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

During my time at Spring Harvest in April we met (one evening) a group of girls (between 12 and 14) not in the main session, we asked them why, their reply was detailed and had obviously been discussed by them in detail, they discussed all the reasons for the leaders being ‘hypocrital’, saying one thing yet doing others. One example being throwing a flan in someone’s face and then talking about how we just waste food in this country when we shouldn’t.

Now the thing is that on the surface these girls have a point, although perhaps taking what was being said a little too seriously, however the thing that got me was how cynical they were and how they were going into these sessions just to pick holes.

This challenged me, I am naturally very cynical and the challenge I faced in challenging them was that by doing that I was challenging myself and actually in the end I just said to them ‘before you go into the next session ask God to show you one thing in that session and look out for that one thing not all the negatives’.

The fact is I (like many others) find it very easy to find faults with things, if you read through this blog you’ll find my faults with the church, with Christians and even if you go far enough back some specific churches…and the problem is that it’s all too easy to moan about it.

For instance one thing that gets me about Christians is that they moan a lot about things in church if it’s not to their taste, however by moaning about this I think I’m wearing their shoes (so to speak) and the trick is how to turn the negativity into something positive.

If we continue to take the negative things we see and discuss their negativity we will just become a cynical, bitter bunch of hypocrites.

The difficulty is finding a way to take the thing we see as negative and make something positive and I don’t know that I entirely know how but I guess every situation is different….it’s so easy when someone mentions someone you don’t like to mutter something negative, we all have things or people that rattle our feathers but we need to work out how to make this positive.

The church is full of negativity…and I am probably part of that to an extent. My big thing in the last few months has been about judgmental Christians and yes, I’ve ranted about it, however I’ve also tried to do the opposite, one of the things a young person at church wrote for my portfolio said that ‘you can tell him things and he won’t judge’…although for them that might have been a throw-away comment to me it was reassurance that I had actually managed something positive from something negative.

The challenge to all of us however is to bite our tongues and rather than moan or rant find a positive angle…or at least move on from that rant.

I’ve been reading a book on Lamenting in church and the author talks about the pattern for a psalm of lament is roughly: have a rant, tell God what he should do, praise Him, so if we take that approach to our negativity let’s have a rant if we have to, think about how we can make a positive difference and then praise God by doing that.

That is my challenge…why don’t you join me…

No Comments »

For those readers who’ve spent the last few weeks/months reading my groans over my portfolio there it is…on the left…well…most of it!

Today is going to be my last day on the portfolio and by 6 tonight when I have a band practice (for a band still with no name!) it will be done…I basically have one section and 1000 words to do today which is do-able quite easily.

However business doesn’t end…next weekend I’m leading St Andrew’s Church, Gorleston’s youth work for their church weekend away at Letton Hall which’ll be fun. I picked up the book ‘I believe’ by Alistar Mcgrath yesterday which I need to read for my sermon on the ascension at the end of June (what a wonderful topic to be given). I also have Park Road’s Youth weekend away at Trimmingham towards the end of June. So there’s lots on, however on a lighter, more fun note I’m off to Lightwater Valley theme park tomorrow for a rally day which was Mike & Yvonne’s birthday present for me back in October so that’ll be a good day and a nice way to relax after the madness of portfolio’s….anyway I must portfolio…I shall blog soon!

No Comments »

If you haven’t head there is a healing revival going on in Florida and people are flooding there, it’s being headed up by Televangelist Todd Bentley, if you google search you’ll find all sorts on it, in particular the ‘Fresh Fire Ministries’ website which includes Desktop Wallpapers for the Florida Revivals plus a live stream.

Apparently the revival has been going on for almost 50 days and so far at least 12 have been raised from the dead…

So why blog on this?

Recently I’ve been reading a lot about healing in particular from books by Pete Greig and Philip Yancey, both written about prayer, but including a lot on the topic of unanswered prayer. Greigs book ‘God on mute’ focuses largely around the unanswered prayer him and his wife face for her severe epilepsy.

Now I completely believe in the healing power of God, I believe that he does heal today, however this kind of thing makes me uncomfortable…if people have been raised from the dead I cannot argue with that, nor if people have been healed of physical sicknesses…in particular when mainstream TV in America is reporting on this too, however I do question it, no where in the bible do mass healings seem to take place, in fact, there isn’t a huge amount of healing in the bible, there is far more suffering than healing.

I also wonder what kind of Christians this revival is producing, to me it seems to run the risk that Christian’s who’s faith is purely based on the experience of God are going to be the result, however unless we disciple these people properly and teach them about unanswered prayer too and the difficulties of life they’re going to come to the first hurdle and give up…Jesus didn’t teach his disciples to have a fluffy life but to have a difficult one, he taught them about unanswered prayer, he told them that they’d be persecuted and even killed for their faith. I wonder how much of this is being told to the new converts in Florida?

The fact remains that more often than not we find our prayers of healing unanswered, I don’t think it’s because of our lack of faith, or because of sin in our lives but just that sometimes God is beyond our understanding, if every prayer we asked was answered God would be a vending machine, if God never drew away from us our faith would be based on a feeling and a faith based on a feeling is only good as long as the feeling stays.

I don’t have any reason to believe that God isn’t working in Florida, although if I’m perfectly honest the whole thing makes me very very uncomfortable and I’ll be interested to see the long term effects…I just wish people would report of not being healed there as well as those being healed reporting…I also hear (from someone who was telling me about it) that people are being healed just by watching it on the God Channel, and yes I’m sure God can work through TV but I do feel very uneasy about the whole thing.

Comments would be good readers…

2 Comments »

One disadvantage (perhaps) of my MacBook transfer (see this post) was that I no longer had the use of Macromedia’s Dreamweaver which I used to use for all my web design in Windows…however every cloud has a silver lining and the lining here was that since using a text editor to edit sites rather than Dreamweaver my hand coding and knowledge of HTML, PHP, CSS and MySQL has improved which I’m so happy about.

I’m still in the process of making the new Stand For Christ however today got distracted with updating all the coding for Park Baptist Church’s website (my home church for which I run/build the website), as a consequence all the icky dreamweaver code has been replaced by more simple yet more effective Tiddy-Code! Check out the slightly new looking Park Baptist Church website here

No Comments »

ASBO Jesus blog hits the nail on the head! - Link

No Comments »

So in under two weeks time I will be here, probably asleep having handed in my portfolio and having led a weekend of youth work for St Andrew’s, Gorleston (the youth group I attended)…this makes the next two weeks very very busy what with youth work to finish planning, youth work to run here, portfolio’s to finish, uni to attend and next sunday I’m at Lightwater Valley with Mike for a rally day….which was Mike’s birthday present to me (just took a while to organise!) so it should be a mixture of crazy and fun weeks.

I’m also hoping I can get the new ‘Stand For Christ’ website complete, it’s entered it’s last phase of development with just resources to re-order/format and upload which is less geeky and more tedious so motivation for that tends to lack.

However in my procrastinating of portfolio so far I have done a new blog theme which kicked in yesterday and was the result of four hours solid procrasination!

I was at Joel and Vicki’s for lunch today and they did an awesome roast, we’re also now thinking the band should be called ‘Joel and the five pigs’…we also discussed things such as nudist gardeners, so was a lot of fun!

Anyway I’m going to attempt to portfolio, I hope you liked my random update, I shall aim to blog properly when my life returns!

No Comments »

I have upgraded the blog template, it’s a little bit more funky, less relaxing more ‘boo!’ so I hope you like it, I do!

All the issues it had when I first uploaded are fixed…I think I should have done some work instead though but nevermind!

I shall blog again soon

No Comments »

“You can’t save everyone…” - that is the phrase mentioned to someone I know in regards to starting some youth work at said persons church (I keep things vague purposely!). Now as a Christian (and if I’m honest one who isn’t a calvanist!) this annoys me…however as a church youth worker this seriously frustrates me.

The Times (todays I think) had an article all about church decline and how it’s predicted that in 40 years if the church continues to decline then no-one will be left…young people in particular seem to be few and far between in our nations churches…but the question I ask is “have we given up?” Now on the surface the phrase ‘You can’t save everyone’ is less of a phrase and more of a fact, I know full well that every young person I come into contact with is not going to become a Christian however when we take the ‘you can’t save everyone’ in the context meant in the first paragraph it comes less truth and more surrender…God never gave up on us, when the Israelites kept messing up God was always looking for new ways to save them…to save us…and finally He sent Jesus who did just that, He came to save us. So why do we suddenly forget this persistancy of God and give up? I stated above that I know every young person I come into contact with won’t become a Christian, some may never become Christians others may just require time…however if we’re not there to sew the seeds then how will they ever know about God? The church (generally) let down young people, we expect them to swing along with whatever older generations are used to, and yes I agree there has to be some in between, some mix of the old and new however these young people aren’t tomorrows church as we so happily throw around in defence of our youth work (I don’t!) they are the church of today!

The attitude of giving up on young people saddens me…and I’m pretty sure it saddens God, the New Testament makes it clear that no-one (neither Jew or Gentile, Slave or Free) is not open to the saving grace of Jesus Christ, so why are we making a rule that young people are? (In some places) I’ve said it before and I shall say it again, the idea of ‘youth churches’ makes me uncomfortable, I firmly believe we need a family dynamic in the church, we need the wiseness of those who are old-in-the-faith, we need the ‘floaters’ who perhaps aren’t called to help out but are dedicated, passionate prayers for the work going on, without these people I suspect many of our churches attempts would fail miserably! However the more I think about it the more I wonder if the ‘old church’ is leaving us with no option but to have youth churches, if these churches are a place where young people feel valued, loved and accepted then to me it is filling the gap the wider church misses, if these places explain the gospel in the exciting, passionate way Jesus did then they are filling the gap often missed by the wider church and if these places allow young people to enter into a relationship with God and disciple them into the faith then I can really have no grounds for dismissing youth churches because often they’re not treading on toes (although a few sheep may shuffle) but they’re filling in the missing gap…reaching out to the group that often seems so difficult to reach to the average church or even the group your average church have given up on in a ‘well you can’t save everyone’ mentality then I am not going to critique them.

I do however hope my generation and the next generation learn from this and don’t fall into the ‘I want church my way’ trap because church was never intended to be about ‘us’ but about God - praising Him in everything

Note: Some churches do not fail young people, there are plenty that do the opposite, there are plenty that create an awesome family feel and operate in a way accessible to everyone, providing the right things for young people and older people alike, actively reaching out into communities and discipling in those who give their lives to Christ.

No Comments »

This blog is mainly aimed for people googling for help!

I have been having an issue with my Samsung G600 since I got it, the issue being that when I have put mp3’s on it whether the phone recognises the ID Tags (i.e. whether it tells me the artist, album etc) has been a bit hit or miss…I’ve tried every type of tag within the mp3 format, compared the mp3’s that show up and those that don’t and found no solution.

However in itunes you can convert them to AAC audio files which are different to mp3’s but effectively the same idea…and they work! The tags display perfectly…to do this in itunes…

1 - Install Itunes - apple.com

2 - Click File > Preferences > Advanced > Importing and set import format as AAC

3 - okay that then right click the mp3’s you want to convert in your library and choose ‘convert to AAC’

4 - wait for the conversion!

5 - put on your g600 and enjoy!

No Comments »

…a melodica - link

No Comments »

For those that don’t know I run a monday night youth group as part of my job called ‘Doodles’, from January it’s been weekly alternating between social nights and serious/more God-focused nights…and this term we’ve been doing a ‘Coping with…’ series.

Tonight’s ‘Coping with’ was titled ‘Coping with God’ and was all about the parts of God we struggle with, as part of it we had a time of quiet/prayer where we had Tim Hughes’ ‘When Silence Falls’ in the background whilst I invited the young people to write down the things they struggle with (God-wise) on paper as a way of expressing but also a chance to ask God to help with them.

We followed this up by going through them on an anonymous basis and encouraging everyone to have a go at trying to answer the coping issue, it turned into an awesome session where they all came up with some awesome stuff.

Now I appreciate asking young people to think about their struggles and questions is perhaps a little unusual but why? I think we need more opportunities within church and youth groups to question, to wrestle with God, to lament. I’ve recently got a booklet about lamenting in a church of praise and I’m hoping reading it will give me ideas of how to build lament into church more because I think we need to.

Note: If you think the session sounds interesting it will feature on the new version of Stand For Christ which is probably about 2 weeks away from completion!

1 Comment »

Pete did something on this with the young people at church this morning, it’s really thought provoking so have a read. (It’s from 24-7prayer.com)

The Vision

So this guy comes up to me and says “what’s the vision? What’s the big idea?” I open my mouth and words come out like this…
The vision?

The vision is JESUS – obsessively, dangerously, undeniably Jesus.

The vision is an army of young people.

You see bones? I see an army. And they are FREE from materialism.

They laugh at 9-5 little prisons.
They could eat caviar on Monday and crusts on Tuesday.
They wouldn’t even notice.
They know the meaning of the Matrix, the way the west was won.
They are mobile like the wind, they belong to the nations. They need no passport.. People write their addresses in pencil and wonder at their strange existence.
They are free yet they are slaves of the hurting and dirty and dying.
What is the vision ?
The vision is holiness that hurts the eyes. It makes children laugh and adults angry. It gave up the game of minimum integrity long ago to reach for the stars. It scorns the good and strains for the best. It is dangerously pure.

Light flickers from every secret motive, every private conversation.
It loves people away from their suicide leaps, their Satan games.
This is an army that will lay down its life for the cause.
A million times a day its soldiers

choose to loose
that they might one day win
the great ‘Well done’ of faithful sons and daughters.

Such heroes are as radical on Monday morning as Sunday night. They don’t need fame from names. Instead they grin quietly upwards and hear the crowds chanting again and again: “COME ON!”

And this is the sound of the underground
The whisper of history in the making
Foundations shaking
Revolutionaries dreaming once again
Mystery is scheming in whispers
Conspiracy is breathing…
This is the sound of the underground

And the army is discipl(in)ed.

Young people who beat their bodies into submission.

Every soldier would take a bullet for his comrade at arms.
The tattoo on their back boasts “for me to live is Christ and to die is gain”.

Sacrifice fuels the fire of victory in their upward eyes. Winners. Martyrs. Who can stop them ?
Can hormones hold them back?
Can failure succeed? Can fear scare them or death kill them ?

And the generation prays

like a dying man
with groans beyond talking,
with warrior cries, sulphuric tears and
with great barrow loads of laughter!
Waiting. Watching: 24 – 7 – 365.

Whatever it takes they will give: Breaking the rules. Shaking mediocrity from its cosy little hide. Laying down their rights and their precious little wrongs, laughing at labels, fasting essentials. The advertisers cannot mould them. Hollywood cannot hold them. Peer-pressure is powerless to shake their resolve at late night parties before the cockerel cries.

They are incredibly cool, dangerously attractive

inside.

On the outside? They hardly care. They wear clothes like costumes to communicate and celebrate but never to hide.
Would they surrender their image or their popularity?
They would lay down their very lives - swap seats with the man on death row - guilty as hell. A throne for an electric chair.

With blood and sweat and many tears, with sleepless nights and fruitless days,

they pray as if it all depends on God and live as if it all depends on them.

Their DNA chooses JESUS. (He breathes out, they breathe in.)
Their subconscious sings. They had a blood transfusion with Jesus.
Their words make demons scream in shopping centres.
Don’t you hear them coming?
Herald the weirdo’s! Summon the losers and the freaks. Here come the frightened and forgotten with fire in their eyes. They walk tall and trees applaud, skyscrapers bow, mountains are dwarfed by these children of another dimension. Their prayers summon the hounds of heaven and invoke the ancient dream of Eden.

And this vision will be. It will come to pass; it will come easily; it will come soon.
How do I know? Because this is the longing of creation itself, the groaning of the Spirit, the very dream of God. My tomorrow is his today. My distant hope is his 3D. And my feeble, whispered, faithless prayer invokes a thunderous, resounding, bone-shaking great ‘Amen!’ from countless angels, from hero’s of the faith, from Christ himself. And he is the original dreamer, the ultimate winner.

Guaranteed.

No Comments »

So today which could have been a day of portfolio and work isn’t…quite simply because I can’t be bothered! However I’ve been programming more of the new Stand For Christ which is beginning to take shape.

Also apologies for amount of youtube videos I’ve linked this week, but they’re good!

No Comments »

I stumbled across this on youtube this morning…enjoy

No Comments »

This is a video clip from a program called ‘30 Days’…it’s by the same guy who did ‘Super-Size me’. It’s quite thought provoking!

No Comments »