All Editorial articles – Page 66
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Issues
The Lab: Support and self-care
Being tired all the time, but not sleeping well. Unexplained headaches. Finding yourself forgetting things… While these could be linked to getting older (or parenting, as I’m finding out), it’s also possible that they are signs that your body is telling you that you’re stressed and you need to pay attention. Our work is often underpaid and undervalued with high amounts of stress, especially when working with young people with chaotic lives.
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IssuesMark My Words: Improving our relationships with parents
I took a group of young teens to Mexico on a mission trip to build a little house for a family. After painting the house, we had to clean our brushes. Our logistics person had picked up some paint thinner or something of that sort, and two girls did the work, getting it all over themselves in the process. However, whatever we used was not the same as the stuff I was used to in the States. I should have had them wear gloves (though it probably wouldn’t have made a difference, since they got it everywhere). But whatever was in that clear liquid dried out the skin on their hands and arms to the point where they were quite panicked, and in mild pain. We soaked their arms and did what we could in terms of care, and within about five or ten minutes, they were fine.
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Faith at homeA story for home: The woman and the girl
Here is a story for you to tell at home, perhaps at bedtime or as part of a God-time during your day. Enjoy pulling the different faces and making the sound effects together. You could also use this story during a children’s session, using the actions as they are written here, with everyone sitting down, or making the actions bigger, standing and / or walking around the room as you do them.
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IssuesFast but not least
Has fasting become the forgotten spiritual discipline? It appears front and centre in Jesus’ ministry but has dropped off our radars in youth and children’s ministry. As we enter Lent, Martin Saunders thinks it’s time it made a comeback...
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Faith at homeForming faith rituals: Rituals at home
How do you view rituals? Religious, solemn, and prescribed? If so, they don’t sound very easy or exciting to use with our families at home! However, for me, at its heart, a ritual is a series of actions or behaviours which are done regularly – it’s something which is repeated. And it’s this repetition which allows us to go deeper.
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IssuesWhat do you do when you realise you’ve built the ministry around you?
Rich was a brilliant youth worker. When he arrived at the church, teenagers, parents and volunteers alike were dazzled by his charisma and bowled over by his range of skills. He could preach, he could sing, he could play the guitar. He instantly built rapport with the core members of the youth group, and watched as they rushed to invite their friends to church as a result. Within nine months, the group had almost doubled in size, and the weekly youth congregations which formed the centre-piece of the church’s programme for teenagers were attracting over 150 young people. Rich was, apparently, smashing it.
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BlogMeeting guide 4: ‘The one’
Meeting aim: To enable young people to think though the idea of ‘the one’ in terms of dating, relationships and what God has to say on the matter!
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IssuesMeeting guide 3: Digital relationships
Meeting aim: To begin to explore our sexualised digital culture, including sexting and pornography, from a faith perspective
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IssuesMeeting guide 2: Blurred lines
Meeting aim: To explore the age-old question, ‘where is the line?’ within sexual boundaries.
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IssuesMeeting guide 1: Bae-sics
Meeting aim: To explore a set of key values that help form healthy foundations for relationships, and to explore the values Jesus demonstrated in his own relationships.
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IssuesLoving our Muslim neighbours
Recently, my wife and I had to buy a new car seat for our two-year-old son. I thought this would be a fairly straightforward, with the biggest decision being how much we would spend. But oh no, this was something else. We weighed up rear or forward facing, isofix, buckle crunch, the limitations of our make of car, weight of the child, and ended up testing almost all the car seats in the store, as well as the patience of the kind sales assistant.
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IssuesYCW Investigates: Homelessness
Jack came into contact with Christian youth charity XLP when he was just 14. His relationship with his mum had broken down to the extent where he wasn’t allowed back into the house. He slept at friends’ houses but had no long-term solution. After his mum refused to engage, staff at XLP made an emergency referral but social services wouldn’t intervene. As a last resort they had to leave Jack at a police station for officers to contact social services which resulted in emergency accommodation for one night being secured for Jack. The following day social services still refused to help and encouraged Jack to reconnect with his mum. When she refused, XLP staff escalated the situation and contacted chief police officers and the head of the social service department, as well as speaking to local churches that might have influence. Consequently, social services finally arranged a meeting, which Jack’s mum attended, and the result was that his mum’s ex-partner agreed to house Jack long term. This meant he had to move to a new home over two hours away to live in an area with limited friends and support. XLP is still in touch with Jack, trying to be a constant during a time of incredibly difficult change.
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IssuesYou can’t hurry Lent: it’s a game of give (up) and take (up)
March 1st ushers in a period of attempted abstinence and holy reflection (until we buckle and stuff our faces with chocolate!) but what should children’s and youth workers give or take up this Lent?
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IssuesEditorial - March 2017
It didn’t feel like the session was going that well. Our usual game to kick off the group had been ignored by the majority of the kids, the video showing Jesus’ feeding of the 5,000 was shouted over and our attempt to recover by acting out the story had been sunk by everyone wanting to play the part of the fish offered to Jesus. Sure, we’d had fun talking about our favourite foods and what we’d offer in our lunchbox to Jesus, but that hardly felt like the kind of profound spiritual nourishment I was hoping for.
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BlogThe Youth and Children's Work Book Club - Saying is Believing
The latest book to be read by the CONCRETE Theology and Youth Ministry reading group is Saying is Believing by Amanda Hontz Drury. Tim Broadbent offers some reflections.
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BlogVeggie Fails...
We’re all aware of the current vegetable shortage dramas – shops being forced to ration lettuce, courgettes and aubergines because of flooding in the Mediterranean – but how can fruit and veg help us in our ministry to children and young people? Here are ten alternative uses for those (not so readily available) healthy snacks:
