Recently in Christian interest Category

Have you ever heard the story of a guy, trapped on his roof after his whole street gets hit by a major flood - Being a Christian, he prays that God would save him. Some time later a lifeboat comes past, offers to help, and the man replies "no, God's gonna save me!!" Then a helicopter flies by and offers to help, but the guy says the same again, after 4 declined offers of rescue, the guy falls from the roof and drowns. On getting to the pearly gates, The man asks God, "Why didn't you save me?" to which God replies "What do you mean? I sent you a lifeboat, a helicopter....".

So, what does that have to do with anything, I hear you ask...

Well, we've been asking God for a while now to help us with the whole housing thing, and it kinda feels that over the last week or so, we've been offered a lifeboat and now a helicopter.

I can't really say much about the lifeboat, but the helicopter is an offer of a rent-free 2 bedroom house just down the road. It's really quite an unbelievable offer, but still means committing to Rugby for the forseeable future, rather than the planned move to Coventry.

The big question is, is this God trying to help us, or a cunning ploy of the other guy to keep us out of Coventry?

And can we really risk the potential of drowning when I'm still on a 6 month probation period at YFC?

As usual, your thoughts are really appreciated on this one, as we need to make a decision (again) pretty quick smart.

I'll keep you posted!!

It's been a while, but I'm back, and this time I'm slightly baffled!!

For those of you that don't know, after spending the last few months working through various issues of Leadership and Life-Planning I decided it may be time to move on from NSYFC so started looking at (and applying for) various youth-type roles. As yet, I still remain unconvinced whether my future is in church based youth ministry, a YFC centre based role, or something completely different - all I do know is that I need to work that out within the next 2 months.

Having had several long conversations with Liz at NSYFC, I can now officially tell you that I leave my role at NSYFC at the end of August this year. What that means in the short term is that we need to work on selling our house (there aren't many youth worker roles around in Stoke at the mo) and looking to God and the jobs pages for ideas regarding our futures.

One thing I know for sure, is that God has big plans for our futures and I'm actually really excited about the possibilities that lie ahead. Believe it or not, this is a very positive situation to be in. I just kinda wish I knew what God's plans were NOW (but apparently he doesn't often work like that).

Anyway,  keep praying for us as we work out what's next on the journey, and if you feel the need to don a paint brush and work overalls for a few hours at any point, you know where we live.

Ciao for now dudes (and dudettes)

Happy StarWars day everyone!!

It's been FAR TOO LONG since my last blog post, but here I am, talking to the world again.

I can't believe how busy my last few weeks have been. I mean, I usually like to keep myself busy, but I remember waking up two Tuesdays ago and just thinking "I have no idea how I'm gonna get to the end of this week".

The three big things have been a 2 day event at Lichfield cathedral called "log on 2 God", seeing around 200 high school pupils wandering round the old cathedral and playing giant versions of Rock, Paper, Scissors with them. I also got the opportunity to speak to many of them about issues concerning self image and how the media distorts what real beauty is.

That was the really fun bit. But then, in the same week I had another trip to the north east for the leadership training course I'm on. It was pretty amazing really, but also baked my noggin within 2 minutes of arriving. More about that (hopefully) on my other blog www.realyouth.net/good2great.

It was a cool few days, and my old friend Dave from Scotland came down so he could travel with me, which meant that as usual he stayed till the saturday, (but got the right train this time).  And finally, on the Friday, my other friend, James, came to visit so he could help with a big puppet training day at a church in Market Drayton last Saturday. It was a really good day - but puppet stuff always is. I've developed a bit of a puppet bug again. they're now all over the house. James left on Sunday after printing a few GrannyMechanics T-shirts and missing his train back to sheffield due to annoying roadworks.

Anyway, last sunday we went to our old church, St James, in the village for a christening. It was weird to be back there after nearly a year, but not a lot has changed.

And that's about all - oh, except for producing a new newsletter to send out to friends and family (if I like you, you should get one in the post - if you don't get one, well, that says a lot doesn't it) and the youth leaders' lunch that I organised for this Thursday - a really productive meeting, even if only 2 of the 8 people turned up.

So, I hear you asking, what has any of that got to do with the title of this blog? Well, let me explain...

The worship leader (Paul) of our present church called on Friday to ask if I'd be willing to play at the service today, and of course I jumped at the chance. As it turned out, every (planned) song was in the key of E, so for some variation I figured I'd get out my old trusty Foote Capo. It's basically a Krysler capo, with the rubber that would normally press down the low E and two high strings cut away. It's really fun to play and produces some lovely drone effects. I've played around with it quite a lot since I made it in 2003, but today was the first time I've used it in a corporate worship setting since I first made it for a youth event in Rugby.

Well, I think that's the last 2 weeks covered. I now have to go and re-format my laptop as it's running slower than a sloath snail. Joy Joy.

May 4th be with you!!