Post of the day to this ripper from Julie Clawson
And check the controversy on my recent post Trade – Heague & Moran. It makes blogging feel weird.
Category: <span>Church</span>
After all my whinging, the internet is not totally destitute of quality help for stuck youth leaders.
In my digging for something that we needed for youth on Sunday FAST, which I didn’t end up fulfilling (but things wound up okay), I found a whole lot of intriguing and useful blogs. Along with design related thing – a spawn from Church Marketing Sucks. Interesting.
Chase these links:
Church Marketing Lab – brochures/cards/flyers/posters done by people for Churches, some pretty good work here. I have a small bit of fun doing youth programs now and then, but I really don’t produce masterpieces. This might inspire me.
Jonny Baker – check the ‘Worship Tricks’ on the right hand side.
Passionately Pensive – her writing is fun and she shares ideas now and then.
Rethinking Youth Ministry – the title says it.
If you know of any other good ones please share.
image by Dan McArthy (I sourced it from somewhere else… but as usual I have forgotten where) regardless, there’s something pretty timeless and beautiful about it.
I wish there were more resources out there on running girls discipleship groups. A blog? I want to look at prayer this time and I’m not sure where even to start activity/discussion wise. Except to get them praying.
Our kick off is a lunch at a cafe in March. I’m going to get 3-6 girls (estimate) – the same group as last year (which I’m pretty happy about) minus one who is going into the Yr.7’s to be with a friend. This year it’s Year 8’s for me. It’ll be interesting to see what it brings maturity-wise, because Year Sevens seem to grow up an awful lot from the start of the year to the end. I’m proud of them!
I had way too much fun making invites* this morning… perhaps I should pour my effort into actually working out what we’re doing, but hey, if I got something like that back in Yr.8 I would be really excited. Probably beside myself (inside). I’d stick it on my wall.
Here’s a confession. I have a card my youth leader gave me (several years ago now) and I framed it because it meant so much and it’s lived on my wall ever since (except now because we still don’t know if we can put hooks up).
It scares me now that I might have something remotely close to that kind of influence.
*This book by the way, is sweet. I’m studying package design this semester so I thought I’d load up (Mostly it was an excuse to have something to make boxes etc for fun). It supplies the templates in eps. form and you do what you want with them. Ahh the world has opened up!
Yes it’s early, but post of the day goes to the Naked Pastor for,
Gather. Sing. Give. Study. Pray. Disperse. Keep in touch.
Without totally squashing the post prior to this one, there are some issues in settling into tackling living as a Christian in suburbia.
It’s easy to get comfortable. It’s easy to get involved somewhere and think we’re doing our bit. Or to shell out cash to alleviate our guilt and compassion.
I’m not sure how to determine what is a satisfactory level of service or giving. We may have to keep searching and stretching ourselves and taking further risks. I’m inclined to think that it leans well to the later. with our dependence on Jesus our strength – lots of balance and with less selfish emphasis on burnout.
“Much of what I had done before along the lines of service was guilt induced. When I would hear a horrific story, I would want to respond quickly, write a check, and be done with it. But I have met many incredible people who are responding with their lives, and that has exposed something in me. I have been given a lot of joy in life, but I’ve also missed something. All of my life I have been grooming my faith, but have missed something about the purpose of that grooming. If I understand scripture at all, I have to know that to enter into the suffering of the poor and the oppressed is to know Christ and his suffering.â€
– Sara Groves
How do you find out how to do that in a society where it isn’t always blatantly obvious? Yes there are clear levels of poverty and homeless in Australia, but I feel kind of confused for the incredibly ignored ‘rich’. It is untrue to say that the rich have perfect lives. Where to enter that suffering?
Jesus hung out with tax collectors, right?
The quote that inspired me is from a post over at Radical Womanhood, the rest is really worth reading.