On Sunday we went to the church that Hans (one of the organisers) attends. We were welcomed by the minister from the front, although Hans got a few frowns as he did his best to quietly translate a complicated sermon for us! It was great to be at that church, fairly traditional, but most of the time I wasn’t really sure what was going on! There seemed to be a lot of liturgy responses which members of the congregation all knew off by heart, and not much instruction from the front but everyone knew when to stand, when to sit and when to sing! A couple of the sings were in English or had English words underneath the German ones so we could join in a bit! The last song was Shine Jesus Shine, much to our ‘enjoyment’!

After coffee and biscuits we headed to an italian restaurant. They boys all had pizzas of some description while I had a salad which was very nice until I got to the bottom which was full of balsamic vinegar….mmm soggy lettuce! We then headed back to The Lighthouse to set up for the evenings ‘Check It Out’ Service. The theme was ‘Pusteblume’ – literal translation is ‘blowflower’, but refers to Dandelions. The service was to do with spreading ‘seeds’ – telling people about Jesus. There was music from their ‘Check It Out’ band, acoustic songs from Taste, a hilarious sketch, a great talk and the blessing of various teams who are off on mission. I had Marco translating brilliantly for me so I knew when to play the videos and powerpoints! A lad who became a Christian last year at The Lighthouse Week we were at came back and was translating for Joy – it was really great to see him again! After the service we packed away and were treated to more sausages and soup before saying our goodbyes and heading back to the hotel.

Monday was the long trip home, we left at 9am and got to the office at 7pm! We were all on track for the earlier ferry but hit traffic just before Calais, very frustrating! We kept smiling and telling awful jokes despite being hot and uncomfortable! It was funny, as soon as we landed in England everyone got their phones out, turned back on the internet and got engrossed into Facebook and emails…!

It was a great weekend, mainly in preparation for events in October and November, which I’m not sure that I will be involved in but it was really nice to see everyone again, and be reminded that God is bigger than England!

Today I have been back in the office getting ready for Solid Youth Festival and Junior Solid this weekend!

http://solidessex.wordpress.com/

Well this year I crossed over to the other side and joined B:ace (Baptist Assembly Children’s Event), working with 70 5-11 year olds. After two crazy weeks of intense preparation (printing, cutting, sticking, laminating, building and painting fancy wooden structures…) we headed up to Blackpool and the Norbreck Castle Hotel where we had a marquee set up. Andy Keel came with Ed and I in the van (the second hire van – the first wasn’t big enough so we had to swap at 4pm on Wednesday afternoon!) to tech for us.

The weekend went something like this:

Thursday: Travel, unload, a bit of set up, find our B+B, head out for dinner.
Friday: Breakfast at 8 then to the hotel for a day of setting up (with well timed pauses to catch the important bits of the royal wedding!) – the first session from 7pm-9.30pm.
Saturday: Session from 9am-12.30pm, session from 7pm-9.30pm
Sunday: Session from 9am-12.30pm, Praise Party from 4pm-5pm, session from 7pm-9.30pm
Monday: Session from 9am-1.15pm, pack down and travel home.

We had a great team of people all volunteering to work with us and took over a local(ish) B+B so had time in the evenings to get to know each other a bit better. We were joined by some volunteers from BMS, Jack who became Fredrickson the Crocodile at key points over the weekend!

The theme for the weekend was ‘Your Kingdom Come’ and we had a Knightly Theme – each day following three Knights on the quest for the Ultimate Kingdom. There were crazy songs with Big Fish Little Fish, stories, news reels, weather reports, talks, leaders being pied (yes I did, and no I didn’t whinge…much!), letters from Fredrickson, crafts, games…you name it, we did it! We also had for the weekend a keypad system which meant at certain points each child was given a keypad and we asked questions and they selected their answer using the keypads (Who Wants To Be A Millionaire ask the audience styley!) which was brilliant. We asked them all manner of questions about God/Church/Prayer/Friendships, as well as using them for discussion times in smaller groups.

The weekend was exhausting but brilliant. It was so cool to see these kids engaging, having fun and chatting about God. We also filmed them answering questions like ‘What is Worship?’, ‘Is the Bible boring or exciting and why?’ and ‘Why do we go to Church?’ – some of the answers they came out with were fantastic – well thought through, or just spontaneous and enthusiastic. It was great to chat to the parents too and hear that the Children were so excited to come every morning and were loving it. The parents were really appreciative that we weren’t just babysitting the kids so that they could get some time off in the adult venue, but were actually giving them some good teaching.

Now it’s time to sort out the 20 something big plastic boxes full of stuff, remembering what happened over the weekend and praying that the children we met will have been really impacted by God and fired up to live their lives making a difference and helping see God’s Kingdom come on Earth.

As promised, here is the update released from Viz-A-Viz Ministries this week about the current changes.

Please take the time to read it, thanks!

http://www.vizaviz.org/latestnews.htm

My latest newsletter is out now! View it here.

As you may have read in my newsletter, my role at Viz-A-Viz Ministries is now geared very much towards Children’s Ministry. I am now working pretty much full time with Ed Jones for Arise Ministries. This involves some admin, planning and delivering events, coming up with ideas, helping deliver training…all kinds of exciting things to do with Children’s Ministry! Ed and I had a long meeting this morning looking at things that are coming up – Newbury Baptist Church Weekend Away, Baptist Assembly, a couple of exhibitions and had some fun batting around some ideas.

This week Andy Keel is away in Gorleston with Taste so I’m a little lonely in the office! My laptop has died a slow death so I need to take it back to PC World at the weekend. For now I’m stationed on a desktop computer running Windows XP. This is causing me quite a few frustrations as it’s too old to open some websites and isn’t compatable with some files i’m working on. But hey ho, keeps me on my toes! So I’ve got a nice long list of things to work on, from basic organising and shredding, to planning games and challenges to be filmed for Newbury.

Things are changing here at Viz-A-Viz Ministries (more details to come soon) and on 29th/30th we’re having a massive office sort out and move round. Peopel are already starting to go through old files and the shredder seems to be on constantly! Will be good to have a nice spring clean and re-organise.

I’m reading a good book at the moment called ‘Don’t Tell Cute Stories – Change Lives’ by Mark Griffiths and although I’ve only read the first couple of chapters it’s great and I’d recommend it to anyone involved in, or looking to be involved in Children’s Work. Very encouraging and inspiring! Let me know if you want to borrow it when I’m finished!

While we’re on the subject of recommendations – watch this video – Manifesto – The City Harmonic. Really great band and powerful song. The original music video is good too – but this one has the lyrics displayed.

What do you believe?

The last couple of things I have done have been with the wonderful Ed Jones, director of Arise Ministries. Arise is a partnership between Viz-A-Viz Ministries and Girls Brigade Ministries. The strapline is “Equipping the church to reach a generation” with the belief that that children can become followers of Jesus, live as His disciples and tell others about Him, whilst children. Arise produce resources but mainly focus on equipping and working with churches in their children’s outreach.

Over the next weeks and months I will be working more with Ed and am really looking forward to it!

On January 30th I travelled up to Sandy Baptist with Ed and his wife Emma  (Rich’s Sister) and their 2 adorable children Ewan (4) and Evie (3). Sandy Baptist is ministered by Beth Powney (Emma and Rich’s Mum, who used to work for Viz-A-Viz and who I stayed with for the first 3 weeks of my first gap year) and so I was looking forward to seeing her and Stephen again. Ed was taking part in the family service and I came along partly to assist, but also to see how I might be able to help out more at future services Ed is invited to. It was really great and I ended up singing too which was good. The Bible passage was Mark 4: 35-41, looking at Jesus calming the storm. The angle Ed was taking was looking the fact Jesus was just on his way from A to B when the storm came. What are the storms that hit us everyday? And what are our fears? We did an interactive Bible reading featuring a large squirrel (No, Ed, that says SQUALL!) and an activity which involved creating lots of mess with polystyrene! The response was writing a fear on a pebble and placing it in a container of water – then later taking a pebble home to pray for that person and situation. I really enjoyed being part of it and working with Ed – and was treated to a really nice meal at Beth’s and an afternoon playing with Ewan and Evie!

This past weekend (4th-6th Feb) Ed, Sam La Roche, Andy Keel and I travelled to Eastbourne for the Children’s and Families Ministry Conference to run an Arise Ministries Stand. Lots of planning had gone into this including large orders of yo-yos and colouring pencils! The main focus of our stand was to promote ‘Just a child?’, the new training initiative from Arise. In each delegate pack was an outline of a child and a pack of colouring pencils. The task was to colour/draw/write on the outline what came to mind when you thought of children, fill in your details on the back and then hand in to us to receive a free ‘Just a child?’ yo-yo and be entered into a draw to win a full set of Arise resources worth £60.

On the stand we constantly played with yo-yos with gained attention – especially Sam with his super fancy yo-yo and tricks! Ed liked to think his ‘tricks’ wowed people…we humoured his many different stances that were basically the same thing!! Over the weekend we had lots of good conversations, for many linking up the resource ‘Alf’ (which is quite widely known and used) with the organisation behind it. Ed had a showcase on the Christmas resource -  Journey To The Centre Of The Christmas Pudding which went well, and a seminar exploring why holiday clubs should be part of a whole year’s outreach.

I really enjoyed being part of the team and helping enthuse people about their children’s ministry.

Looking ahead I’m planning on joining the Arise team at Baptist Assembly and Leading Edge this year, as well as helping out at a church weekend in April and also working on Junior Solid in July.

Tomorrow is Solid Remix at Chelmsford Cathedral which I’m on the technical team for, under the capable leadership of Technical Manager, Andy Keel!