Urban youthworker

If I get £10,000 I'll shave all my hair off

It's for the kids.
This Sunday I aim to run a marathon on a bad knee to raise money for hubhouse; an inner city project that will help hundreds of children and young people. Please give generously.

Stop the Traffik

Diane Louise Jordan taking up the symbol of hope for children lcoked into slavery. Kids from the hub kids club @ church.co.uk went and did their piece by standing in front of Nestle HQ. Go to the stop the traffick website to see their protest. We're trying to develop the hub into being more than a youthgroup but a youth group with a voice and with a heart for justice.

Lent

Headspace was great on Sunday. We spent time refocussing on Christ. As part of our worship we did a "pilgrimage" around our local community, exploring Jesus's wilderness expereince and what it might mean for us. At the end of the service people were given space to write in the sand what they had learnt from the wilderness pilgrimage.
Download wilderness_pilgrimage.doc

Soliton

Soliton was fun! See my album. Here's one to whet your appetite.

Waxing lyrical

A message from a young person I work with

Every building tells a story

The redecoration process has begun at the new youth centre... we have been given money from Lambeth Council and the good people of EDS and are beggining to brainstorm ideas with the young people of what the youth centre will look like.

It's funny how a building conveys a story. Most hospitals look ill, most pubs tell a story, most stores look like a product, most schools (good ones that is) shout achievement... What story will the hubhouse tell, how will people feel when they enter it, what will it make them think of? Most community buildings you go into look second hand, cheap and dull, they don't inspire greatness nor do they instill hope and achievement in the people they serve. I want the hubhouse to be full of hope, full of creativity, full of fun not just functionality.

Fed up with fakes

I can't stand youthworkers who try and pretend to be like the kids/young people they work with!! It's totally unnecessary and never impresses the young people you work with.

5 things you may not know about me

Emily tagged me, so I guess I should respond, as is the spirit of these things.

1. I have a hamster called cuddles that is a big part of our life. If anyone kidnapped him, I would pay the ransom. (Don't even think about it Tim)
2. I play the euphonium... the what??
3. I have a growing relationship with Kevin Spacey's dog. Kev lives over the road from us in the posh buildings, and whenever I see him I find myself strangely captivated by his little mungrel dog.
4. Admiral Parker (Lord Nelson's boss) is my great, great, great... grandfather.
5. My favorite place for solitude is Westminster Cathederal

I tag Andrew, Rach, Conrad and Amy

We've read it all wrong

Part 1 of understanding the Bible

It seems to me that most of our problems ('our' being the chuch and the majority of Chirstians) stem from a misunderstanding of how we are to read the Bible.

Understanding the genre

For some reason we have decided to read it like a science book, apparantly God made the world in 6 days and tempted Adam and Eve with a talking serpent; a rule book, yeah because that's really appealing to the post modern world we live in; some people treat it like a history book that has to be accurate in every way... cos history is always full of facts right? Some people read it like a horriscope, ever read Word for Today? Others are more old fashioned and believe it to be an encyclopedia on how to live your life. Why is we throw our brains away when it comes to reading the Bible?

The Bible is a series of different books, some books are poetry (Genesis, the Psalms), some are biographies (The gosepls), some are parables, or storeis told with a plethora of meaning (Job, Jonah), some are letters (Corinthians and Galtians) and each should be read as such!!! Sometimes when we read the Bible we are aware of this, we don’t read the passage in Psalms about dashing the heads of children on rocks and think it’s okay for us to do this… why because we recognise it is a poem expressing anger towards God about our enemies. However sometimes we fail to realise that some parts of scripture were written as poetry but we read them as history. Genesis 1 is the classic example of this, the creation narrative would have been read around campfires like a piece of rousing Shakespeare, it ws a story with incredible meaning, and says some beautiful things about our God but it didn’t happen.

When we watch star wars we realise that the director is presenting an alternative reality, a reality that is saying something about politics, about the outcast, about the importance of tradition, faith and our heritage but we don’t have to assume that the things it alludes to are actually happening in order for it to mean something to us. Reveation is pregnant with meaning, pregnant with images of white horses and wild beasts, trumpets and angels, firey furnaces and all manner of other things. The number of people Ive talked to who think these things will actually happen is quite staggering. The writer is using imagery to paint an alternative political reality much like the director of star wars. It’s really not that difficult to see is it?

It's a dogs life

Assaults in London involving dogs rose by 12 per cent last year, the sharpest jump in five years. This is probably why I see more and more of our young people with dogs. Some weeks we get more dogs than humans wanting to attend some of our youth sessions. They look at me with their puppy eyed faces, a real treat to behold... dog angels in the making. As I petted one the other day whilst I waited for it's 16yr old owner to return it licked me up and down my arm... I began to think how nice it was that this young lad was taking an interest in something other than himself. Then the predictable happened. Some of the other lads started hitting the dog, pushing it round and putting their hands down it's throat to try and get it to fight back... it's only 15 weeks old and the poor dog didn't understand. When it started yelping at them they all laughed and nodded as if to say good job well done.

The majority of dogs owned by young people in London seem to be used as weapons. What's funny is the treatment they give to these dogs is the same treatment that many of them have received from older people in their own life. You've got to be tough to survive round here. Beat someone up enough and eventually they fight back, they become hardened to people around them, suspicious of the world they are in and cynical about everyone they meet.