YOUTH ALPHA IN NOVEMBER

For the next couple of Sundays YA will be taking a short break so we can join with the rest of the church in marking Remembrance Sunday and in celebrating the 15th anniversary of Chrysalis Arts Trust (click the link to find out about them).
But Friday nights will keep chugging away.

Tonight we start a new series taken from The Word on the Street by Rob Lacey.

Tonight is entitled NEEDLES and we’ll be looking at 2 Timothy 3:1 to 4 (along with some other stuff).
And playing a bit of…. Ah but that would be giving it away!


The next few weeks look like this:

Friday 16th 'The Crowd' – Ephesians 4:17-24

Friday 23rd 'TV' – Matthew 6:22 – 23 & Philippians 4:8-9

Sunday 25th 'Where did I come from?' - part 1 of a brand new thing, more news soon

Thursday 29th 'Saltmine Theatre present 3 Wisemen and a Baby'
£1 for under 16’s, £3 everybody else.

Friday 30th 'Victorian Shopping Night in Chesham'
No YA tonight but come to church to say hello and get yourself some hot chocolate.



For those who don't know:
Youth Alpha is a group for people in school year 7 to 11. It meets at Broadway Baptist Church on Friday nights from 7.30 til 9.30pm and Sunday morning from 10.30 - 12pm (during the main church service. All meetings are at Broadway Baptist Church, Chesham unless otherwise stated.

Doing the impossible

This Sunday's Youth Alpha will consider some impossible stuff from 1 Timothy 1 verses 12 to 17.
See if you can beat 'the impossible quiz'.
Apparently it can be done. Just not by me!
Play The Impossible Quiz

Youth Alpha Fireworks at Chesham United

Here's the flyer with all the details of this Friday's Youth Alpha trip to the Chesham United grounds for the fireworks display.

Youth Alpha Pirates trilogy-athon

9.30 - 7pm,
Nuff said.

FREE* CAFE'

It's back again this Wednesday. Jolly Good.

Cheerio HALF TERM

Good bye half term & hello again school.
I hope everybody related to the wonderful world of Broadway Youth (Youth Alpha, Free* Cafe', The Chesham schools Christian Unions, etc) had a great week. I certainly did.
There's no Youth Alpha tonight what with it still being half term & all. But we are back on Sunday morning and we'll be unleashing our events program for November & December. There are an absolute ton of quality things coming up, and we'll publish the November dates on the blog on Sunday afternoon so check back here from about 3pm on Sunday if you can't make it to church this week to get your paper copy of everything that's going on.

On Sunday we’re in REVIEW mode. The term is half over and the year is almost gone, so it’s a good time to reflect on where your life is at the moment.

See you on Sunday!

(Youth Alpha is a Christian group for people in school year 7 to 11 & meets at 10.30am till 12pm at Broadway Baptist Church, Chesham during the main service)

Youth Alpha this week - time & venue change!

On Friday night (5th October) Youth Alpha are meeting up with our friends at
Newtown Evangelical Baptist Church
301 Berkhampstead Road,
Chesham, Bucks, HP5 3AT

from 7.15pm to 9pm. Please note the different time to usual!!!!

Here's some directions to Newtown:

Driving north along the A416 from Amersham you pass through the town of Chesham. Pass the park and pond on the left, then two further roundabouts. Pass the neon loveliness of the Mighty Bite take on the right as you drive north along Berkhampstead Road. The church just after a zebra crossing and Newtown First school on the Right. There is a car park behind the church.

Approaching from Berkhamsted and the A41 drive down Nashleigh Hill into Chesham. Follow the road round sharp left at the bottom. You are now driving south along Berkhampstead Road, passing St Columbus church on your right. Newtown church is about 400 yards along on the left hand side. There is a car park behind the church.

By Underground (Metropolitan Line): outside the station turn left down into the main shopping area. Then turn right and follow the High St north, past Sainsbury's. Continue along Berkhampstead Road past the neon loveliness of the Mighty Bite take on the right. The church is on the right just after a zebra crossing and Newtown First School. The walk from the station takes about 15 minutes.

And here's some blurb about Youth Alpha:
YA is a group for young people in school years 7 to 11 run by Broadway Baptist Church. We meet on Friday nights during term time to have fun, build friendships together and learn more about Jesus Christ. We also meet on Sunday mornings during the main church service. For more info call the church office on 01494 772244.

Youth Alpha is (also) BACK!

From tonight Youth Alpha is back on Fridays (7.30 - 9.30pm) and Sunday mornings (10.30 - 12pm) @ Broadway Baptist Church.

Tonight we kick off the term with some chit chat, games and (most importantly and inkeeping with traditions dating back all of 18 months) we'll be dipping food into chocolate and eating it. For tonight is the legendary

YOUTH ALPHA CHOCOLATE FONDUE SOCIAL NIGHT.

Oh good.

On Sunday we start our regular program with a look at John 2 verses 12 to 25 from the bible and a think about 'Why do you come here?'.

Here's how the rest of the month is shaping up:

Friday 14th Sept - Anger night!

Sunday 16th Sept - Belonging to God from John 10 verses 1 to 30

Friday 21st Sept - The Source from John 15 verses 1 to 11

Sunday 23rd Sept - Trust and Faith from John 16 verses 17 to 33

Friday 28th Sept - a social night (give us your suggestions of what you'd like to do)

Sunday 30th Sept - Commercial break (a critical look at adverts and other things that surround us every day) from 1 Timothy 1 verses 3 to 11


(Youth Alpha is for young people from school years 7 to 11 and is part of Broadway Baptist Church, Chesham, Bucks, UK.)

FREE* CAFE' IS BACK

Here's a sneaky peek at the promo flyers for the new season of Free* Cafe'.
We're opening up ours doors again on Wednesday 19th Sept at 3.30pm
If your in school year 6 and above or (in more normal terms) aged 11 to 18 then come along and let us know what you think.


As ever Free* is based at Broadway Baptist Church in Chesham, and run in partnership with the the Parish of Great Chesham.

LONDON BABY!

Today was the Youth Alpha London shopping trip, high lights included:

Everybody arriving in time for the train (woot!)
A tone deaf man singing the theme from superman in order to sell little radio controlled helicopters which he claimed were 'the best toy in Hamleys'
Foam sword fight!
A bear that blew a whistle and played a drum, which Dan loved. Why?
Lauren brought a carrot
The Pizza Hut waiter who poured Pepsi on my hand. Bah.
Stephen blowing bubbles
Is a pocket sized hand sanitizer really such a shameful thing Sarah?
The electric shock dueling game
The filthy-dirt-filth smell by the cash point
Gob stoppers the size of tennis balls. Who has a gob that big?
Wondering if massive gob stoppers bounce, only to find out they don't (sorry Chris!)
Stephen's white lips.
We got the right train home at the right time. Cool huh.

Jango frets his way to 10K viewings

Like it says up there, our Jango's Frets video has finaly had ten thousand viewings.
Not bad for a throw away video made for a Sunday Morning Kid's Church lesson on the spur of the moment.
Why not watch it again to enjoy the cheap and cheerful production values!

Spiderman 3 video gets 10K viewings

Remember about a year ago when I excitedly posted that the Superman video for Free* Cafe' was the most popular thing on our youtube channel with a whooping great 200 viewing?

As of this week the Spiderman 3 video is our first one to break the 10'000 mark (with shoddy masterpiece Jango's Frets hot on it's heels at 9776 viewings). To mark this momentus occassion here's the spidey video in all it's glory:

New video

Added to youtube today is our good bye tribute to Matt & Lizi Ingle:

'the A to z of the Ingles'

Matt has been working as a ley worker (or an 'intern' to our american chums) for the Anglican churches in Chesham for the last 2 years. Matt & Lizi both played a big part in developing Free* Cafe', F.B.I., Solid Rock at Chesham Park school and Intense (among plenty of other things) and they will be greatly missed by the local youth leaders and yoing people alike.

The video consists of some very 'Ingle' style humour and features me interviewing them about some of the things God has done in their lives. Hope you enjoy it.

Ben

And...

... this was the 201st

200th post

Check it out, this is the 200th post on the Broadway Youth blog.
We've posted 200 of these things now.

This the 200th post. I thank yooooooo.

Cinema shinanigans

Hey folks,
Last nights Simpsons movie cinema trip was a lot of fun (my favourite line: "Dooms day is family time")
This weekend the Bruce Almighty sequel Evan Almighty opens across the UK.
From the trailer 'Evan' looks like a pretty straight forward modern retelling of the 'Noah's Ark' story from Genesis with a lot of animal gags.
If you do go and see it be sure to let the rest of the Youth Alpha, FBI or Free* Cafe' crowd know what you think.

Here's some clips and a little review of the movie from Youtube.



Click here for the full story of Noah from The Message bible paraphrase. There's so much more to him then building a big boat. He's a true hero, but also a mixed bag of good and bad like most of us (check out the part where he gets drunk and shouts at his kids).

Youth Alpha cinema trip

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:

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

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/

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.