Jon Jolly

Last week I took a 15 minute assembly for Year 7 in Secondary School on the theme of Poverty. This session was only meant as a basic introduction to the theme, so is deliberately lightweight but is designed to get the children thinking about their own personal response to poverty this Christmas. This assembly plan will also be posted on the schoolswork.co.uk website as a resource, so feel free to use and adapt it for your own schools work.

As the young people arrived into the hall, I had on the stage in front of them 2 Christmas presents each wrapped up and placed inside a separate glossy paper bag. This provided a good focal point and many of them wanted to know what was inside.

Although the assembly was on poverty, I told them that I wanted to talk about Christmas. I then asked them what they were hoping to get for Christmas. Answers ranged from Playstations to High School Musical DVD’s, but it got them thinking about getting gifts.

I then pointed to the presents and invited someone to come and open the first one. They did so and were pleased to discover some chocolate inside. I then invited someone to open the second present. Inside the box it was totally empty (you could place stones, paper, etc here instead). They were obviously disappointed sitting down with nothing when someone else had received a gift.

This helpfully led me to explain about global poverty ranging from starving children in Africa, to the homeless people in their town. There are many resources you can draw on for information about poverty (Make Poverty History, Christian Aid, World Vision and Oxfam are good places to start). With poverty in mind, my challenge to all the Year 7’s in the room was this: “What are you going to GIVE this Christmas?”

I then explained that as a Christian, I believe that God has told me to help those in poverty. Jesus said “love your neighbour as yourself”(Matthew 22:39) which means ‘care for others’ NOT ’snog the person who lives next door’!

To finish, I allowed them a minute of quiet to think about what they might give that could help those in poverty this Christmas (donate money, give more thoughtful gifts, invite less fortunate people round, volunteer to help out in some way).

The assembly was well received by the staff and I had a number of comments from young people as the left about what they might do to help those in poverty. Hopefully some will go away and put it into action!

This is one of our favourite games at Ignite and we play it all the time!

It works like traditional stingball where everyone is in the centre of a large room or hall and leaders (or those nominated to be ‘on’) are stationed around the outside. When the game starts, the ones on the outside throw balls into the middle to try and hit everyone else. If someone gets touched by one of the balls, then they are out and have to come and sit at the side. The game continues until only one or two are left in.

We call this version Giant Stingball though because instead of using kickballs or sponge balls, we use giant exercise balls which are harder to avoid and bounce off people! The young people love diving out the way Indiana Jones-style to avoid getting hit.

In order to make it safer and fairer, we usually say that balls have to touch people below their knees in order for it to count. This avoids head shots!

This game works best with lots of people but you can play with about 10 individuals.

Equipment Needed:

• A large Hall
• 2 or 3 Excercise Balls (used for aerobics)

We tried this game at Ignite last week as part of our Challenge Night. I first heard about it on the source for youth ministry podcast and thought it could be a lot of fun! The premise is that someone has to spell out a word to their teammates simply by wiggling their derrière in the shape of the letters until the word is guessed. Here are the original instructions:

Cut up slips of paper with words on them and put them into a bag. Break up your audience or group into two teams. Get a volunteer from each team to spell the word he/she took out of the bag by moving their hips (spelling the words with thier butts!). (Make sure they do not say a word to give away clues.) If their team (or their side of the audience) does not figure out the word after two spellings, the other team gets to guess. Make it interesting by the words you choose, try to keep it clean. We don’t want any dirty butts!

We played it slightly differently from the instructions by running it more like a speedPictionary competition. We had four teams competing at the same time in order to be the first to have spelt a list of ten words that got progressively harder. This enabled the game to last a little longer, involved everyone in the room and gave it a more competitive edge. Those who weren’t confident in waving their backside could simply guess the letters with everyone else so there was no pressure on anyone.

It was absolutely hilarious to watch as the teens jumped, shuffled, clenched and wobbled their bums to spell out things like apple and it’s certainly a game we’ll use again! If you’re looking for Butt Charades on The Source site, it can be found under Audience Games.

Reaching out without selling out

Although I’ve known of Pastor Mark Driscoll for some time due to his exposure in the emerging church scene, I’d never read anything of his directly until a friend gave me this to read during our recent holiday. I have to say, that although sceptical when I picked it up, I loved this book!

The main thrust of the book is about getting back to the business of sharing the gospel with the world by being present in the various cultures around us. Driscoll argues that to fulfill this mission we must have equal emphasis on the gospel, the culture and the church. To leave one out leads to parachurch, liberalism or fundamentalism. For examples and explanations of this, read the introduction.

Reformission is a radical call for Christians and Christian churches to recommit to living and speaking the gospel, and to doing so regardless of the pressures to compromise the truth of the gospel or to conceal its power within the safety of the church.

I found the whole argument rather compelling and it certainly reinforces my own experiences about the relationship between gospel, culture and church. In fact, I agreed with pretty much everything he was saying! Throughout the book he punctuates chapters with real-life interviews with people who are living out ‘reformission’ and therefore back up his argument.

Driscoll has a really honest yet direct writing style which is bound to get up the nose of certain traditional Christians. For example:

Doesn’t the story sound like the plot of a trashy, daytime television talk show? The God-Man is born to a teenage virgin in an animal stall, grows up with a blue-collar dad in a dumpy rural town, and has a weird cousin named John, who lives in the woods and survives on a steady diet of bugs, sugar, and repentance.

I would highly recommend this book if you’ve ever longed to see Jesus transform the world around you but become disheartened by the evil in the world and the traditions within the church. Driscoll helpfully puts all these struggles into context and explains an exciting way forwards; reformission!

This week I’ve had a number of discussions with Christian friends who were planning to go see The Golden Compass movie as a fun-filled family outing. No problem there! But when I asked these people if they were going to have a chat with their kids after seeing the movie, I received a number of blank stares. Now I’m never one for jumping on a bandwagon, but the lack of understanding of the themes contained in the movie by parents was quite surprising. It seems the predictable Christian boycott outcry (a la ‘Harry Potter’) has passed a large number of people by.

I’ve not yet seen the movie nor read the books, but a few years back I bought Northern Lights (The original English title for The Golden Compass before it was Americanized) for a non-Christian friend without realising the strong anti-church themes contained in the story. This led to a great deal of discussion between us (much of which has been helpful) and I’m thankful for the dialogue. My hope is that other Christians will take the opportunity this movie presents to talk about the issues it raises rather than attack them as heretical. In fact some Christians see the movie as purely positive.

What Pullman encourages is unmediated, critical thinking – the only antidote to the mental stupor that today’s culture cultivates in young people. And Pullman does so in multiple ways. For example, by turning the familiar story lines of Genesis, Narnia, and the like, on their heads – thereby prompting the reader to reimagine those stories for him- or herself. In short, Pullman doesn’t tell his readers what to think, but how to think. And to think, period. This, I suspect, is what Pullman’s critics really find unnerving.

For more in-depth and thoughtful responses to the movie, check out Tim Abbott’s and Dr. Headley’s posts on the subject with some great links to other resources so you can make up your own minds.

Yes it’s my birthday and I’ve had a busy old day! I started out at 8:30am with a Year 9 assembly that got promptly cancelled when a tree fell onto the learning support block! The hall needed to be used to house the students and we had to clear out before I started.

I then had two primary assemblies back to back in another school followed by an hour lesson on ‘What Christians believe about The Bible’. All that was quite fun as the kids were great at listening and I got them acting out stories from the Bible. David and Goliath has never been so succinct!

After a inter-church lunch meeting about an upcoming youth event, I went to Wickbourne for the official ‘Lights On’ event that the BBC were filming for the Politics Show this coming Sunday (they’re interested in a resurgence of Christianity and the role the church is playing in the community). While there I helped do a variety of craft activities for the kids and had the choir sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to me!

This was all followed by an amazing dinner cooked by one of the young people, and then the youth group debate about Abortion! By no means a lighthearted event.

I’ve just got home and put the kettle on waiting for Kirsty to get in. Rumour has it that she’s bought me a present! I just want to say thanks to all the people who’ve posted best wishes through cards, email, Facebook and text - it’s good to know you’re all there. Thank you.