children

Quick Quotes

thehutch, , , , , , ,
“Life involves commitment, responsibility, dedication, persistence, and hard work”
Zig Ziglar
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“A sunny disposition is the very soul of success, enabling a man to do double the labour that he could without it, and to do half the physical and mental exhaustion.”
William Mathews
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“There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.”
Edith Wharton
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“Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they’ve never failed to imitate them.”
James Baldwin

 

Silence Children in Church

thehutch, ,

A little while ago, on my personal twitter stream, I tweeted the following:

“At baptism/dedication we welcome children into family of church to spend rest of childhood in a back room while adults do church. Why?”

There were a few re-tweets and 2 comments in response – not overwhelming when you consider the millions that are on twitter but interesting nonetheless.  One of the reasons that I asked the question was that the words of welcome we use appear to last for the one service (in some churches anyway!) and wonder why they fall off the radar at a later age.  I do not have a solution but there seems to be a problem that needs solving – off to find resolution.

segregating children

thehutch, ,

This tweet from @samrdonoghue was very challenging:

“When a church segregates children they show a greater confidence in the liturgies of the classroom than the formative practices of community”

This quote strikes me because it comes at a time where I am questioning the way many churches do much of the children/youth ministry.  It is a beautiful quote but I am sure that it provokes a wide variety of response from different types of people.

Get your Kids through Church

thehutch, , , , ,

Am on the way home from Cambridge after an evening with Care for the Family and Rob Parsons. It was a good night and worth the trek from London. I thought that I would use the journey home to write a blogpost on the iPod.

I have to confess that my initial thoughts were that I would not like it and be rather cynical. The first few minutes supported this theory as the sound was not great and the ott adverts are not my thing but it would have been fine for the mainly white middle class attendees (well it is Cambridge!!)

My cynicism was ready to overflow until phatfish led us in some worship and my heart melted somewhat. As always, they were excellent and they overcame deficiencies in the sound with seeming effortlessness.

Rob Parsons spoke with a proliferation of stories and sound bytes that hit the nail on the head – for many youthworkers there was little that we have not said before but Robs voice is heard and people will likely act – it needed to be said. Without doubt he won me over – children need our time, every word counts, invest in youth etc.

I probably would not rush back but there are many for whom this would be important. For that I am thankful and grateful. My cynicism was crushed beneath a banner of hope. Thank God for people speaking truth in our churches.

As a footnote, some video clips of youthworkers made me smile – they spoke of time with young people, would love them to listen to Steve Griffiths at ywc11 – may challenge them 😉

these are rushed thoughts written on an iPod in the immediate aftermath of a busy day so may make little sense. Hope that they read ok