OK, so the blog is broken. All that spam has caused my hosting company to suspend the account, meaning I can’t access it via ftp.
In the meantime, I’ve moved hosts and set-up the blog again. I’m just waiting to import the past 4 years of posts to get it all back to normal! Currently, this is the only post on the entire blog! Strange huh?
I hope to get everything back to its usual state by Monday, but for now please be patient.
Dear God is a website where people send in their ‘prayers’ to be posted on the site. Similar to the creative confessional Postsecret, the site allows people to express their emotions and sentiments to whatever higher power they believe in.
It doesn’t matter what your version of God is… Jesus, Allah, Buddha or simply a spiritual universal energy… praying to a higher power soothes and heals. It’s scientifically proven that people who pray are healthier, happier and more resilient.
An interesting idea, and one that is capturing a lot of imagination and press. Go check it out as it is equally inspirational and disheartening.
This is part of an 11-session series for 11-14 year olds, teaching our mission statement and the importance of its values:
We exist to learn to follow Jesus, to show honour to God, to use our gifts to serve, to support each other, and to share our faith.
Session Aim: To learn how to share our faith with our friends
Activity: Now You’re Talking
Split people up into pairs and tell them have to take it in turns to talk about their favourite movie! They will have 1 minute each to tell the other person all the best bits about the film, why they love it, what happens, etc. After a minute, the other person gets a chance to share their movie. They are likely to get quite excited and animated as they talk about it. Explain that telling others about Jesus should be just exciting as talking about movies because of what He has done for us. Today we’re looking at how we can share our faith.
Read: 1 Corinthians 2:1-5
Dear brothers and sisters, when I came to you, I did not come preaching God’s secret with fancy words or a show of human wisdom. I decided that while I was with you I would forget about everything except Jesus Christ and his death on the cross. So when I came to you, I was weak and fearful and trembling. My teaching and preaching were not with words of human wisdom that persuade people but with proof of the power that the Spirit gives. This was so that your faith would be in God’s power and not in human wisdom.
Illustration: 8 Reasons I Don’t Share My Faith
This is a funny YouTube clip where a Christian explains all the reasons he doesn’t want to tell anyone about God. It may prompt some questions from the group, so be sure to focus on the purpose of evangelism and refer back to Jesus’ command in the Great Commission (Matt 28:19-20).
Discuss:
Pray:
Challenge:
This week, practice telling a Christian friend about what Jesus has done for you! Don’t worry about words, but try to get it clear in your head.
Further Reading: 1 Peter 3:15-16
But respect Christ as the holy Lord in your hearts. Always be ready to answer everyone who asks you to explain about the hope you have, but answer in a gentle way and with respect. Keep a clear conscience so that those who speak evil of your good life in Christ will be made ashamed.
Just a quick post to apologise to those who’ve tried to email me over the past week. Apparently my mail account was deleted on my domain and everything was getting bounced back to senders. I’ve no idea what fantastic messages I missed, so feel free to resend anything interesting. 
Things are back to normal now.
Tim Schmoyer over at Life In Student Ministry has developed a new website for promoting, sharing and rating youth ministry related articles called PlugRug.com.
If you’re familiar with Digg.com then you already know the deal. Stories get submitted by the community of members and are then ‘plugged’ or ‘buried’ depending on their popularity.
Once a submission has earned a critical mass of Plugs, it becomes “popular” and jumps to the homepage in its category. If it becomes one of the most popular, it qualifies as a “Top 10.” If a submission doesn’t receive enough Plugs within a certain time period, it eventually falls out of the “Upcoming” section.
Obviously the more people who sign in and rate items, the more that the good content gets filtered and pushed up. The beauty is that it only works when users participate on a large scale.
It’s a great system but I’m yet to be convinced it’s needed for such a ‘niche’ as youth ministry (although try searching for ‘youth ministry’ on Digg and nothing comes up, so maybe I’m wrong). Either way, it’ll only work when people go check it out!
This is part of an 11-session series for 11-14 year olds, teaching our mission statement and the importance of its values:
We exist to learn to follow Jesus, to show honour to God, to use our gifts to serve, to support each other, and to share our faith.
Session Aim: To discover why we must tell others about Jesus
Activity: Divide and Share
Get one standard A4 sheet of card and ask the group to cut it up so that everyone gets exactly the same amount as everyone else. This will be easier with an even number of people, so you could always do a second round where you exclude someone and ask them to work out how to divide the sheet. Explain that just as they shared out the paper, tonight we are talking about sharing our faith.
Read: Matthew 28:19-20
So go and make followers of all people in the world. Baptise them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach them to obey everything that I have taught you, and I will be with you always, even until the end of this age.
Illustration: Postsecret
PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard and a selection are put on the website at www.postsecret.com.
WARNING: the content of the website often contains graphic and adult themes so is not suitable for young people to visit.
Thousands of people send their secrets in and claim they feel better for sharing them with the world. As Christians, we have the best thing to share with the world! The following image is one that was posted onto the site and may cause some discussion:
Discuss:
Pray:
Challenge:
This week, write down the name of a friend who is not yet a Christian and ask God to give you an opportunity to talk with them about Jesus.
Further Reading: Acts 26:16-18
Stand up! I have chosen you to be my servant and my witness - you will tell people the things that you have seen and the things that I will show you. This is why I have come to you today. I will keep you safe from your own people and also from those who are not Jewish. I am sending you to them to open their eyes so that they may turn away from darkness to the light, away from the power of Satan and to God. Then their sins can be forgiven, and they can have a place with those people who have been made holy by believing in me.
I’m loving this story about a London teenager who tried to call directory enquiries to book a cab to Bristol and accidentally ordered some furniture!
She tried to book a taxi but used the cockney rhyming slang “Joe Baxi” to the confused operator who told her they were unable to find anyone by that name.
The short-tempered woman snapped back, saying: “It ain’t a person, it’s a cab, innit!”
The operator responded to the request by locating Displaysense, the nearest supplier of cabinets, and put the woman through to the company.
She then started speaking to an equally confused saleswoman and fumed: “Look love, how hard is it? All I want is your cheapest cab, innit. I need it for 10am. How much is it?”
The saleswoman responded by saying it would cost £180.
The teenager wasn’t put off by the figure and gave her address details before saying: “I wanna pay by card, ’cause I got no cash.”
The company received an enraged phone call the following morning when the woman, who was expecting a taxi, was sent one of their retail/office cabinets instead.
You’d think at some point she’d have figured out she wasn’t speaking to a taxi firm. £180 for a cab to Bristol? Wow! I’d take the train.
This post is a bit of ‘heads up’ as I’m currently writing small group teaching notes on the first twelve chapters of Acts (my favourite book in the Bible). Once finished, I’ll start posting them up here for you to use and adapt as necessary.
The reason for only working on the first twelve chapters is due to our school term being twelve weeks long. As our youth groups meet every week, they’ll be working their way through the book covering one chapter a week until the summer holidays. The plan is to get them reading each chapter in advance, ready to participate in discussion! We’ll see how well it works!
This is a great story about a social worker who while being mugged by a desperate teenager, offered the guy his coat too!
He was walking toward the stairs when a teenage boy approached and pulled out a knife.
“He wants my money, so I just gave him my wallet and told him, ‘Here you go,’” Diaz says.
As the teen began to walk away, Diaz told him, “Hey, wait a minute. You forgot something. If you’re going to be robbing people for the rest of the night, you might as well take my coat to keep you warm.”
Diaz ended up taking the teen for a meal before giving him some cash to help out. Talk about turning the other cheek!
This is part of an 11-session series for 11-14 year olds, teaching our mission statement and the importance of its values:
We exist to learn to follow Jesus, to show honour to God, to use our gifts to serve, to support each other, and to share our faith.
Session Aim: To think about ways we can support and encourage each other to follow Jesus
Activity: Positive Paper
Give everyone a piece of paper and stick it to his or her back. Tell the group that they must move around and write an encouraging message on everyone else’s piece of paper. The message must be about either their character or their gifts and abilities (e.g. “You’re great at dancing”). It must not be about appearance or possessions (e.g. “Nice Haircut”). Finish the exercise and allow some time for everyone to read the messages. Encourage them to keep them inside their Bibles.
Read: Hebrews 10:25
Let us think about each other and help each other to show love and do good deeds. You should not stay away from the church meetings, as some are doing, but you should meet together and encourage each other. Do this even more as you see the day coming.
Illustration: All In This Together
Use the clip from near the end of Disney’s High School Musical where they sing “We’re all in this together”. The group will probably join in singing all the words! When finished, ask them about the lyrics to the song and how it relates to supporting each other.
Discuss:
Pray:
Challenge:
When you are next at a Christian meeting (like church or Ignite), find a way to encourage someone else in his or her relationship with God.
Further Reading: Hebrews 12:1-3
We have around us many people whose lives tell us what faith means. So let us run the race that is before us and never give up. We should remove from our lives anything that would get in the way and the sin that so easily holds us back.
Let us look only to Jesus, the One who began our faith and who makes it perfect. He suffered death on the cross. But he accepted the shame as if it were nothing because of the joy that God put before him. And now he is sitting at the right side of God’s throne. Think about Jesus’ example. He held on while wicked people were doing evil things to him. So do not get tired and stop trying.
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