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

Despite claiming that the Sheffield SPCK would re-open 2 weeks ago and nothing happening it seems SSG (new trust running spck) are making yet another promise…they claim this time that SPCK will re-open from tomorrow (1st March) with new opening hours…I wonder how it’ll work with no staff…

And secondly having listened to a little bit of Delirious here are 2 comments on some lyrics…

‘I want to go deeper but I don’t know how to swim’ - firstly if you don’t know how to swim perhaps it’s easier to go deeper because when you drown…you’ll sink…if however dying is not your thing I advise staying on the surface buying some arm bands.

‘I could dance a thousand miles’ - I’m sure he could dance a thousand miles but I can’t help but feel it would make more sense to walk, catch a train or drive..

(If you don’t get the humour don’t worry because every other person reading this probably doesn’t either!)

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Since blogging this morning on fairtrade cola I have since discovered that by going onto the ubuntu cola website - click here for link. You can print off a letter which you can fill in and give to your local supermarket…can I encourage everyone who reads this blog to go to the site, print off say five for each supermarket you regually visit and give them to friends and family asking them to hand the letters in to the supermarket.

Also I’ve discovered that Sheffield University sell it, so tomorrow (I’m in Sheffield for the day) I shall go in search of it and tell you if it tastes good or bad….fairtrade cola here I come…

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If you don’t know we are into the first week of fairtrade fortnight…Sainsbury’s are currently offering triple points on fairtrade products and in the last year we’ve seen more and more fairtrade products hit our shelves…however not enough!

I’d like to encourage you to all try and buy fairtrade where possible, most supermarkets now have fairtrade bananas, grapes, coffee, oranges, tea, fruit juice and chocolate with others (namely sainsburys) now including individual chocolate bars on the end of aisles, clothing, sugar and other products…

Most of the fairtrade support comes from Sainsbury’s and The CO-OP with ASDA and Tesco doing the bare minimum…for example all the hot drinks in Sainsbury’s Cafe’s are now fairtrade as are ALL of Sainsbury’s bananas.

In the news today (the metro) I’ve read that Fairtrade Cola is becoming available…which is brilliant because the ethics of Coca Cola and Pepsi are pretty bad…Pepsi being the better one.

Although at the moment I cannot find anywhere online to buy this other than The Drink Shop (link), I’d imagine that Ethical Superstore will be stocking it soon - link to ethical superstore

In the mean time I think it’s time to start pushing our supermarkets to start stocking it…why not write to them? or if you see me regually I have lots of ‘Dear store manager’ fairtrade postcards which I can pass on for you to bombard your supermarket with.

Finally if you go to The Ethical Superstore you can buy Fairtrade Easter Eggs…and actually they’re pretty much the same price as Supermarket Easter Eggs…so buy someone a fairtrade easter egg!

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                                                        Joel being the genius he is has observed that not only is our Olympic logo the worst in the word but if you imagine that the right hand 2 shapes is Lisa Simpson then you’ll notice she appears to be fallating a headless man…brilliant!!!

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So today at uni we’re doing presentations in front of each other, these are either in the form of an assembly, an all age sermon or a youth group talk…now yes it’s good for us to practice and learn how to do things like this but here’s where the good point ends…

Writing the sermon

The main problem I’ve had writing the sermon for today is not being able to really picture what the people watching it will expect…every church does all age talks very differently and to use the beatitudes in an all age seems slightly silly to me as there’s so much in it…it should be as part of a series really!

My solution to this was to write the talk as if presenting to Park Road and write a service plan so I could see where the whole service would go.

The Presenting

The actual presenting of the all age sermon is not in front of a church but actually in front of around 10 fellow students and 2 tutors…thus taking away all authenticity from the sermon both in presenting and in receiving which equally annoys me.

The Judging

Perhaps this is the cynic in me however I do feel that the way the presentations are going to be marked will be based in part by the marker’s view of what an all age sermon is and perhaps not without understanding what our placements are like etc.

Overall as you’ve probably gathered from this early rant I think this whole thing is pretty pointless and annoying…putting a serious situation into a classroom losing authenticity and all point!

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I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the McDondaldisation of church. At Park Road we’re currently doing the 40 days of community which is the follow-up to Rick Warren’s 40 Days Of Community which we did at Park Road 2 years ago.

For those who don’t know the 40 days series are written by Rick Warren and consist of Sunday Sermons revolving around a particular weeks theme, home groups being based on the theme too, usually with a mini sermon by Mr Warren himself via video ad then there’s a daily reading.

In fairness it’s probably no different in principal to other ready to use church material such as Alpha…of course like all of this it needs adapting, for example Rick Warren’s sermon outlines are 23 page scripts with lots of americanisms. As a principal I can see how the 40 days of purpose have changed Park Road for the better, we now have house groups (which were launched through the 40 days of purpose) and some people entered more into the fellowship as a result, and the same way I suspect that the 40 days of community will do a similar thing….however the more of these things we have the more franchised a church seems to be.

You can go to any McDonald’s in the world and essentially buy the same thing (I purposely refrain from using the word food) and my fear is that church will become the same, yes perhaps it will be contextualised for a situation however surely Paul’s letters help us to realise that every church is different and needs different things addressing….otherwise would he not have sent the same letter to all?

I’m torn between being pro these series that any church can use and being anti…and I think much like youth work resources it depends how they’re used. I think they encourage us to be lazy…however at the same time from what Tim has said it’s far more difficult adapting Rick’s huge script than writing a sermon, so perhaps it gets more preparation. The same way with Alpha essentially it’s a good thing and has been a huge success however when it becomes the ‘be all and end all’ of outreach for a church it loses it’s purpose in my opinion.

At the end of the day series can help a church look forward, start new things and be challenged, it can provide excitement about church, encouraging people to read daily, or come to church more regually…but I think we need to seriously personalise things like this to the individual church and congregations needs.

Comments are appreciated….

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Today my A to Z has entered me onto the letter D (roughly a letter per week of my itunes adventure so far), and I have been listening to ‘The Darkness’ and surprisingly their second album wasn’t as awful as I remember it being, Justin Hawkins is still too squeaky on it and the first album is still way better…but it’s not as bad as I remember.

I also listened to the Dakona album who were a Christian rock band who’s album I bought because it was very cheap and they looked rocky and it’s such a good album…so search Dakona on ebay everyone and buy the album!

Thirdly I have updated my music page on the blog and also my music myspace (my social friendly myspace no longer exists!)

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Despite very minor SPCK updates (Chester SPCK remains open btw) a week off has led to a lack of blogging, I have 2 sermons to write one for church, one for uni all ideally by wednesday (uni one definately by wednesday) I also have lots of things I want to blog on…not happening yet though…I think when this weeks done blogging will resume.

My week off was fun, some time in Sheffield, some in Chester, fun times in both…was good to see Jo (as always) and was also good to catch up with Hayley, Rachel and Shane in Chester…and spend until 5 in the morning talking to Hayley…ah late nights and catch ups are good.

Only other thing to say is that I might be becoming famous…my SPCK photos which also appeared on Dave Walker’s blog might appear in Premier Christian Magazine under an article on SPCK…get me!

This is Mark bringing the awesome to my blog….off, over and out!

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The SPCK in Sheffield remained closed this morning despite the sign on the door stating that it would re-open today…also SPCK norwich was on the news: link (link stole from cartoonchurch)

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Although I appreciate none of you are interested I am and seem to have put a reporters hat today, between my last update blog and this blog I have wandered into Sheffield and had a look at the SPCK, and lo and behold…it’s closed (CLC wasn’t and they had a sale though!), however a sign on the door/window indicates that it will be opening again on the 18th feb, which is good because it shows hope for christian bookshops!

Photos (click for large versions)

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I have added the Last FM plugins to the right hand side instead of the text version of what I’ve been listening too…adds some colour and fun to the blog.

I have also updated the blog roll..

I plan on blogging today so I shall return later…

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Prior to my previous blog I have had a couple of comments, one from the Rev Tim Ball who is the vicar of the church in Essex offering free weddings (Holy Trinity Springfield), he corrected part of my blog so I thought I’d post the comment;

free Weddings for more than just worshippers!!
Not true, Mark Tiddy, that we are only offering a wedding at no cost only to regular worshippers. It is for anyone who lives in the Parish whether they are members of the church or not. It is a genuine offer and already taken up.
We cannot offer it wider than our parish because we are legally constrained in that respect. People who live in other parishes are in other vicar’s care.

I don’t think I ever meant to imply that it should be open wider than the parish, however didn’t really clarify! To add onto my previous comments on the idea I think it is a brilliant idea, especially now I understand it is to all parishioners (I must have misread Dave Walker’s blog), the idea of offering weddings for free in order to promote the idea and give Tim Ball a chance to share the gospel with the couples is brilliant…regular readers will know I love it when churches do something positive…so brownie points and blessings to Holy Trinity Springfield!

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This last week has seen a few fairly big things within Christian circles and so I thought I’d produce a bit of a round up of events.

Rowan Williams - Of course the huge debate started by Rowan Williams is by far the biggest Christian news this week, however I haven’t read much on it, believe he has been took well out of context and therefore will brush over the topic!

SPCK Shops Closing - As a regular reader of Dave Walker’s Blog (Cartoon Church) alongside reading the Network Norwich website the closing of SPCK shops across the country saddens me, in particular the way it has been done. St Stephen The Great Charitable Trust took over SPCK after SPCK was in trouble, however within the last two weeks numerous SPCK’s including Norwich, Sheffield and Canterbury have been closing…the staff in Norwich and Sheffield were sacked by e-mail after disagreeing to signing a new contract sent by the trust.

I think although we can buy everything Christian online now whether it’s through Wesley Owen, Amazon, eBay or newly launched ‘Shop ZETO’ it’s sad to see Christian bookshops closing from our highstreets because their presence I’m sure has made it easier for searchers to find helpful books, bibles etc. I also think it’s very sad that a Christian trust can treat employees so badly (See this article). For more on the SPCK situation I advice reading ‘Dave Walker’s Blog’ as he has been following and covering this topic for months - link

Free Weddings

Once again something from Dave Walker’s blog interested me, when he reports that an Essex Church Offers free weddings.

It’s interesting because although in essence it sounds good, it’s actually an offer only open to regular worshippers.

Dave Walker contacted the churches vicar to find out the reasons behind this ‘free marriage offer’.

The reverened of the church states this as reasons for the free weddings.

• We want to say how important we think marriage is, best for couples, best for children, best for society.
• We want to express our faith in generous giving - we don’t want to say we will ‘do it for Free’ - but that we will ‘pay for it’ because we have to pay the fees to the diocese, to the organist and for the verger etc, - so it is not just a case of not collecting the fee payable to the PCC.
• We would like to highlight the fact that the Christian marriage service expresses a higher ideal of committed love than any other wedding service.
• We hope we might encourage couples who aren’t married to consider it, or even to do it.
• We want to put our money where our mouth is - in that sense it is sacrificial, we see it as an investment in the kind of society we would like to see as bearing the marks of the kingdom of God.

(Taken from cartoonchurch.com)

I think that these reasons for doing it are good, I believe that by promoting marriage and using it as a chance to express the churches opinion of marriage and share their faith positively is a good idea, however I wonder if opening it only to regular worshippers makes it a bit cliquey. Obviously doing it for all could provide a ridicuous amount of work for the church and also not be very do-able…however I wonder if there’s a way to open it a bit more.

Anyway…that’s the Christian news I’m sharing for this week, I’m still working on various updates for Stand for Christ including a new, packed youthwork resource section and restoring the CD Reviews section (it’s only took me almost a year!). I have a week off from this evening which’ll be nice, few days in Sheffield with Jo, few in Chester visiting Hayley and hopefully Shane and Rachel too. Hopefully a marriage blog will surface soon…the essex church thing is getting me thinking more about it so watch this space.

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So here is the low-down of what’s happened this last week in Mark land.

1- Spring Harvest - my place on the spring harvest youth evangalism team is sorted…I’m no longer in skeggy but in minehead which is a shame and means a 6 hour drive but I’m looking forward to Spring Harvest

2- Oasis gave us the modules to choose from for next year and they look pretty cool, we had to think of dissatation ideas too so I’m pondering on emerging church and ways which young people relate to church.

3- I have a sore throat…I have a complete lack of voice, a sore throat, and currently a lemsip, I’m meant to be leading worship tomorrow evening at church so I may or may not be able to sing!

4- I’m looking forward to a week off - from thursday I start a whole week off….starting with a few days in Sheffield with the wonderful Joanna before moving onwards to Chester to catch up with hayley (and hopefully shane and rachel).

5- My itunes tour has took me past blink 182 and bowling for soup, both of which lasted forever and I’m not onto the letter C with the likes of Christina, The Corrs and The Cure to look forward to.

Anyway I think that’s the things from my week…I know I keep promising a blog and marriage and it is in the making, is just taking time for me to actually blog something serious!

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I’ve just been linked to this site by Jo (in a jokey way of course, however she will hate me for putting this blog in the ‘Joanna’ category!) http://www.frenchlettercondoms.co.uk/ this site makes and sells fairtrade, ethical condoms which I think is genius!

The site that links to these fairtrade condoms is also christian: link!

Disclaimers: I do however believe that if you are planning on buying these you should be married ideally and I have no intention on buying them for a while!!!

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