Young and Gay

I'm doing a small (3000 words) peice of work for uni on faith and justice and am going to tackle the way lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, or questioning young people are treated in Christian and Secular youth groups.

If you have any experience of this- would you be able to say how it was for you or someone you know? then please do get in touch- nikinko@yahoo.com I'd love to know how you found you were accepted in both church and secular youth provision and school.

I'm excited about this piece of work, it's not a huge peice of work, but is obviously one that's close to my heart! Would love your input and will make the work available when it's finished.

Nikki

Post Charismatic

Thoughts about a new kind of charismatic spirituality I posted here, here and here are still rumbling away for me, they're just not getting translated to words becuase uni and work are taking priority.

Meanwhile Jason has a link to Post Charismatic. It looks good at a glance, and I'll read it more thoroughly and let it re-trigger some of my thinking over the Easter break. Someone hold me to that!

To participate or not to Participate

Is participation really all it’s cracked up to be?

It’s a really strong value for me- as I’ve said before, but last night I was reminded that it’s only one way of doing youth work.

The football coaching session that I observed/ helped out with/ joined in last night was not what I’d have recognised as participative. The young people were lined up, told what to do, shouted at when the didn’t do it or mucked about, and shouted at more positively when they did something well. I’ve been asking myself lots of questions just lately about where the role of sports coach or instructor (a role where you instruct, discipline, control, and tell young people what to do) meets the role of a participative youth worker- when you encourage the young people to think for themselves about how things are done, and think through issues and things that go wrong for themselves.
What struck me was that in the older group, (14 – 19) the young men were told ‘I want to see you playing like young men, not like kiddies’, and that seemed to be enough for them. These young men were able to captain their teams and able to communicate and work well as a group… and they hadn’t been taught it through participative work- they’d been taught it through discipline and having it ‘drummed into them’.

So maybe participation isn’t the be all and end all after all?

Pancakes and Youth Work

Thanks Richard for teaching me how to teach young people to flip pancakes. Before yesterday, I would never have thought of telling them to imagine the edge of the pan is like a quaterpipe and the pancake slides up it before turning 180 and landing.

Having attended a church anniversary service, a church lunch of 'hearty soup and a roll' a church meeting, and planned a session on Islam for a group of young people who 'occassionally exhibit some racist views', I don't have much more to say tonight.

An Alternative View on Environmentalism

Martin Livermore writes an interesting alternative perspective on environmentalism, suggesting that we need to chill out and stop worrying about polluting the earth, and worry more about the poverty of our fellow humans in different parts of the world.

I'm not sure that I aggree, I think one is inextricably linked with the other, but it made for interesting reading. Much in Christianity recently has encouraged us towards concern and care for the environment. Is this missing the point of Christianity, missing the Kingdom of God, taking our energy away from seeking a Kingdom of Shalom to redirect it towards saving the world, or is saving the world part of becoming fully human. Maybe re-engaging with nature and protecting and appreciating rather than exploiting is all part of reconnecting with God?

Links are Easy

Thank you Rainbow Dreams for asking the question about links, and Caroline for answering it.. I was feeling pleased with myself coz I'd worked out how to do them by typing in the html code, and frustrated coz so often it threw them back at me saying there were things wrong with them. I hadn't realised there was a much easier way of doing it.

Lent and Living Generously

With my current phase of deconstruction of all doctrines and traditions Christian, I'm don't understand what this whole lent malachy is fully about. We're 'preparing ourselves for easter' or we're 'fasting' and I'm just wondering what we're doing and why.

At our Ash Wednesday Sermon last night the reading was from Isaiah 58

Isaiah 58:6-10
Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?

Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator shall go before you,
the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.

Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer;
you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.
If you remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,

if you offer your food to the hungry and
satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like the noonday.

So my 'Lenten Fast' this year. Well, I'm not quite up to the Year of Living Generously which some people have signed up for, but I'm going to go for 40 days of living generously. I'm going to try to be less consumeristic, use my car less and my feet more (which might be good for my health as well) and look to where I can be generous amoungst my friends and community. Of course, I will be continuing to eat chocolate and biscuits!

Feel free to ask me how it's going!

Volunteers in Youth and Community Work

Part of my role in Plymouth has been spending time community profiling in the area I'm working in, networking with others who work in the community. Second to working face to face with young people this networking is one of my favourite parts of the job, just because of the number of amazing people I meet.

I had a meeting on Monday evening at a local community centre. The centre is entirely voluntary, every member of staff is a volunteer apart from the bar staff (the bar raises the money for the community activities) and the cleaner. 30 years ago the community was nothing but a housing estate, so the residents decided they needed something and set it up. The centre was built by volunteers who'd come home from work, have their tea, then go out for the evening to (literally) build the community centre. The lady who is the secretary, now retired and struggling with arthritis so that she can barely walk was the secretary right from the beginning.

During my hour with the secretary and the youth worker I saw so much. There was passion in her eyes as she remembered the community which 30 years ago had built the centre. She could have been forgiven for more bitterness as she spoke of isolation as the community college whose grounds they are on, and the city council barely acknowledge their existence. And there was sadness that the committee and helpers and volunteers are the same as those who were in from the beginning- there are no younger residents now who will put themselves forward to sit on committees, work with young people, or organise events, although there are plenty to fill the bar and the social club. They felt that taking on a paid youth worker would take from the funding that could be used for the work, and be a disrespect to colleagues who had put in their time and energy freely over the years.

Evenings like this make me wonder why I should get paid to do what I do when others give so much of themselves for the community and expect nothing in return. They make me deeply appreciative and respectful of volunteers. Why is the community spirit which inspired people to give so much so freely to their communities dying? Is it because as people we simply don't see that we need one another any more? Is it because surviving at the pace of modern life takes up so much of our energy that we don't have any left for our communities? Is it that we simply don't give a fig for the needs of others any more? As community development workers who work for community co-hesion and capacity building within communities, can we ever recapture the simple human spirit that says, we're here together, we need one another, we care for one another, we'll give ourselves to one another?