting. I also had time to spend a short while in St Wulfstan's crypt which is an amazingly spiritual place. I do love the exciting times but those quiet times are pretty special too.

Tomorrow I should have even more time for some quiet as I'm visiting Jenny Baker's BREATHE session at one of the Church of England secondaries in Worcester. I'm really looking forward to it as it will be cool to catch up with Jenny as well as get the chance to explore this wonderful resource which the diocese is considering using more in future.

The Circle of Life

How strange it is that sometimes we get the strangest coincidences. I'm just looking at sorting some things for a trip to Taize (see new funky banner and feed in the sidebar) and it turns out that one of the people in the new diocese who's running a Taize service is a person who was in my small group the first time I went to Taize. I remember the small group very well. It was a really amazing group of people and we had some fabulous discussions. What I remember most was the great loving encouragement in the faith and in our individual vocations. Just thinking about that group makes me smile.

Groups can often have their problems - trials and tribulations, character clashes, disasters, fallings-out etc etc but when they work WELL, especially, I think, when they're a group of Christians meeting for spiritual/vocational/reflective purposes, they can be INCREDIBLE.

How are the groups you're working with at the moment? Is there tension or is the a beautiful flow to them? What might be causing tension or flatness? Is your group missing something?

I've recently left a group of youth workers that worked so amazingly well together despite being VERY different. It contrasted greatly with a previous incarnation of the same group which just didn't work. It wasn't that the people didn't like each other or get on. It was just that working together never worked. I remember using the Belbin model of group roles in trying to work out how we could make it work better and it turned out we were lacking in quite a few really vital areas like completer finisher and monitor evaluator! Of course the question we faced was how to resolve that.

In a group that isn't functioning do we re-form the group with additional (or fewer!) members or do we seek to change the way we work as a team, asking individuals to work not just from their natural strengths but developing their weaknesses?

Landing in the Midlands

Ok so it has been a LONG time since the last post but I have been on the move and we're still not online at home. I'm now the Diocesan Youth Officer for Worcester Diocese as of last Monday. We've moved to a new house in Kidderminster and I'm still occasionally humming "I'm living in a box" as the place seems to contain more cardboard than any other material. We are settling in gradually though. I think the biggest shocker after being offline for about a week was to discover that I had accumulated several hundred blog posts on my bloglines. The quickest solution was to clear them all so... Did you blog something I should have read in the last week? Let me know in the comments section.

Normal service should resume shortly.