Mark Tiddy’s Blog & Website - Thoughts of a Christian Youth Worker & Musician

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Relient K - Five Iron Frenzy are either dead or dying

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I continue my serious with another top 5, this time things you toast, however still not as yummy as my top 5 good mornings!

Number 5 - A Muffin

Number 4 - A Sandwich

Number 3 - Toasted Bread - AKA Toast - The Hovis Load

Number 2 - The Scotch Pancake

and at number 1….

The Crumpet

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At number 5….
Don’t know her name but the one on the bottom left, female vocalist from pop-punk girl band ‘Tuuli’ who released one album and split up

At number 4….
Amy Lee lead singer of Evanesance, only really entered this list after seeing the video for ‘Call me when your sober’

At number 3…
Kirsten Dunst, actress and all around ‘Good morning’, I still insist Spiderman is stupid for turning her down…

At number 2….
Tammin Sursok ex-’Home and Away’ actress, now model and singer, songs suck, but came very close to beating number 1!

And at number 1…
Jennifer Aniston, star of Friends and several films including ‘The break up’ which, although is crap confirms that she has a nice arse, she arrives in at number one and possibly the oldest in the list…slightly worrying but ‘Good morning’

So bloggers I leave you to ponder on that (yes ponder, nothing else)!!!

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1 - People who automatically assume that screamy music is satanic (usually Christians)
2 - Christians who call themselves Christians yet don’t believe they need to go to church and think it’s fine to go out get drunk and generally fit in with what everyone else does
3- Not being able to sleep when really tired
4- French Cars
5- The bit on guitars where you plug the lead in coming loose!

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Ian gets hit by a low flying hoola hoop

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But having had a serious listen to Busted recently and bought both albums for under £3 from amazon market place (yes 2 albums & p & p for under £3) I think that musically they’re quite good and I am converted.

If you now feel the urge to pray for my taste in music feel free to, but at the end of the day it’s a ‘whatever floats your boat’ kinda thing, my taste seems to be getting even more varied, everything from Ramstein and System of a down up to busted and christina aquilera and everything in between!

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This blog is about a topic which I briefly meantioned in this previous post but am about to go into in more detail.

It seems to me that we are in a society where grades seem to matter, in a society where students are put under huge pressure to succeed academically, whether it’s at GCSE’s or A-Level, we’re in a society where experience is almost counted for nothing and getting a degree is the way to success, forcing thousands of students to end up in large sums of debt and I think that although grades do have a part to play in life it’s more of a case, in our society of life having a part to play in grades.

Even in youth work where a key value is emphasised as ‘informal education’, educating without the classroom or formality, without the exams secular government organisations want to see results from youth work departments expressed as certificates or formal achievements, telling them that a young person has given up drugs or drinking as much isn’t good enough, a certificate to show key skills is!

In my opinion this is ridiculous, life isn’t about grades and exams, and young people shouldn’t be put under such pressure to succeed academically, yes they should be encouraged but they need to learn life lessons at the same time. They need to learn social skills and more importantly they need to know that failing GCSE’s isn’t the end of the world.

In my opinion too many young people are made to feel pressured and stressed by the pressure of exams, there is talk of SATS for year 3, how ridiculous! They’re children, they should be having fun, I even think the year 6 SATS are pointless.

All the pressure to succeed academically seems to be leaving the less clever children and young people feeling like failures, and depressed, this shouldn’t be happening. God has made every single person with a purpose, not all of them to be clever but to have an individual purpose. He doesn’t care if you failed GCSE’s he still has a purpose for you. Jesus didn’t go out and pick clever people, he picked simple fishermen, yes he picked clever tax collecters but not all his disciples were smart. The book of Mark was written in terrible Hebrew, the guy could barely string a sentence together but God used him. The fact is God doesn’t want us all to be clever A Grade students, he made us all to be unique, and I think the self worth is something society needs to get back hold of, not judging people on their grades but on them as a person, on their talents and on their personal achievements whether it’s giving up smoking or having a degree!

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“And then Simon Peter stodd up before the other 11 and Jesus, lifted the plate and proclaimed ‘Let us now take a love offering for Jesus’ “

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So I started typing this the other day but blogger crashed, so I shall start again.

It seems that in Christian Culture at the moment ‘Worship should be a lifestyle seems to be the buzz phrase if you like, particually in a Christian Youth Culture, it seems frowned upon to be a Sunday Christian and Jesus is being promoted as a 24/7 kinda committment, which is good…

before I go into more depth on what I think ‘Worship as a lifestyle’ is, here’s a cartoon

I like cartoonchurch.com, it makes me smile!

So what is worship as a lifestyle?

In a nutshell worship as a lifestyle is WWJD (*cringe at corny Christian phrase*), it’s about trying to act like Jesus 24/7 and showing your committment in both your words and actions, this doesn’t mean preaching 24/7 or muttering tongues constantly, nor does it mean shutting yourself away in a little Christian box only doing Christian things, with Christian people, not watching any TV or any of those worldly things satan places to stop us having a good relationship with God, and of course this follows the model of Jesus…or does it?

To anyone who thinks being a Christian means avoiding all non-Christians you are wrong!
In my opinion a 21st Century Jesus would be down the local pub with his disciples (who of course would become his homies!), playing pool, chatting to the locals, performing miricles every so often, pint in his hand, because Jesus liked a drink, but he didn’t get drunk (a model I wish all Christians would follow), he mixed with normal people, he even mixed with the prostitutes (a modern day version of this could perhaps be xxxchurch.com whose ministry is to convert porn stars). Jesus would be out there getting stuck in, he’d bring the latest victim of gun crime back to life, he’d turn tables in the church’s who have it all wrong, he’d completely piss off the Catholics, and the anglicans and the baptists and the evangelicals, not intentionally but because he’s teaching would be so radical and so spot on!

So is that what we’re called to do when we’re told to ‘Worship as a lifestyle’? The answer: yes & no, our mission is not to piss off the church’s, our mission is to follow Jesus and to love our neighbours, yes sometimes it might mean saying things people aren’t going to like, turn a few metaphorical (or literal) tables but in love and according to God’s will.

Before I explore futhur I feel a definition of worship is needed, my friend dictionary.com says this:

1.	reverent honor and homage paid to God or a sacred personage, or to any object regarded as sacred.

2.	formal or ceremonious rendering of such honor and homage: They attended worship this morning.

3.	adoring reverence or regard: excessive worship of business success.

4.	the object of adoring reverence or regard.

To be honest I’m going to pass the first two, and meantion the third and forth, which meantion adoring something, so worship is basically adoring something, some people may adore a footballer, others a celebrity, others their awesome pastor, some people adore God.

So as you can guess worship as a lifestyle means to constantly adore God, and what does that mean? Well to be perfectly honest adoring something doesn’t mean doing everything they say, if I adored Jennifer Aniston (which I don’t but mmmmmmm…), I wouldn’t do everything she said, if she was on TV and said ‘Well I think we should all hate George Cloony’ I wouldn’t hate him, and likewise adoring God doesn’t mean we have to do everything he says, however God’s kinda odd because not only are we called to worship him but firstly we are called to love him, and this is where it gets tricky.

When you love a boyfriend or girlfriend (in my case the latter), you want to make them happy, you don’t want to upset them, and yes they do get upset sometimes but you try not to, and it’s like that with God, if we love Him then we shouldn’t want to do anything to upset him, so we shouldn’t get drunk because God doesn’t like it, we should avoid witchcraft, we should avoid sexual immorality, worshipping other Gods etc etc.

When you put these two things together, ‘Worship as a lifestyle’ and ‘loving God’, you get a Christian I guess, worship as a lifestyle means nothing more than adoring God and showing that, we sing songs in Church, or at cell groups etc like footballers chant to their team, to show their adoration and commitment, and yes (as monty pointed out on a previous posts comment), you don’t have to be in a church to do that, you can walk along a beach praying which can show adoration to God, you can be at home with a guitar, worship as a lifestyle is showing adoration to God constantly, loving God is the whole WWJD thing.

So on that note I’m going to end my long rambling blog, I hope it makes sense!

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I’ve just watched part of a programme/ documentary on the increase of gun crime and general crime in young people and it got me thinking.

This programme was based upon youth in manchester where the gun crime is double anywhere else in the whole country.

The first part of the programme interviewed a lady who watched Youth’s gather outside her home, accross the road and vandalise cars, windows etc, so she installed her own CCTV camera to help gather evidence to help protect her neighbours from this mindless vandalism, of course every so often the police came along and gave them ASBO’s, now I have two problems with this, as a Youth Worker.

The first problem is that ‘why is it always the troublesome few that give youth a bad name?’, yes, there are young people out there who do drugs, who vandalise and are generally horrible however they are a minority, many young people who hang out on streets are there because they want to meet their friends and there’s no where else to go, most of them are happy sitting down or standing up and socialising, the generalisation that all street kids (in a non-homeless sense) carry guns, vandalise and are generally unpleasent creates a bad generalisation to the point where people are scared to walk on the same side of the road as them for fear of being attacked, this media-induced fear is silly, for every one person who is attacked by youths I suspect there are at least 100 who have walked past without the youth evening thinking about attacking.

The second problem I have is ASBO’s, the programme interviewed a policeman who said it shows the young people they can’t mess with the law and get away with it, however I think an ASBO proves that they can, yes they have a bit of paper saying they can’t go to a particular street but hey, there’s always another place. I don’t claim to have the solution to the problem but I do know that ASBO’s aren’t, they’re not a solution, they are merely shifting the problem.

The whole issue of why this crime has gone up is beyond me, young people do statistically get more experienced younger now, for example it is proven that girls hit puberty much young than previous generations. However this ‘urge to grow up and feel important’ among young people seems to have great consequences, for example, the idea of say a gun or a knife would make a young person feel important and grown up, however they don’t have the maturity to cope with it, in Spiderman Peter Parker’s uncle says ‘With great power comes great responsibility’ and to an extent I think this applies here, yes a gun or knife may make a young person feel secure and responsible and grown up however it comes with a great responsibility.

My final thought on this matter takes the Christian stand, and part of me wonders if this is due to the amount of ‘wrecked’ homes, with the divorce rate on the increase, along with single mums, kids without 2 parents surely it’s not doing the kids any good, either to be shipped between houses, lose mum’s attention whilst she’s with her new boyfriend etc. It just doesn’t seem to be how God intended, God intended a male parent and a female parent, married for a purpose, yes even kids with 2 parents in the bible stuffed up and did stupid things (Cain and Able for example), however part of me thinks that this may be something to do with the reasoning behind this youth crime increase. I also think another reason for this could well be down to the pressure that is put onto young people in schools, with increasing pressure to do exams, coursework, revision and take as many GCSE’s as you can cram into a day, I think it makes the kids who aren’t as brainy have a real lack of self worth, in a world where things are measured by grade, so perhaps this gun culture could link to this to.

Anyway those are just some thoughts

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Hello readers,
In reply to my last two blogs which seem to have raised a lot of comments, either questioning my thinking or not understanding the point of the post (dave!) I thought I’d make an explanation post.

Remberance Sunday
I think perhaps my wording on this was quite bad, and the points people raised do make sense, and Laura, thank you for your comment which makes more sense than all the others.

I agree that the bible says there is a time for sorrow etc, and I would be the last person to say ‘i you feel crap you’re not a Christian’, and I don’t think everyone should go to church a happy bunny, we should be honest with God. However I think the whole thing and basics of my original post go down to the ‘I can’t relate to it thing’, which in all honesty is a fairly pathetic arguement and kinda goes against everything I think church shouldn’t be (if that makes sense), by which I mean that I don’t think church should be about me, me me, but about us us us, and I guess just because it’s something I don’t relate to doesn’t mean it’s pointless, just means at the time of blogging I fail to see the point. So take this post as an apology if I offended you by my original post.

Church

My post about ‘what I don’t get about church’, was more of a pondering, I think in my mind I wanted to think if there was something about church that attracted people other than God (as in God attracting people whether they realise it or not), and I think unless you’re a ‘all the hype money can buy’ (to quote benvolio) and therefore a ‘Sheep-Shuffling’ church then there is nothing about the church (or nothing obvious) that does attract people other than God, and to be perfectly honest I think to an extent that’s how church should be, churchs like PCC, Proclaimers, Audacious and various others seem to almost go for the ‘Jesus plus’ option, there is nothing wrong with it, as long as the church stays focused on God not ‘look at our massive screen and awesome P.A’, I think these things can really help a church (and I know I’m going around in circles) but by it being attractive it’s more likely to be noticed (like Jennifer Aniston!!!). I guess it’s back to my old thought circle about these mega churches, and whether they help or hinder worship, and to be honest I don’t think there’s an answer other than, depends on the church and how they do it, same goes for the less hyped churchs, if they do it well people will benefit, if not then perhaps not so many, but at the end of the day it’s where the heart of the worshipper is at, if I go to church thinking ‘This will be crap’ or ‘Can’t be arsed to worship today’ then chances are I wont try much, might just murmer songs, doodle in the sermon and not get anything, but if I go to church with a mind thinking ‘I’m gonna worship God with all my heart no matter how crap I feel today’ then I will benefit from it, not because God will definately speak to me but because it makes him first, King David’s psalms sometimes go along these lines ‘God, everything sucks, but you’re good, you’re amazing and I’m going to praise you anyway’ and I think that’s where our hearts should be as Christians…

Anyway…ramble and apologies over

Posts coming soon: The Top 5 ‘Good Mornings’ and ‘Worship…a lifestyle?’

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So today was rememberance sunday and people who wouldn’t normally go to church did, people stopped at 11 to stand silent for two minutes, the whole of britain probably virtually stopped…but why?

Okay, so 80odd years ago lots of people went to war (in my opinion war can never be justified! (but that’s another story…or blog)), and died whilst fighting and whether we want to admit it or not it’s thanks to them today we’re not all german!

But more people die than that from say poverty or aids in a year (I suspect) yet we don’t remember them, they don’t have a choice to have it it just happen.

I guess the point I’m trying to make is that surely there is no point in rememberance sunday? We should go to church to praise God and learn more about him, I don’t think I could sit here and type that we shouldn’t have rememberance sunday but I just don’t see the point, yes people died but it happens all the time, we don’t need one day to remember it, if people want to remember it they can do it whenever, why have a somber church service? Why not celebrate for those soldiers who believed in Jesus and are in heaven? I truly believe that God would rather we celebrated than had a somber service!

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Okay firstly this excludes all the hyped up churches

But thing thing I honestly don’t get about Church is why people go? I know as a Christian the obvious answer is people and God but I think if someone was asked to pin point why they go to church rather than say the pub with the same people.

Church, most the time can have a fairly low standard of music, a group of people you wouldn’t normally dream of spending time with, worries about the tiniest of things (such as microphone batteries and one being put away in the wrong place), the fact is though there’s something about Churches, no matter how many boring litergy, old organ hymns, moaning people and boring preachers happen to be there something attracts people and it’s a mystery!

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