Yoblog – Musings of a Church Youth Officer

I am wishing Prince William and Kate to set their wedding date as soon as possible.

You see, I’m also trying to set dates for Diocesan youth and children’s events next year. I’ve already checked the 2011 rugby calendar.  I want people to have no excuses not to come.

I’m thinking of two May weekends for a Diocesan Fischy music bash and a Youth (11-14s) weekend retreat.

Anybody guessing when the Royal wedding will be? Or any other life changing events that I should know about???

One of the priviledges of my job is to visit churches around the Diocese.  I went to Melrose yesterday and found myself transported to two different places in my past.

One of the readings yesterday was from Job and included the verse “I know that my Redeemer lives”.  As soon as I heard it read I was back in the dining room of the orphanage that I helped in in the Diocese of Pelotas in Southern Brazil. I had tried to cheer up some of the rooms by painting murals and one of them was a joyous ant (Smilinguido) with this verse underneath. Sitting in the church in Melrose I realised I had never thought about the biblical context of that phrase and reflected that to end up in a Brazilian orphanage is maybe not dissimilar to what happened to Job. And I wondered what had become of the girls I had worked with 15 years ago..

And then I also had another flashback to being a teenager at St John’s Princes Street Perth, where it was decided to get the youth group involved in all the committees of the church. I was on the worship committee and spent most of the time feeling a bit puzzled. They wanted to hear what we youngsters liked and disliked but they didn’t want to change anything. Instead, I was told I would learn to love what they love as I got older.  I still haven’t grown up enough to adore singing psalms. Nor do I ever search out a Matins service. The kids in Melrose said they wanted more upbeat music and lordy, so did I after having sat through the service! Change can be such a tricky thing to get right, but not trying at all is surely worse.

There is a lovely bunch of people in Melrose and a great group of teenagers getting ready for confirmation. I hope everybody can find something in their church that speaks to them, while understanding other people’s needs.

When I turned up to the admission to communion class at Bathgate at about 4.15pm , I had a bag of food with me that had done the rounds of the Diocese today. 

There was a Provincial Youth Network meeting this morning at the General Synod Office where I took some left over biscuits, fruit and sandwiches to my next destination – the Pizza Party and Summer Camp Stories Youth event in Penicuik.  The sandwiches went, but I acquired left over pizza. Cakes were offloaded in Bathgate and having retreated home, the spare pizza fed to my children for their dinner after a busy day. So my bag of ‘Diocesan food’ has been well dispersed.

I managed to drive past or pretty close to quite a few of the churches in the Diocese in my 62 mile round trip. There are still plenty I have never visited.   I’m off to St Ninian’s Comely Bank tomorrow morning and will take my two oldest kids as ‘mystery worshippers’. It is always interesting to get their feedback!

In this job, events seem to all come at once and then there follows a period of calm. This is one of those busy weeks!

Synod was good last night. I did a presentation on Messy Church with the help of some others who are currently doing it.  I really liked seeing the genuine enthusiasm of these middle aged men as they talked about the work for families in their churches.  The new treasurer did a good turn too, although I spent most of her talk coveting her dress as I was sure I had seen it in the Boden catalogue that has just dropped through my door and is for looking at ONLY! Moral – be an accountant and you will have money to buy from Boden!

Then there was a group discussion slot about What we are doing about God. I had some big cheeses in my group which made it moderately interesting but I don’t think we got anywhere near answering the posed questions.

When my mind was drifting, I did think we could try a Messy Synod. Instead of everybody having to listen to finance, childrens work, the Bishop…. you could split it all up and let people choose what they went to. People might contribute more and those presenting get more feedback from people who have chosen to engage with that topic. Not sure how you’d feed everybody though. Chippy?

So it’s a Provinical Youth Network meeting tomorrow morning, the Pizza Party and Summer Camp stories youth event in the afternoon and a visit to a church I’ve never been to before on Sunday morning. I’ll need Monday to recover.

Some in our church always had a doubt about whether having a special First Communion service on Halloween was actually a good idea.  All talk of getting dressed up for the occasion has the kids thinking fangs and blood.

I made the mistake of mentioning that somebody special with a pointy hat and a big stick was coming to the service.  Poor Bishop Brian will wonder why the kids are looking out for a wizard and not him!

Having been off the scene for over a year, it is good to meet up with folks I’ve worked with from around the Diocese. Ruth Innes was instituted at Christ Church Falkirk in a joyous and moving service on Friday night where the great and the good were all in attendance. Looking at the start of her new ministry I felt a wee tweak of envy that she has one place and one community to work with.  Being part-time and working across the whole Diocese can make me feel that it is nigh impossible to have an impact in any one place or to really get to know one community.

Maybe I’m getting old, or maybe it is still ‘baby brain’, but I was struggling to remember people’s names at the bun fight afterwards. So many a conversation started with “Great to see you, how’s things and will you please just remind me of your name…”  Even worse are the folks who seem to know me and I would swear I’ve never seen them before in my life.

And then it was First Communion classes on Sunday at St Columba’s Bathgate. One of the Mission and Ministry Committee’s objectives is to produce Confirmation class type material so I was curious to see what my kids would make of it all. In the end it was very short and sweet and to be continued…

Now an Epiphany party to plan, a Pizza party to co-ordinate, a Synod presentation to write  and lots of visits out and about  to let people know I am back.