My God is a good God!

Alternatively titled: God’s wonderful world – that we live in and that we love to learn about! So what is your favourite view on the whole earth? Where is your favourite place to be? God made that place, and all the places in fact. What have you learned about this week/month/year that surprised you? Here’s just a few facts for you and you can probably give me hundreds more!

·         On average 100 lightning strikes occur worldwide every second.

·         The oceans contain 99 percent of the living space on the planet.

·         The Nile River in Africa is the longest river (6,825 kilometers) on the earth.

·         The human eye detects 10 million colours

·         Your thumb is the same length as your nose

If our world is so amazing now, what might it have been like without the stuff that goes wrong?

God’s plan for his wonderful world is something debated by people all over the world from all nationalities, backgrounds, faiths and theological views! I’m not going to pretend I know better than any of them. However I think we can probably agree that God wants us (all of humanity) to live lives that are God-centred, that love Him wholeheartedly and that glorify Him in ALL circumstances.

Jesus is the key to this plan. Many of you reading this will know of Jesus but do you really know Jesus for yourself? Have you looked for Him? Have you stepped out in faith?

Who introduced you to Jesus? Maybe it was your parents, maybe your grandparents, your best friend, your spouse or partner, your kids, your teacher. Those of us who know Jesus, who walk the walk of faith, were introduced by someone. So the fact of the matter is that each of us who know Him have the responsibility to pass that on to someone else. How will people meet Jesus unless we tell them about him? After all “Faith without works is dead”. If we say we believe but do nothing we are just a shell of a person, just a clanging bell or crashing cymbal on its own.

Christians in schools, whether they are pupils, teachers, head teachers, governors,  readers, cleaners, dinner servers, playground supervisors or visitors, have a role to play in helping their friends, charges and co-workers find out about Jesus. And there are lots of ways we can do this! Talking to our friends about Church, about the things we believe in, about the things that Jesus has done for us; offering to pray for people when it’s appropriate; being a good friend to others, even those we find difficult; being a responsible colleague or worker, going the extra mile in our work.

Finally if you are a youthworker and not involved in your local school can I urge you to find out about how you can get involved? Maybe you have a schools work organisation in your town you could turn to. Maybe you have contacts within your church who are teachers or other school people you could ask how you might best serve your local school. Ask God to direct you and start by making enquiries.

And may God bless you as you work out your own role in telling people about Jesus!

We love our Youth Worker!

I am, at heart, a youthworker. I have been one all of my adult working life. Even through 5 years as a teacher I was still a youthworker. Even though now my average contact hours on a weekly basis with those over the age of 10 is in single digits, I am a youthworker. I believe passionately in young people: their outlook on life; their energy; their honesty. I have been in the privileged position to stand alongside a whole bunch of teens who are now in their twenties through some hard situations.

So youthworkers don’t do politics right? Especially Church Politics… Except that if we have our eye on the long game, if we want what we do to last, to be sustainable, Church Politics aka Working With Others, should be the first thing on our list. I have been reading ‘Sustainable Youth Ministry’ by Mark Devries and honestly if you are in youthwork, especially (though not exclusively) if you’re in Church based youth ministry, this is a book to be read. With a notebook and pen next to you, one chapter at a time while you pause in between to decide how the bit you’ve just read relates to your own group. It is fantastic and one of the things that the book recommends is learning to play ‘Church Politics’.

So much of what we think do and say is about or affected by expectations. Whether we wear them on our sleeves or hid them under layers of politeness and/or insecurity, what we expect of other people in our lives makes a massive difference to our overall outlook and attitude to life. Learning to live without expectations of others can mean success instead of failure, across the whole spectrum of life.

Knowing the people you work with enough to be able to get alongside them and encourage them in what they do is a sure way to make life much happier! Understanding what makes people tick and how to work with them instead of having to fight a battle to get your opinions heard has got to be the best plan for working relationships. Now don’t read me wrong, I’m not talking about manipulating people, I’m not suggesting we simply get to know someone so that we can get the best out of them in a selfish way. I am saying that we ought to get to know those we work with and for in order that those relationships can work for the best for all concerned.

I am a youthworker and I will play the ‘politics’ game, but call it Working With Others and do it in love and out of respect for those I work with and for.