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

I know I never even said I was going but it’s been such a busy 8 days…last thursday I went to Sheffield to see Jo for the weekend, I returned home at 11:30 on Monday and left for Letton Hall at 12:30 on monday!

So the last few days I’ve been a leader on The CROPS Trust’s Letton Hall houseparty with around 70 young people and it’s been a brilliant funny and challenging few days.

I had the opportunity to lead worship on the first night which I really enjoyed, it’s great to lead in different settings and it was nice to have a bit more freedom on songs, styles and repeats!

I was also asked to lead a seminar on ‘How to read, understand and apply the bible’ and in planning that I found myself challenged and hopefully the seminar provided some useful stuff for young people…at some point I shall try and post all my notes online!

One of my favourite bits of Letton was the ‘Half Hour Hold’…a half hour slot each day of silence…It was great having a chance just to listen to nothing, to be able to read the bible a bit more and just ponder various thought…I highly recommend silence!

Anyway usual blogging should resume from now on!

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Last night at church was ‘The Point’ (the usual monthly Youth Service I’m involved in organised by The CROPS Trust. The difference was that for the first time we used the upstairs (church bit) of Park Road…it’s amazing what CROPS managed to do with what is usually a dullish building…moving the chairs out the way, adding some coloured lights and some backdrops made it look brilliant…and the smoke machine addition was just a bit of fun!

It was a great evening and was really nice to hear a real drum kit in Park Road again!

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What started as a post exploring the topic of sex before marriage and whether it’s acceptable to expect Christian young people today to wait until marriage seems to be becoming a series.

Ben, Steve and Carl have all made interesting comments on the sex before marriage post and this post (hopefully) takes the next step forward from the sex before marriage post and explores the topic Carl bought up in his comment of how churches except (or usually fail to) people in who practicing sex before marriage (by which I mean doing it…not literally practicing…though practice does make perfect!….)

Finding the balance been excepting a person and not their sin is something only Jesus seems to have managed, those churches/Christians who are accepting get accused of being liberal and those churches/Christians are condemn the sin usually end up being way too conservative.

Now the problem is this….how do we accept someone and welcome someone into a church yet at the same time acknowledge that what they’re doing is wrong?

If we look at the character of Jesus then we see how he did it. If we take the woman at the well he first offered her love, he accepted her, he welcomed her…then eventually he moved onto tackle the sin.

This approach of acceptance and welcoming and then tackling the sin seems to be a good approach, however finding the right time zone between accepting them and tackling the sin is something which is difficult and varied because of the individuality of people.

I’ve come across many people in the past who think they cant be part of a church because they’ve got problems and issues and everytime I hear people express that opinion it drives me crazy…since when was church meant to be a place of perfect people?

The early church was made up of people with plenty of problems, Jesus didn’t preach to the perfect but the imperfect, in the Old Testament God didn’t choose the sorted people but the murderers and prostitutes.

I think this outlines the first point I want to make and that is we need to allow imperfect people into our churches, we need to be accepting and welcoming to everyone.

At the same time we need to accept that once in sinning doesn’t stop, people continue making mistakes. I guess this is one thing you accept with youth work. In an ideal world all the young people in your youth group would grow up following the bible, having amazing Christian experiences and never straying…however it’s not soul survivor everyday and young people make mistakes…they fool around with the opposite sex, they smoke things they shouldn’t and drink too much but this doesn’t mean we reject them…quite the opposite, it means we help to teach them acceptance.

It’s here the church needs to learn a lesson especially with sex, we shouldn’t turn away those involved in any kind of sin whether it’s lying or perhaps more taboo topics such as sex or homosexuality, we should accept them, show them God’s love, welcome them and then in time find a place to challenge them on their actions.

No family sees a family member with a problem, tells them about it then ignores it until it goes away, a family stands by that person, acknowledges that they need extra help at the time and supports them, helping them deal with things at their speed.

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A while ago I started writing a blog on sex before marriage following a comment I head from someone (Christian) who suggested that it is ridiculous to encourage young people to abstain from sex until marriage in today’s society…this was in the week leading up to a Doodles on ‘Sex and relationships’ which never happened and so as a result this blog joined the list of ‘Draft Posts’ on my blog.

The problem is that sex before marriage is a massive topic…and I’m not sure many Christians would argue the biblical basis for waiting for sex until your married and if I’m honest I think God does say to us that waiting to have sex before marriage is the best idea and I think perhaps humans have proved that when we look at the amount of problems people have because of being sexually promiscuous.

One thing I’ve become more aware of recently, particually in younger Christians (or rather my age) is that the things society seems to say is definately okay Christians seem to have bought into, the idea that it’s okay to get drunk (particually on birthdays), the idea that perhaps fooling around with the opposite sex is fine and perhaps even swearing becomes something compromised…I don’t know!

The problem with this is that we begin to separate Christianity and the importance of the bible, if we believe that the bible is God’s word and that God never changes his mind then surely sex before marriage doesn’t need to be questioned?

The thing is that we interpret this is different ways, and the problem with sexually related ‘naughties’ is that often it’s easy to twist our interpretation to fit what we want, so I believe that when we form our views on ‘how far is too far?’ or have that ‘boundaries’ conversation we need to be thinking if we genuinely believe what we’re saying or if we think we’re fiddling God’s word to suit ourselves.

I’ve often heard people say ‘it’s okay to have sex…we’re gonna get married’, the problem with this is that it’s naive, you never know what could happen in a relationship whether you’re close and everything’s cool or not and also if sex is meant to be a wedding gift from God as I’ve often heard preached then surely it’s the same as a child opening all his gifts on Christmas eve?

I’ve also heard people say that in God’s eyes once you’ve had sex you’re married…the problem with this is that it misses several points. Firstly if (as Christians) we’re meant to respect the laws of our country then whether we think sex = marriage or not the fact is we’re not married in the eyes of our country.

The second problem with that view is that actually in the bible we read ‘for this reason a man will leave his Father and Mother and be united as one with his wife’…in the sex = marriage situation I’m not convinced that there’s any leaving of mum’s and dad’s 9 times out of 10. The other problem is that actually this is (in my opinion) the wrong interpretation of marriage in the bible.

Often in biblical times before a man could marry his fiance he would have to build an extension on his parents house for them to live in (this is similar to what Jesus talks about when he discusses there being many rooms in his Father house), in other biblical times the marriage was official after sex but there was ceremonies before that (often followed by the bridge and groom going into a tent to ‘do it’ with their guests waiting outside).

Finally I think the ’sex = marriage’ approach loses value of marriage, I do not believe that God intends sex to be the only significant different in marriage, I believe that God intends marriage to be 2 people giving themselves completely to each other, two people committing to love each other through the good and the bad times and the easy and the hard times.

However we clearly live in a society that says sex is okay, a society that pressures us to lose virginity (perhaps the film American Pie sums this view up) so is it realistic of us to expect young people to save themselves for their future missus (or mister)?

Perhaps there are more pressures around today to have sex than there has ever been but I think there are two things we need to make clear to young people on the matter of ’sex before marriage’

Firstly we need to make it clear that it is entirely possible with God’s help - We need to help young people realise that it’s not a daunting, impossible target but something you can manage with God’s help, by being mature about boundaries with boyfriends/girlfriends and also (much life with alcohol) knowing your limits…if after kissing a girl you have an undesirable urge to have sex with her (and probably will then is that a good idea? The same goes for everything up to sex from ‘hand sex’ to ‘oral sex’.

Secondly we need to make clear the idea of God’s forgivenesss, too often young people feel guilt when they’ve made mistakes in the sexual area, and often I think the church causes that guilt without meaning too, we need to remember (particually youth workers) that we are there to not just show young people that God can help them save themselves but at the same time help young people realise that ultimately they have a loving God who will forgive them not a God who’ll turn his back on them for a mistake.

i believe that today our message of waiting for sex until marriage is no different regardless of what society says, and I believe that we need to help young people realise that, that we need to challenge societies views at the same time showing the world a loving, forgiving God.

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So at tonight’s youth group the topic of ‘Enema’s’ came up, and much to my amusement one young person said (in the midst of confusion over what en enema was) ‘Isn’t that where they pour cold coffee into your bum’

After much giggling, bad coffee-bum related jokes we concluded it wasn’t, it was a brilliant quote yet nothing more…or so I thought…

In order to be a good aware youth worker I thought I’d read up on Wikipedia to check that enemas didn’t involve coffee, much to my surprise some do!

See this link on coffee enemas

However 3 people have died from coffee enemas so I’d always recommend seeing a nurse for your enema needs and not doing it yourself with a cup of your favourite brew!

That’s all for tonight, I hope you feel enlightened!

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“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.

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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!

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Mark and Angela at church tonight told me that Stand For Christ (my other website) was featured in May’s Youth Work magazine, so I grabbed it from my office, had a rummage and sure enough…it is!

There are some very positive comments on my site published in a couple of paragraphs which is very nice…I do however feel slightly guilty that so much of the site doesn’t function at the moment…however I’m working on a complete re-build.

To read my youth work article click the image.

For the whole article click here

If you’re interested in stand for christ head to www.standforchrist.co.uk although I advise that you wait until I finish the new design first…updates posted here!

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I was talking to Jo the other day and she needed a description of what she did at Spring Harvest on the 11-14’s team…I wrote a job description;

‘Your role will primarily be to lead and facilitate discussion in a designated small group (20) of young people who will have you assigned as their group leader. Alongside this role you will need to use the other time you have to develop and build effective, professional relationships with them, enabling your small group discussion and informal education with the young people to develop further as the short placement progresses. During your placement you should continue to develop and implement a variety of informal activities to aid you in your relationship building ‘

I’m quite proud of it really…shows I can talk rubbish quite easily!

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Continuing with my desparate hunt for evidence for my portfolio I asked the young people at my youth group last night to write nice things about me…or rather write things.

I’ve just read through them now and some are really lovely…my favourite comment so far however is;

‘he almost has a sense of humour’

Other comments have included comments on my fashion sense!!!

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Readers of my blog will know that from the 5th until the 10th April I served on the ‘Base Team’ at Spring Harvest Minehead, originally I envisioned writing blogs during the week…then found there was no internet at Springy (or free internet anyway), I then thought I’d write upon my return however because of having to write an essay on Springy and proof read two, alongside catching up on thousands of e-mails (exaggeration!) the Spring Harvest blog is happening now…six days after the event and midway into the final week of Spring Harvest for ‘08.

The Base team was all about heading out around and about Butlin’s and finding young people who were disengaged with the main youth sessions at Springy (iScape & Distinctive), we would chat to the young people, befriend them, perhaps encourage them on their faith or just talk about whatever they want to discuss about.

The second part of the Base Team role was to organise late night events which (to an extent) threw us into ‘Red Coat’ kinda positions, we organised Open Mic Nights, Drop-ins and x-factor’s which all went really well…we unofficially overfilled the venue a couple of evenings (officially numbers were spot on!!!).

Having never been to Springy before I was intrigued to compare it a bit with Soul Survivor which I attended in the summer and I think that at Springy the Youth Work provided for young people seemed to be much more hyped up than the events at Soul Survivor…obviously this is based on the few sessions at Springy I attended in both iScape and Distinctive, however I thought that perhaps the teaching at Spring Harvest was more in depth than Soul Survivor (which I liked).

At the end of the day though most Christian events in their own way tend to be hyped up…I don’t mean this as a bad thing but they seem to produce their following, some groups rave about their yearly trip to SS others about their trip to Springy or Green Belt and I think this excitement and hype can be a good thing, many people will feel so re-energised in their faith because of it, others of course may find it discouraging and unhelpful.

So there are a few little thoughts on Springy, I thoroughly enjoyed being part of the Base team, laughed a lot, thought it was of great value to Spring Harvest (as often it’s disengaged young people we forget!) and will hopefully get to do it again next year!

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I appear to have writers block at the moment I just haven’t thought of anything particually interesting to blog…however truth be told I’ve been pretty busy (and will continue to be)…

Macland - Those regular readers will have read that in the last week I have upgraded to a MacBook, my MacBook is of the rather sexy white, 2.4ghz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2gb Ram, 2mb cache variety and I’ve spent the last week installing lots of fun applications, sorting out a new backup system for my documents and making a way for them to sync beautifully.

I got a rather nice surprise when I discovered that the USB port on the end of the PS2 connectors for my PC’s wireless keyboard and mouse actually made both the keyboard and mouse a USB  wireless device which works perfectly with my macbook…I’ve also discovered how to output my MacBook onto my monitor alongside mounting an external NTFS formatted drive…all in all a very geeky week.

Band-land - Another part of my week included a band practice with Joel, John and Decca. The four of us have formed what appears to be a band…which is awesome because it’s something I’ve always wanted to do…the scary part is that I’ve entered into vocals and piano (and sometimes guitar in a Matt Belamy-esque kind of way), there’s even some demo’s lurking out there in the web!

Youth Work Question

Perhaps the most exciting development for me this week in bloggerland is a comment from Theresa on my ‘About Me’ page, firstly because it shows I have outside-my-known-readers readers which is always a novelty. Secondly because answering the question made me think. Theresa enquired how she could get into youth work having done children’s work for sometime, alongside how to train in the given area…I replied in the form of a comment on my About Me page, however here is my reply for anyone else interested in youthwork.

Hello Theresa,

Good to hear you’ve been reading my site and I hope it’s been useful, I guess the first thing to do with getting involved in youth work would be to do some volunteering, most training courses like you to have had some experience, it’s also a great benefit to you to have had some before you enter training.

If you’re part of a church offer to help out with one of their clubs, they’re always grateful for new volunteers, if you’re not I’d recommend talking to your local council about opportunities they have for volunteering, most are understaffed and so appreciate volunteers. There will perhaps be a bit of a wait as CRB checks will have to be done, you may also have to fill in a volunteer contract (agreeing to child protection acts etc).

As far as courses go some youth services (state) offer introduction to youth work courses either for free or for a small cost, these are great for understanding the basics. If you wish to take training further there’s a variety of choice, I am currently on the Oasis Youth Work and Ministry course which covers both secular and christian youth work and gives you a BA Hons degree plus a JNC Level 2, places like CYM (Centre for youth ministry) also offer similar courses.

If however you’re not so interested in church youth work or a Christian course I know people who have done youth work degrees both with Anglia Ruskin university (Cambridge) and also Chester university, both of which I’d recommend.

Mark 

Anyway that’s all I’m blogging for now…I’m currently listening to ‘The Hoosiers’ album ‘The Trick To Life’ which I absolutely love…which is odd because I’m not really an indie fan.

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A third cartoon from ASBO Jesus…this time one youth workers can relate to I’m sure

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Tonight we took one of the youth groups at Park Road Ice Skating. Peterborough is lucky enough to have an Ice Rink within the city so it’s an ideal place to go that in the past we simply haven’t! (In my three years here I’ve been twice before…not one with a youth group). I originally thought that from a youth work perspective it would just be a social, people skating all over the place, myself sitting looking after the young people’s things and reading a book…however it turned out to be the opposite.

The young people I was with (a brilliant bunch who I love working* with) were all of various abilities, some having been skating, some having never skated in their life, and they all worked together, helping each other up, holding arms and hands to teach others…one particular young person ended up teaching myself and John (other leader)…yes…I ended up on the ice and didn’t fall over.

Overall I really enjoyed this evening, it was great for people bonding and developing relationships and at the same time so much fun…I do ache though!

*Working is such a horrible word to use but I couldn’t think of an alternative that summed up what I meant.

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For those of you who think youth work is a nice fluffy easy job…then you’re wrong…for quite a while there have been national occupational standards for youth work…oasis have invented occupational standards for youth ministry too and as part of my course I have to compile a folder proving I can do all 9 of these standards (each standard has an average breakdown of 4 sections to evidence). The whole folder/portfolio thing will be a nightmare to do but a good experience I think.

However this week in the world of youth work the government have released the new ‘National Occupational Standards For YouthWork’, interestingly within these new guidelines whilst many remain the same the government are suggesting a more holistic approach and state within the standards ‘personal, social and educational development can also include, for example, physical, political and spiritual development’. What interests me is that the document discusses helping young people realise the differences between religion and spirituality (which is good), however I think the problem is that many youth workers who do not have a faith or belief will struggle to come to grips with what spirituality is, and those youth workers who do have a faith will find that their ideal of spirituality will be very much rounded upon the way their faith discloses spirituality.

I do however think the recognisation of a need for spirituality within a core document like the occupational standards is brilliant…just confused at how it’s going to happen!

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