A friend recently lent me a book by Donald Miller called To Own a Dragon: Reflections on Growing Up Without a Father which I have been making my way through. It’s a good book that’s informally written and as you would expect focuses on finding purpose and identity without a father figure. In one part [...]
Today I spent an enjoyable day in central London at the LICC Strategic Schools Work Conference. Apart from making some new friends and listening to the excellent speakers (thanks to Chris Curtis for helping to clarify some key points), I’ve come away with a great deal to think about for the new schools-based initiatives we [...]
At our church, we are currently starting the process of evaluating our existing children’s and youth work and developing a new vision for what we want to see . The first part of this process was to consult the amazing team of volunteers who deliver the vast majority of clubs and activities each week, and [...]
I’ve been thinking a lot about the 11-14’s age group recently (especially as Spring Harvest is coming up fast). I’ve been running the church 11-14’s group for around 5 years and always had a lot of fun doing it, but I’m seriously considering if the programme we run is delivering what this age group actually [...]
I forgot to link to Marko’s post about the top 10 most influential Youth Ministry books when he posted it a couple of weeks ago (so here it is now). Many books I’ve picked up recently have come as recommendations from other bloggers, so it’s well worth checking out the list on his blog including [...]
This afternoon, when out for a walk in the countryside with 5 teenage boys, we wandered onto land that was not part of the public footpath. We were challenged by a lady shouting from the upstairs window of her house, who then gave us directions back to the path. It was getting quite dark and [...]
Ok, Ok. So this post is around a month late, but I’ve had a lot to think about (and no time to write it). I was also prompted by the arrival of all the talks on mp3 yesterday. I attended the Eastbourne Conference and although the whole weekend was good, I was most struck by [...]
Having grown up in the evangelical/free church movement I have a rich heritage of vibrant, exciting worship and inspiring experiences of the Holy Spirit which have helped to shape my view of the faith over the years. However, although I have heard many gifted preachers and spent a lot of time in Bible Study (particular [...]
The last 2 weeks have probably been the hardest I have yet had to face in my vocation as a youth worker because I have spent much of my time supporting particular families in crisis situations while wrestling with my own role at work. I have felt singularly useless and found myself exhausted of practical [...]
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