Last week at our 11-14’s group Ignite, we had an Arty Evening where we did a number of creative activities for the 50 young people who came. One of those activities was doing chalk drawings outside which the kids thoroughly enjoyed. By using a huge stack of playground chalks, we managed to cover the car park in colourful pictures and slogans (without any swearing). Some of the girls even drew chalk outlines like dead bodies around my car with the words “Police Line - Do Not Cross!” The picture above was taken after only the first of four groups, so you can imagine how crazy it looked at the end.
At the end of the night, it was getting dark and the team had a lot to clear up inside. We left the car park as it was, knowing there was nothing offensive there and hoping that it would rain overnight. I never really thought it would be a problem!
Anyway, next morning the chalk was still there and I got in a LOT of trouble for not having cleared it up! I spent the next 40 minutes outside with buckets of water and a stiff broom trying to scrub it off the tarmac while cars came in and out. More embarrassingly, I had to leave the job half finished as I was driving up north to my brother’s wedding. Apparently I now owe some guys in the church a huge apology as they ended up scrubbing the rest away on my behalf! This is after we trashed the carpet before Christmas by playing messy games with flour, custard and mashed potato. I’m on my second strike.
Lesson learned? Never assume it’s OK to leave things out!
Last Sunday we ran a joint youth event with St Margaret’s Angmering and St Peter & St Paul’s Rustington called iWorship. The purpose was to hang out, have a meal and worship together allowing a chance for the youth to get to know young Christians from the other churches. It was a great event and we had a lot of fun together.
During the meal, we placed an image with corresponding scripture relating to some part of Jesus’ life onto each one of the eight tables. The young people were encouraged to read the passage while they ate. Later, as part of our worship together everyone was asked to reflect on that scripture and image, then to write or draw their personal thoughts about the passage onto post-it notes and stick it down.
Once everyone had a chance to finish, we laid out the eight images at the front in chronological order. Suddenly the young people could see a pictorial timeline of Jesus’ life and how their particular passage fitted into it. They were also able to read the various responses they had all written to what Jesus had done for them. At Christmas time, rather than just focusing on the birth of Jesus, we wanted to give them something of the significance of His life and why therefore we celebrate Christmas.
As an exercise in creative worship, it worked really well and might be something you can try with your groups throughout the year. I’ve prepared the images and scriptures we used as a download for you to print out and adapt. You can download it here (you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader).
These are the eight points in Jesus’ life that we used:
Jesus’ birth (Luke 2:1-20)
Jesus as a boy (Luke 2:41-50)
Jesus is baptised (Mark 1:4-12)
Jesus calls his disciples (Mark 1:14-20)
Jesus’ miracles and teachings (e.g. Matthew 14:22-33)
Jesus is transfigured (Mark 9:2-9)
Jesus’ death (Luke 23:32-47)
Jesus’ resurrection (John:1, 11-17)
And these are some of the responses the young people wrote:
It’s all about Jesus coming into the world and how the saviour of the world was born from such poverty
It’s not always easy to follow Jesus. It can be a rocky road. we need to trust Him and have faith like Peter to step out of the boat.
Jesus picked normal people, NOT people who would usually be leading or have high respect in society
Thank you for calling me! Help me to be a fisher of men
On our way home from the Blog Awards, Kirsty and I saw this great installation at London Victoria Station. It’s purpose is to promote the TV Show ‘London Ink’ on Discovery Real Time and the oversize sculpture features an original tattoo on the small of her back. Click here to view the full Flickr set.
Kirsty and I spent the weekend in Cornwall, exploring the beaches and countryside and staying in a tiny tent. It was great! Part of our trip was spent at The Eden Project where we looked around the biomes, wandered the gardens and learned about the importance of plants within our world. It’s a fascinating and brilliant place that everyone should visit (although I found it a little too humanistic with its emphasis on the potential and greatness of people).
Eden currently has an interactive exhibition called ‘towards the edge’ which included lots of great creative ideas (click here for the full Flickr set).
Part of the display included thousands of tags with various questions printed on them. People were invited to write their own answers and hang them up with others on a clothes line. As I stood looking at the display, this particular tag caught my eye. Among thousands of others, it really captured my own thoughts and reminded me that God is doing His work in the unlikeliest of places.
If you could change one thing in the world what would it be?
First, an explanation:
I wrote this silly song on a youth retreat around 6 years ago because I was bet that I couldn’t write a song about an Orang Utan in 10 minutes. It became one of those collective moments that the youth group remembered and has never quite been forgotten. Needless to say, I never expected to perform it on stage at Spring Harvest to 500 teenagers!
And the lyrics:
I had a friend who was an Orang Utan
I asked him if he would like to join my gang
His name was Bob and he was hairy
When he pulled a face, he was scary!
He was an oo oo oo oo oo oo orang utan
An oo oo oo oo oo oo orang utan
Oo oo oo oo oo oo orang utan
And he was my best friend!
Bob always liked to do a dance
He even ate my mum’s plants
His favourite lesson at school was art
When he ate baked beans they made him… SMILE!
He was an oo oo oo oo oo oo orang utan
An oo oo oo oo oo oo orang utan
Oo oo oo oo oo oo orang utan
And he was my best friend!
Sadly Bob swallowed a balloon
I don’t think he’ll be back too soon
He floated up into a tree
And stayed to raise a family
He was an oo oo oo oo oo oo orang utan
An oo oo oo oo oo oo orang utan
Oo oo oo oo oo oo orang utan
And he was my best friend!
“Derrick” is a good friend of mine who’s doing a great job up at Soul Survivor working alongside Tim Hughes. As well as generally a great bloke, he’s also annoyingly creative. Check out Evans & Greg on mySpace.
As a kid (and adult too) I had a great love and fascination of Transformers. I still have a huge box of the toys at my parents and the original cartoon series on DVD.
There have been many incarnations of the heroic Autobots and evil Decepticons (Gen 2, Armada, Beast Wars, Energon, R.I.D., etc.) and with the new movie coming out soon they’ll be a big resurgence of interest in the franchise, but as every fan knows it’s the original Generation 1 characters that inspire awe and nostalgia in equal measure. Hence my excitement when I found this:
An Optimus Prime action figure made entirely from paper and downloadable for free! Get yours now at paperrobots1999.com
My name is Jon and I'm a full-time Youth & Schools Worker in Littlehampton, UK. This site reflects my thoughts, ideas and experiences of working with Young People. I hope you find it useful!
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