Wanna catch up with people from Youth Alpha?
(It has been a whole week since we last got together!)
Wanna see the Simpsons movie?
Wanna go to Hemel Hempstead?
‘Course you do. Doesn’t everyone?
We will be leaving the church at 7.45pm on Thursday night (2nd August).
If you want to come tickets are £5.50 and we need to know to book one for you by the end of end of Wednesday.
Get in touch in the usual ways (see http://www.broadwaybaptist.org.uk/ if you’re not sure how)
Juice yourself up by watching the trailer below:
Monday, July 30, 2007
INTENSE 2007: THE THANK YOOS
I’d like to thank everybody who made Intense happen,
but I don’t know every bodies names so don’t feel left out if you’re not on the list.
Thanks to:
Matt & Lizi,
Sarah Shelly
Jenny Constantine
Nigel
Jenny & Dan (‘O’)
Andy
Andy
Greg
Phil, Ben & all the young people who helped out
Becky & Jo
Everybody else who helped with the food
My wife for supplying hot water bottles during the sleep over
All the Broadway folk who did security during the sleep over
Anybody I have forgotten
but I don’t know every bodies names so don’t feel left out if you’re not on the list.
Thanks to:
Matt & Lizi,
Sarah Shelly
Jenny Constantine
Nigel
Jenny & Dan (‘O’)
Andy
Andy
Greg
Phil, Ben & all the young people who helped out
Becky & Jo
Everybody else who helped with the food
My wife for supplying hot water bottles during the sleep over
All the Broadway folk who did security during the sleep over
Anybody I have forgotten
INTENSE DAY 4: BBQ & SLEEP OVER
Here’s my last blog entry for intense 2007.
We’ve covered all the serious stuff so all that’s left are the Friday night Barbeque and Sleep over.
The Barbeque started after the main session. Along with all the scoffing that went on it was a good time to chat to people about what they thought of Intense, how they had got on helping out at Back Packers and to hear about how God had spoken in their lives during the week.
I’d got to know by small group by this point in the week but now I got to catch up with other people I knew and to get to know the characters behind the faces that had become familiar over the week.
Matt & Jenny C got a game of ultimate Frisbee going but I didn’t feel that energetic so I hung around with the people sitting by the main marquee. We stuck the Back Packers bootleg CD on and some of the girls had a karaoke session on the stage. Meanwhile there was juggling and Andy chucking his Diabolo about. It was a somewhat surreal scene, the perfect setting for a concept album or prog’ rock opera.
I wondered down to Choices Video with Carl, Charlotte, Caroline and Jo to get a DVD. Most of us had seen the Chesham edition of How Clean is Your House on Channel 4 last night so that was the main topic of conversation. Via our collective local knowledge we reasoned that TV is all a lie;
the local lady who was filmed asking how to get cat hair off a sofa knew how to do it really.
We had a bit of a falling out in the video shop over the comparative merits of High School Musical and The Pursuit of Happyness (a deliberate miss spelling) staring Will Smith and Son, some hair and a rubrik’s cube. It might have come to blows!
Back at the Back Packers site every body was idling about, playing games, chatting, yet more juggling and more of Andy’s Diabolo chucking (it originally evolved from the Chinese yo-yo, which was standardized in the 12th century fact fans!). Carl taught a group of us how to play Bonanza, a really rather good card game about planting beans & swapping them with other players. This kept me quiet for quite some time.
We eventually stuck the DVD on & those that didn’t want to watch it sat outside the marquee chit chatting. I divided my time between the chatty group and the group who were chucking a light up Frisbee about, which looked just like a UFO. Not that I have seen one. If I ever do I will now assume it to be a light up Frisbee.
Everybody was in bed by 11.30pm (the site has lots of neighbors we didn’t want to upset). Apparently the girls whispered away into the small hours, but we didn’t hear a peep out of the blokes.
In the morning we ate breakfast together, moaned about getting up early on a Saturday and cleared up all the Intense related stuff.
People seemed pretty positive about the whole ‘Intense’ experience. I said good-byes to a few people and asked them if they thought they would come next year. They said they where planning to come back every year for the rest of their lives. Seems like as good a way to end these posts as any.
Cheerio
Ben
PS I've just discouvered the BackPackers website. This is it:
http://www.backpackers-online.org.uk/
We’ve covered all the serious stuff so all that’s left are the Friday night Barbeque and Sleep over.
The Barbeque started after the main session. Along with all the scoffing that went on it was a good time to chat to people about what they thought of Intense, how they had got on helping out at Back Packers and to hear about how God had spoken in their lives during the week.
I’d got to know by small group by this point in the week but now I got to catch up with other people I knew and to get to know the characters behind the faces that had become familiar over the week.
Matt & Jenny C got a game of ultimate Frisbee going but I didn’t feel that energetic so I hung around with the people sitting by the main marquee. We stuck the Back Packers bootleg CD on and some of the girls had a karaoke session on the stage. Meanwhile there was juggling and Andy chucking his Diabolo about. It was a somewhat surreal scene, the perfect setting for a concept album or prog’ rock opera.
I wondered down to Choices Video with Carl, Charlotte, Caroline and Jo to get a DVD. Most of us had seen the Chesham edition of How Clean is Your House on Channel 4 last night so that was the main topic of conversation. Via our collective local knowledge we reasoned that TV is all a lie;
the local lady who was filmed asking how to get cat hair off a sofa knew how to do it really.
We had a bit of a falling out in the video shop over the comparative merits of High School Musical and The Pursuit of Happyness (a deliberate miss spelling) staring Will Smith and Son, some hair and a rubrik’s cube. It might have come to blows!
Back at the Back Packers site every body was idling about, playing games, chatting, yet more juggling and more of Andy’s Diabolo chucking (it originally evolved from the Chinese yo-yo, which was standardized in the 12th century fact fans!). Carl taught a group of us how to play Bonanza, a really rather good card game about planting beans & swapping them with other players. This kept me quiet for quite some time.
We eventually stuck the DVD on & those that didn’t want to watch it sat outside the marquee chit chatting. I divided my time between the chatty group and the group who were chucking a light up Frisbee about, which looked just like a UFO. Not that I have seen one. If I ever do I will now assume it to be a light up Frisbee.
Everybody was in bed by 11.30pm (the site has lots of neighbors we didn’t want to upset). Apparently the girls whispered away into the small hours, but we didn’t hear a peep out of the blokes.
In the morning we ate breakfast together, moaned about getting up early on a Saturday and cleared up all the Intense related stuff.
People seemed pretty positive about the whole ‘Intense’ experience. I said good-byes to a few people and asked them if they thought they would come next year. They said they where planning to come back every year for the rest of their lives. Seems like as good a way to end these posts as any.
Cheerio
Ben
PS I've just discouvered the BackPackers website. This is it:
http://www.backpackers-online.org.uk/
Sunday, July 29, 2007
INTENSE DAY 4: HOLY SPIRIT TALK
Here's my notes from the talk I gave on Day 4 of Intense and some of my power point slides.
Picture the scene: 1994. I went to a Christian youth camp on the Isle of Wight and had a great time. The last night we stayed up all night drinking coffee. The next day I came home feeling ten feet tall. Within 10 minutes of walking through the front door I had a row with my brother which ended in a punch up, then I had a row with my dad (unrelated matter) and then I shut myself in my bedroom and wept. Loudly.
Looking back I think it would have been smarter to sleep on the last night of camp.
At things like Back Packers and Intense you get soaked in God’s truth for a week. You hear the bible several times a day, you pray, the songs stick in your head, you’re surrounded by Christian people talking about God. It can really boost your faith, even if you aren’t a Christian yet.
But it’s also exhausting.
Most of you will get to the end of this week and flop because you’ve warn yourself out.
And for some of you, when you eventually wake up again things will feel different because every day life isn’t like Intense.
Have you ever tried living out the Christian life? It’s hard! I mean really hard to do every day.
And pretty soon you might start to wonder who am I?
Am I a child of God?
Or am I a child of the parents that I row with all the time,
or even a child of parents who neglect me or treat me with cruelty.
Am I part of the eternal Church of Jesus Christ that includes every Christian ever in space and time?
Or am I just part of a little church full of people and things that frustrate me?
Am I a citizen of heaven?
Or do I belong in the here and now, filling my time with TV, the internet, shopping, video games, anything trivial to hide the fact that everything around me will rot away to nothing.
If you think you’ve got it bad look at this:
Matt 28:16 – 20 & Luke 24:50 - 51
The disciples had the most extreme Christian identity crisis ever.
A couple of weeks before this, Jesus got arrested and most of them ran away.
Now he’s back and they are pretty much the only Christians in the world at this point. Then Jesus tells them to go and make more Christians,
then he leaves.
Heh? How are they supposed to do this exactly?
We’re taking about Jesus today because they did it. They succeeded.
The reason they succeeded was because God’s Holy Spirit was with them.
The key to understanding your Christian identity (who you are as a follower of Jesus Christ) is God’s Holy Spirit.
The key to living like a Christian every day is also God’s Holy Spirit.
If you have struggled with any part of the bible teaching you’ve heard at Back Packers or Intense or anywhere, God’s Holy Spirit is the only thing that will help you make sense of it.
We’re going to ask 2 questions together.
Who is God’s Holy Spirit?
Name in reverse order: God’s Holy Spirit
‘Spirit’ tells us it has no physical form that we can see or touch, it’s beyond scientific explanation, it cannot be harmed by conventional weapons.
‘Holy’ means different from us, good, pure, perfect flawless, slow to anger, rich in love.
‘God’s’ means that it belongs to God.
But it’s not an object that God owns. It is one of the three unique individual characters that make up the Holy Trinity, that make up God.
They are:
God the Father,
God the son (that is Jesus Christ)
and God the Holy Spirit.
All 3 of them are equal, all 3 of them are God. Get your head around that!
All of them have their own personalities; the Holy Spirit is not a bland characterless force like in Star Wars. He has likes and dislikes, he can experience happiness and sorrow.
In practical terms, the Holy Spirit is God’s power to do stuff in the world.
Everything God has ever done on planet Earth was done through God’s Holy Spirit.
What does he do?
(moves in) The second you become a Christian the Holy Spirit moves in. It shares your life, he inhabits your mind and your spirit. God is living under your skin.
Once he moves in, the Holy Spirit gets to work.
(teacher) He teaches us.
He will use every opportunity he can to teach you about God.
Sometimes people read a bit of the bible that they’ve seen before, but this time it really leaps off the page. You feel like you really get it. That’s the Holy Spirit at work. With me he’s used TV, films, music and conversations with friends to help me under stand what he’s been teaching me through the bible.
(tour guide) He leads us.
God cherishes your ability to choose so the Holy Spirit will never force you to do anything. But he will influence you for the best if you let him. If you are confused about something in your life (should you do this, should you do that ) and you ask God for guidance, it’s the Holy Spirit who will supply it.
(mirror) He shows us who we really are and what we’re really like.
Have you ever been totally sick of your self because you just can’t seem to stop doing the same bad stuff again and again? It’s the Holy Spirit who brings you to that point. If he didn’t you’d keep sinning away with out worrying about it.
There’s an important point here, The Spirit doesn’t weigh you down with guilt, the devil does that. The Spirit wants you to be more like Jesus so he brings conviction; conviction is where you know what needs to change. Guilt just makes you go
“I’m such a bad person, I’ll always be like this, it’s impossible for me to change. God can’t love me, etc”. The Holy Spirit doesn’t do that and he can help you out of that if that is how you are feeling.
Guilt makes you give up, conviction helps you change.
The Holy Spirit doesn’t just tell you what needs to change, he celebrates what’s really good in you. Best of all, he lets you know for sure that you are a child of God.
Romans 8:16
If you are a Christian and you don’t feel sure that you are a child of God, totally accepted into his family and loved by your father in heaven, ask the Holy Spirit for help.
(RSVP) He expects you to respond.
Eph 4:30 - 32
According to the bible the Holy Spirit grieves when you are bitter, selfishly angry, rude or aggressive. He grieves. That’s what people do when somebody they love dies. That’s strong language.
The Holy Spirit is looking for you to respond to him by becoming more holy yourself, by becoming more like Jesus. He will help you do it, and he grieves when you don’t take him up on his help.
In a moment we’re going to go into our groups to think about one last question.
“Where do I need more of the Holy Spirit’s help in my life?”
Just to answer that question we are going to need the Holy Spirit’s help. So I’m going to prayer for all of us now.
Picture the scene: 1994. I went to a Christian youth camp on the Isle of Wight and had a great time. The last night we stayed up all night drinking coffee. The next day I came home feeling ten feet tall. Within 10 minutes of walking through the front door I had a row with my brother which ended in a punch up, then I had a row with my dad (unrelated matter) and then I shut myself in my bedroom and wept. Loudly.
Looking back I think it would have been smarter to sleep on the last night of camp.
At things like Back Packers and Intense you get soaked in God’s truth for a week. You hear the bible several times a day, you pray, the songs stick in your head, you’re surrounded by Christian people talking about God. It can really boost your faith, even if you aren’t a Christian yet.
But it’s also exhausting.
Most of you will get to the end of this week and flop because you’ve warn yourself out.
And for some of you, when you eventually wake up again things will feel different because every day life isn’t like Intense.
Have you ever tried living out the Christian life? It’s hard! I mean really hard to do every day.
And pretty soon you might start to wonder who am I?
Am I a child of God?
Or am I a child of the parents that I row with all the time,
or even a child of parents who neglect me or treat me with cruelty.
Am I part of the eternal Church of Jesus Christ that includes every Christian ever in space and time?
Or am I just part of a little church full of people and things that frustrate me?
Am I a citizen of heaven?
Or do I belong in the here and now, filling my time with TV, the internet, shopping, video games, anything trivial to hide the fact that everything around me will rot away to nothing.
If you think you’ve got it bad look at this:
Matt 28:16 – 20 & Luke 24:50 - 51
The disciples had the most extreme Christian identity crisis ever.
A couple of weeks before this, Jesus got arrested and most of them ran away.
Now he’s back and they are pretty much the only Christians in the world at this point. Then Jesus tells them to go and make more Christians,
then he leaves.
Heh? How are they supposed to do this exactly?
We’re taking about Jesus today because they did it. They succeeded.
The reason they succeeded was because God’s Holy Spirit was with them.
The key to understanding your Christian identity (who you are as a follower of Jesus Christ) is God’s Holy Spirit.
The key to living like a Christian every day is also God’s Holy Spirit.
If you have struggled with any part of the bible teaching you’ve heard at Back Packers or Intense or anywhere, God’s Holy Spirit is the only thing that will help you make sense of it.
We’re going to ask 2 questions together.
Who is God’s Holy Spirit?
Name in reverse order: God’s Holy Spirit
‘Spirit’ tells us it has no physical form that we can see or touch, it’s beyond scientific explanation, it cannot be harmed by conventional weapons.
‘Holy’ means different from us, good, pure, perfect flawless, slow to anger, rich in love.
‘God’s’ means that it belongs to God.
But it’s not an object that God owns. It is one of the three unique individual characters that make up the Holy Trinity, that make up God.
They are:
God the Father,
God the son (that is Jesus Christ)
and God the Holy Spirit.
All 3 of them are equal, all 3 of them are God. Get your head around that!
All of them have their own personalities; the Holy Spirit is not a bland characterless force like in Star Wars. He has likes and dislikes, he can experience happiness and sorrow.
In practical terms, the Holy Spirit is God’s power to do stuff in the world.
Everything God has ever done on planet Earth was done through God’s Holy Spirit.
What does he do?
(moves in) The second you become a Christian the Holy Spirit moves in. It shares your life, he inhabits your mind and your spirit. God is living under your skin.
Once he moves in, the Holy Spirit gets to work.
(teacher) He teaches us.
He will use every opportunity he can to teach you about God.
Sometimes people read a bit of the bible that they’ve seen before, but this time it really leaps off the page. You feel like you really get it. That’s the Holy Spirit at work. With me he’s used TV, films, music and conversations with friends to help me under stand what he’s been teaching me through the bible.
(tour guide) He leads us.
God cherishes your ability to choose so the Holy Spirit will never force you to do anything. But he will influence you for the best if you let him. If you are confused about something in your life (should you do this, should you do that ) and you ask God for guidance, it’s the Holy Spirit who will supply it.
(mirror) He shows us who we really are and what we’re really like.
Have you ever been totally sick of your self because you just can’t seem to stop doing the same bad stuff again and again? It’s the Holy Spirit who brings you to that point. If he didn’t you’d keep sinning away with out worrying about it.
There’s an important point here, The Spirit doesn’t weigh you down with guilt, the devil does that. The Spirit wants you to be more like Jesus so he brings conviction; conviction is where you know what needs to change. Guilt just makes you go
“I’m such a bad person, I’ll always be like this, it’s impossible for me to change. God can’t love me, etc”. The Holy Spirit doesn’t do that and he can help you out of that if that is how you are feeling.
Guilt makes you give up, conviction helps you change.
The Holy Spirit doesn’t just tell you what needs to change, he celebrates what’s really good in you. Best of all, he lets you know for sure that you are a child of God.
Romans 8:16
If you are a Christian and you don’t feel sure that you are a child of God, totally accepted into his family and loved by your father in heaven, ask the Holy Spirit for help.
(RSVP) He expects you to respond.
Eph 4:30 - 32
According to the bible the Holy Spirit grieves when you are bitter, selfishly angry, rude or aggressive. He grieves. That’s what people do when somebody they love dies. That’s strong language.
The Holy Spirit is looking for you to respond to him by becoming more holy yourself, by becoming more like Jesus. He will help you do it, and he grieves when you don’t take him up on his help.
In a moment we’re going to go into our groups to think about one last question.
“Where do I need more of the Holy Spirit’s help in my life?”
Just to answer that question we are going to need the Holy Spirit’s help. So I’m going to prayer for all of us now.
Saturday, July 28, 2007
INTENSE DAY 4: GOD'S HOLY SPIRIT
The last day of Intense started just as the Back Packers leaders said their ‘good bye’s’ and tidied up their stuff.
Jenny C got our session off to a flying start with an icebreaker about help. In teams, everybody had to carry a blind folded person around the campsite to pick up socks and return to the main stage area. Coz the Holy Spirit is a Helper huh. You like? Good little link huh?
The next game took things to a new level of surreal jocularity;
to illustrate that the Holy Spirit transforms us on the inside,
one person had to transform the outward appearance of the rest of their team with what ever they could find
+ some hair spray, face paints, kids sun glasses and other sundry items that just happened to be lying around.
The transformations were staggering.
One team had lighting bolts on their faces (sadly this was accredit to Harry Potter and not David Bowie).
Another team had what appeared to be newspaper manes (like a lion might wear where it made of local free sheet ‘the Star’). One guy had a giant newspaper magnifying glass. Several boys sported bunches. And somebody had goggles around their ankle, stylish yet practical.
It was all either wonderfully diverse or horribly wrong, but I couldn’t figure out which.
It then fell to me to stand up and give a serious talk about the Holy Spirit whilst looking out at a crowd of freakishness. This was no easy task.
I spoke about how the Holy Spirit is the key to our understanding who we are as followers of Jesus Christ and living out our true identities in Him.
We had a brief look at who the Holy Spirit is and what he does. Then we went into our small groups to think about where we need the Holy Spirit’s help at the moment. I think this is an essential question for the last day of something like Intense or Back Packers. Weeks like this really raise your faith and encourage you and it’s easy to hit rock bottom again when you go back to your every day normal life. It’s hard living as a Christian every day, and God’s Holy Spirit is the one who can help us to do it.
Incidentally, if you have struggled with feeling deflated after an extreme Christian experience like Intense or a youth camp I really recommend a short book called Disappointment with God: Three Questions No One Asks Aloud by Philip Yancey (ISN: 031021436X). It takes sense about how God can use those times of feeling distant from Him or let down, it only about £4 and it’s not that long either.
After the group times Ben Riley shared his story of how he had come to know God and how he made the decision to became a Christian (actually at a previous Intense, cool huh). It was great to hear what he had to say and he was the only speaker all week who got a round of applause!
At this point I got everybody to ask themselves an important question:
after everything they'd heard this week, did they believe that God loves them?
We encouraged those people who answered that question with a yes for the first time to make a decision to follow Jesus, and to say a prayer with the rest of us dedicationg ourselves to love and serve Jesus Christ.
As I stood on the stage praying and hearing people say 'amen' ("I agree") I got a sense of the significance of that moment.
It reminded me of two things that I hold true:
That when we worship God we are not starting something but joining in with the angels who do it all the time,
That every person who makes a decision of follow Jesus sparks a celebration in heaven.
There was a time when I thought that sort of thing was just sacarine sentimentality, but now I see them as in keeping with the character of the God I've been getting to know over the last 11 years.
I’m planning to post my notes and slides from the talk in the next couple of days so check back if you want to a look at those. If any other Intense speakers are up for having their notes posted here please email me.
I’ll blog about the bbq and sleep over some other time so check back for that too.
If you were part of Intense please sign up to blogger.com and leave your comments here. Or if you’ve been doing your own blog or similair please send me a link so I can post it here.
Cheerio
Ben
INTENSE DAY 3: BIBLE VERSES
Check them out for yourself:
Click here to read Hebrews 11:13-16
and click here to read Revalations 21:1-4
Click here to read Hebrews 11:13-16
and click here to read Revalations 21:1-4
INTENSE DAY 3: CITIZEN OF HEAVEN
Years ago I went on a family holiday and we all fell out on the 3rd day. My aunty Gill told me that by the third day of anything people are tired and get on each others nerves. She said the SAS train their people to cope with the extra stress on the third day of an intensive mission. I don’t know if it’s true, but it’s stayed in my head for about 15 years.
With this in mind we approached INTENSE DAY 3 head on.
We started the session with some ice breaker games to get people talking about their perfect Saturday, their perfect date, their perfect job, that sort of thing. You know, coz heaven is to be in the presence of God and that is perfection, nice easy link that.
Then we played a game of my own invention, which is best described as a marriage of crab football and tag with an injection of aggression. I call it:
YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE.
Every body started with two ‘lives’ (2 stickers, one on each knee). They then adopted the position of the crab on their hands and knees. The object of the games was to rip stickers off other peoples knees and stick them to your own, whilst avoiding having your stickers ripped off. Once all your stickers are gone you are legally dead, and out of the game.
Everybody got stickered and crabbed up and hilarity (and some scenes of mild violence) ensued.
It was the ice breaker that split the critics;
“Could somebody tell me what that had to go with being a Citizen of Heaven?”
Sarah Shelly, the day’s speaker & Intense organiser
“I wish we had video taped that so we could show it to the churches and say ‘this is youth work’.”
Lizi Ingle, Free* Café & Intense organiser
Sarah Shelly gave a great talk on what it means to be a Citizen of Heaven. She used some striking photos to liken living as a Christian in the world to being in a departure lounge. She challenged us not to get too comfortable in this life as the Bible calls us ‘aliens’ and ‘strangers in a strange land’ because Heaven is our true home.
(Check out the next post to read the bible passages we looked at today.)
In small groups we talked about the practicalities of going about your every day life on Earth whilst being true to your identity as a Citizen of Heaven. In my group we talked about the times when it’s hardest to see yourself that way, particularly if you are the only Christian in your group of friends or your class.
We tried to come up with practical things that we could do to help us remember our true identity. Reading the Bible came top of the list, and meeting up with other Christians to support each other came pretty high too.
We finished up playing Cat & Mouse, a game which requires you to hold your arms out for a long time. Mine felt like they were coming off at the shoulders by the time we finished.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
INTENSE DAY 2 - THE CHURCH / THE FAMILY OF GOD
Whilst the rain was coming down outside we started today’s Intense session with what I consider to be a true classic of the ‘ice breaker game’ world:
Chinese Charades.
If you’re not familiar, it’s like Chinese whispers, but instead of whispering a word you mime it. Hilarity ensues.
In today’s game one team started off miming ‘a stare out’. By the time this innocent little activity passed through the whole team it ended up looking like the crane kick out of 80’s classic movie The Karate Kid (watch the video to see what I’m on about).
What has this got to do with today’s subject, the Church / the family of God?
Well kids, good communication is very important in relationships.
The next game is a little harder to relate to our subject, but we had a darn good go.
In teams, everybody had to use their mouth’s to get jelly babies out of a pile of flour, then run over to a bowl and spit them in there. Wait, did I say bowl? I meant ‘church’. Acting as some kind of ‘mouth evangelists’ they had to bring people into the safety of the church.
Or something like that.
Ok, so it was an excuse to get everybody good and messy. And it worked.
Jenny Constantine gave the talk today about being part of God’s family. She introduced a lot of the people at Intense to an idea I first saw in the brilliant Screw Tape Letters by C.S. Lewis; that the Church isn’t just your local church or even all the churches in the world, but every person who ever was and ever will be a child of God. How about dem apples huh?!
It’s like God, being outside of time can view the whole Church in time and space, all at once.
It’s a nice ‘get your head round that’ idea. I like it!
We didn’t talk about cheese or moods in my small group today. But Phil did get his trumpet out and provided us with some encouraging ‘work harder’ music whilst we filled in some evaluation forms to help us reflect on what we had heard.
I’m a bit concerned that our groups corner of the carpet smells faintly of wee. We’re not sitting there tomorrow, no sir.
To end the session Andy led a big team game. I was hoovering up spilt flour by this point so I haven’t got a clue what it was about. It looked like it involved putting on a cape made of clear plastic. That’s got to be good….right?
Chinese Charades.
If you’re not familiar, it’s like Chinese whispers, but instead of whispering a word you mime it. Hilarity ensues.
In today’s game one team started off miming ‘a stare out’. By the time this innocent little activity passed through the whole team it ended up looking like the crane kick out of 80’s classic movie The Karate Kid (watch the video to see what I’m on about).
What has this got to do with today’s subject, the Church / the family of God?
Well kids, good communication is very important in relationships.
The next game is a little harder to relate to our subject, but we had a darn good go.
In teams, everybody had to use their mouth’s to get jelly babies out of a pile of flour, then run over to a bowl and spit them in there. Wait, did I say bowl? I meant ‘church’. Acting as some kind of ‘mouth evangelists’ they had to bring people into the safety of the church.
Or something like that.
Ok, so it was an excuse to get everybody good and messy. And it worked.
Jenny Constantine gave the talk today about being part of God’s family. She introduced a lot of the people at Intense to an idea I first saw in the brilliant Screw Tape Letters by C.S. Lewis; that the Church isn’t just your local church or even all the churches in the world, but every person who ever was and ever will be a child of God. How about dem apples huh?!
It’s like God, being outside of time can view the whole Church in time and space, all at once.
It’s a nice ‘get your head round that’ idea. I like it!
We didn’t talk about cheese or moods in my small group today. But Phil did get his trumpet out and provided us with some encouraging ‘work harder’ music whilst we filled in some evaluation forms to help us reflect on what we had heard.
I’m a bit concerned that our groups corner of the carpet smells faintly of wee. We’re not sitting there tomorrow, no sir.
To end the session Andy led a big team game. I was hoovering up spilt flour by this point so I haven’t got a clue what it was about. It looked like it involved putting on a cape made of clear plastic. That’s got to be good….right?
INTENSE DAY 2 BIBLE STUFF
Today at Intense we'll be thinking about what part the Church plays in a Christian's identity.
We'll be looking at Ephesians Chapter 1 verses 9 to 10,
Chapter 2 verses 14 to 18
and
Chapter 4 verses 11 to 16.
Click em to read em!
(These links take you to Biblegateway.com. Click here to find out how to access other free online bible stuff, including audio books (great if you aren't much of a reader) and commentaries that help you get more out of the bible.)
We'll be looking at Ephesians Chapter 1 verses 9 to 10,
Chapter 2 verses 14 to 18
and
Chapter 4 verses 11 to 16.
Click em to read em!
(These links take you to Biblegateway.com. Click here to find out how to access other free online bible stuff, including audio books (great if you aren't much of a reader) and commentaries that help you get more out of the bible.)
INTENSE DAY 1
Day one started with a lot of slightly tired looking people in white t shirts standing around inside a big tent (or ‘the back packers main marquee’: you decide!).
We kicked things off in time honoured ‘yoof work stlyee’ with some ice breaker games to get everybody good an disorientated (or ‘to mix up social groups’: you decide!).
I tried out a game I’d read about online called
‘DON’T LOOK AT ME!’.
It sounded like fun to me.
The object of the Game is to stare at people with out them starring at you. If some one gives you eye contact your both out. It,er, didn’t really work that well. Things got better with the next game which was classic “swap places with somebody else who….” Stuff.
Most fascinating moment:
the number of people who like the taste of Calpol (the liquid pain killer…. for kids!).
Matt Ingle (the “popular and energetic” Emmanuel Church ley worker, for another couple of weeks at least) gave the talk on our daily subject, what it means to be a child of God. Have a look at yesterdays posting to read the bits from the bible that Matt spoke about.
After the talk we went into little group to chat about it. BIG SHOUT OUT to Phil who I’m leading a group with. We started our group time with my favourite question of the moment
(Slumby & Nish, if you’re reading this prepare to groan. 1, 2, 3, GROAN….):
“If your mood was a cheese what cheese would your mood be?”
From this all-important question we learned that Mini Babybel is the happiest of all cheeses. This is indisputably true.
To finish the session every body formed two lines and had use rolled up news papers to bash balloons at Sarah (‘Womans worker’ for Emmanuel) Shelly and Jenny (“I’m the Parish youth worker I am”) Constantine under the instruction of ‘the other’ Jenny. There were rules, points, even winners, but do these things really matter when you can wallop a balloon in the direction of a lady?
Check back for more of this kind of thing tomorrow.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
WELCOME TO INTENSE 2007
Today is the first day of Intense 2007.
Intense is the young people element of Back Packers, the annual summer holiday club run by Churches Together for Chesham in the field at Thomas Harding School.
This year Intense is all about Christian Identity, a pretty important subject for anybody interested in Jesus Christ. What does happen to a person who becomes a Christian? Does anything happen at all?
Is it just a set of moral guidelines or another world view? That's what we will be looking at together this week.
Today Matt will be getting us to consider what it means to be a Child of God.
Clike here and here to read the bible verses we're going to look at together. Or click here and here to read them in context.
These links take you to Biblegateway.com to read the bible online. Click here to find out how to access other free online bible stuff, including audio books (great if you aren't much of a reader) and commentaries that help you get more out of the bible.
See you at Intense!
Are we dead or what?
No, not yet anyway.
Sorry for the lack of action here in the last 2 months and welcome to the summer holidays.
We are hoping to relaunch this blog in September so things will get quieter and then (hopefully) a lot louder.
Meanwhile, during the holidays Ben is going to blog about this and that, including Intense 2007, 2nd Chesham Boys Bridage Company Camp (try saying that with a mouth full of peanuts) and we'll try to keep the page up to date with details of the Youth Alpha activites we hope to run this summer.
In the mean time here are a couple of slices of wholesome youtube loveliness. Check out 'Dad' in the second clip, that man is an icon.
Sorry for the lack of action here in the last 2 months and welcome to the summer holidays.
We are hoping to relaunch this blog in September so things will get quieter and then (hopefully) a lot louder.
Meanwhile, during the holidays Ben is going to blog about this and that, including Intense 2007, 2nd Chesham Boys Bridage Company Camp (try saying that with a mouth full of peanuts) and we'll try to keep the page up to date with details of the Youth Alpha activites we hope to run this summer.
In the mean time here are a couple of slices of wholesome youtube loveliness. Check out 'Dad' in the second clip, that man is an icon.
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