45 Reasons Why You Should Come to the Youthwork Summit in May
|
Youth Work Summit Musings Part 2: Inspiring Ideas
on Saturday, I attended the youthwork summit in Manchester: An incredible thought provoking, God soaked, challenging and inspiring day.
Over the next few days, I hope to explore what I thought worked well (as well as what didn’t), what inspired and challenged me, what I disagreed with and what, frankly, bored me. sadly I couldn’t make the retreat or the other activities on the Friday so my posts will focus solely on the Saturday event.
So let’s dive in. read part 1 here
With stream 1 finished, we had some time to relax, get some much needed coffee, and for me, spot a number of #ywchat folks that I was too introverted to go and talk to ( @dancrouch, @beccadean, @GabriellaRusso and @easyrew).
After that, we were thrown into session 2: inspiring ideas (another mixed bag).
First up was Jason Royce and the “survival school” initiative. It’s an incredible piece of youth work and it was great to learn more about it. There were two challenges that I took from this talk.
1) what do I do with the young people that I hope WON’T turn up to my youth group.
2) Am I too nice? Have I compromised my boundaries because I want young people to like me?
Challenging stuff.
Up next was a full blown assault by Lyn Edwards as she reflected on “lesson from rural youth work”. With a toilet brush in hand, she spouted forth that no dream is impossible with God and that good youth work breaks all the rules.
As Martin Saunders quipped afterwards, she truly reminded me of OT prophets like Jeremiah and Isaiah with just a hint of John the Baptist about her. On reflection, I think she could be a very difficult person to work alongside but there is no doubt God is doing powerful stuff through her.
Like a tornado she entered and like a tornado she left, leaving the Rend Collective to orchestrate some kazoo worship. As Loyd Harp quipped on twitter:
“Just to clarify . . . “kazoo worship” is not the worship OF kazoos, but worship via kazoos.”
It was then the job of Lat Blaylock to bring us back to reality with his mild mannered talk on “God is missing and is missed here” (the schools work imperative). I was familiar with much of what Blaylock presented as I’ve been to ‘prayer spaces in schools’ workshop and am the proud owner of schoolswork.co.uk art cards but it was still great to hear.
We were challenged to join with God in a divine game of hide and seek in school. Brilliant stuff.
Up next was 90 year old youth worker John Langdon sharing why “youthwork needs grand parents”. From the yws11 hashtag on twitter, it was a clear there was a large number of the audience who wanted to adopt him as their grandpa.He talked about the work he does and the importance of stepping out of your comfort zone.
It was fitting that what followed the oldest youth worker in the UK (probably) was a discussion of the biggest youth event in the UK as Andy Croft shared “Soul Survivor: what we get right and what we got wrong”. Glancing again at the yws11 hashtag on twitter, I couldn’t help but smirk (and feel a little inadequate) as most of the tweets referred to Crofts’ physique. I half expected someone to shout out ‘Get your kit off!”
What Croft managed to do was to turn the question round to us. What do we get right and what do we get wrong in our youth work? Too often church youth workers, including myself, can be guilty of not critically reflecting on their own practice and I think this is essential if we are to keep on course with Gods vision.
Croft also stated that “being attractive and being biblical are not always the same thing” and this is a huge challenge. We need to be continually reflecting on our work and aligning ourselves with what Gods big idea for our work is.
To finish off the second set of seminars, Patsy McKie spoke about “what comes from gangs and guns”. There is no doubt her story is a powerful and dramatic one but honestly I felt this talk was a missed opportunity. Personally I would either liked to have heard more about her story and how she overcame the death of her son or what she actually does.
I felt we got neither of those. disappointing. But again, from speaking to others, I know some people were really challenged and inspired by what she said.
And with that it was time for lunch. Again the session met its aims with a varied mix of talks and there was definitely something for everyone. In my next post I’ll talk about session 3. The most challenging and controversial stream.
Youth Work Summit Musings Part 1: Exploring Culture
on Saturday, I attended the youthwork summit in Manchester: An incredible thought provoking, God soaked, challenging and inspiring day.
Over the next few days, I hope to explore what I thought worked well (as well as what didn’t), what inspired and challenged me, what I disagreed with and what, frankly, bored me. sadly I couldn’t make the retreat or the other activities on the Friday so my posts will focus solely on the Saturday event.
So let’s dive in.
Coming on like a Jesus-centred Mumford and Sons, ‘The Rend Collective Experiment’ blew me away and allowed me to enter into one of the most freeing and worshipful ‘worship times’ I have had in quite sometime. For once my identity wasn’t found in being the church youth worker and the time allowed me to drop my cynical walls and sing and cry to my Creator. I am still reeling from it.
After that blistering worship time, and the introductions were done and dusted, we started in the first stream of talks. The day was split into four of these ‘streams’ and in each, a handful of youth workery types were given between 5 and 15 minutes to ‘wow’ us, challenge us and make us think. The structure was similar to that of the TED events that take place around the world. The first stream of talks centred around the theme of exploring culture.
The first talk had the title “The Messiah wears Prada'”given by Dr Katie Edwards and looked at how advertisers use the biblical images of Jesus and Adam and Eve. Now, I know from speaking to others, that many people took a lot from this talk but throughout the various adverts I was left asking, “so what?”. For me, there was a lot of theory and very little application. I know advertisers use these images but I didn’t really see what I could do with any of the info. Maybe in the comments section people could let me know how they are going to use what was said in their youth work contexts.
Up next was Mark Roques talking about “James Bond and Rat Worship“. After around ten minutes of nonsense, Roques finally got to his point, which was the four responses that people will have to the faith:
1) it’s not scientific so bin it
2) believe what you like
3)believe and worship
4) ignore it and follow Jesus
He then discussed how and why we should help young people engage and be critical of culture. Now, I liked what Roques was saying but felt he could have missed out the james bond and rat stuff and focused more time on the last few points but that’s just me. Again, feel free to disagree in the comments section.
Nathan Shepherd then got up and explored how “facebook is killing youth ministry”
I agree with Shepherds point that those who are part of facebook (and I included myself in that) may be suffering from hyper-connectivity. We have too many friends and want to keep constantly up-to-date with what’s happening which can result in us not being ‘present’ with people in the offline world. I know I am guilty of that. I’ll be sitting with family or friends and I hear a little voice in my head saying,
“just think about all the funny things people might be saying in their status updates. if you don’t log on now you’ll miss the chance to comment and so people won’t get to ‘like’ the next witty thing that you say.”
As I said, I liked what Shepherd said but felt he only covered one side of the argument. What about those who ‘do’ youth work on facebook? Yes, there are downsides to facebook as it pulls us away from ‘eye to eye’ contact but is that any less important than the ‘screen to screen’ contact? Some of the most profound and honest conversations I have had with young people has been online. I feel Shepherd missed a trick there. Nevermind.
As funny as Jo Davenports sale pitch for “i-merging church” was (and for the first few minutes I was sat thinking, “surely this a joke”) I felt the time could have been better spent looking at the issue of facebook and online youth work in more detail.
Next up was “the imagined self in a digital world” with Andrew Graystone. Now, this was more like it! I loved what Graystone was discussing here and his use of the demon possessed man ‘Legion’ in Mark’s gospel was eye opening and engaging. It challenged me on the various avatars that I project online: whether it be twitter, facebook, or this blog and whether they are true representations of my offline self. I think it’s a great challenge for us and the young people we work with.
It also gave me a way of communicating the trinity to young people by speaking of the different avatars of God. I know it may not be theologically robust or entirely orthodox but it’s definitely a good way of introducing young people to the theology of the “3 yet one” God that we serve. fascinating stuff.
Finally, Helen Gatenby gave the impassioned and highly subversive speech, “what are we to make of the riots”. It was a talk that stirred me up inside. She spoke of the injustice of an MP who spent 1000s on expenses such as TVs (yet no action was take against him) in comparison to the teenager who stole an ice cream during the riots and was imprisoned for 16 months!!!
What do we expect of our young people when they see the so-called ‘elite’ stealing and lying?
How can we model a better way? A stirring and challenging way to end the first stream of talks I’m sure you’ll agree.
So it was a mixed bag. There were some talks that inspired me and provoked me and some that simply passed me by. But I think that’s what makes the summit great. Every speaker and topic is not going to engage me. For every talk that bores me someone else will find it compelling. I’d rather spend 90 minutes watching 8 different talks that just one or two.
My next post will focus on the 2nd stream: “inspiring ideas” which was just as mixed as the first stream.
The Art of Subversion
A few weeks ago I got out my soapbox.
I take it everywhere I go and on occasion have been known to put it down, stand on it and shout.
The first reason was the video below:
The second was the fact that a recent christian youth work event had starbucks serving coffee.
I’ll let you in on a little secret before I go any further.
I’m a hypocrite. I was getting annoyed at Christians supposedly getting into bed with the ’empire’ (using iphones for worship and getting coffee from starbucks) even tho I have an iphone and I frequent that particular coffee chain (and enjoy it). I think of myself as fairly progressive but still I was getting annoyed by this.
So I got on my soap box.
I ranted about how christians should not partner with empires. Empires that corrupt and abuse.
Then someone spoke to me about subversion and it got me thinking.
“Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.” Acts 4:12
A famous statement by Peter when he spoke to the Sanhedrin.
What’s interesting is that this quote was used by the Caesars as part of the emperor cult. Except when they said it, it referred to Caesar. Salvation was found in no one else (but Caesar).
Peter took this statement from the Empire and subverted it in the name of Jesus.
The gospel of mark begins:
“the beginning of the gospel about Jesus the Messiah”
The term gospel was used to announce the arrival of a new Caesar. This was a term owned by the Roman Empire. The writer of Mark’s gospel took that term and subverted it.
The band, ‘The Rend Collective Experiment’ took a symbol of the empire, the iphone and subverted it. They took a symbol of consumerism and greed and used it for the glory of God.
Now, I’m not saying there is anything fundamentally wrong or evil about the iphone. I have one after all. But it is a symbol of apple. A symbol of consumerism.
I’m also not saying that the iphone needs ‘redeemed’ in some way as that would suggest that it’s evil or ‘fallen’.
In the same way the youth event took the image of ‘starbucks’ and used it for the glory of God.
I find all of this incredibly interesting and exciting and leaves me with a couple of questions.
What other ways are christians subverting imperial images?
Are there any images that couldn’t be subverted?
