You can listen to the interview with Tim and Dave on Victoria Derbyshire Radio 5 Live here It starts after 1hour and 17mins. Some great feedback from other callers as well later in the programme.
Tim and Dave on the Radio and Road
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USA: The Religious Right and the Liberal Christian Left
I really don’t get it!
This week, Jim Wallis of Sojourners, is discussing politics with an ex-leader of the ‘Religious Right’ Ralph Reed. Jim seems disappointed that Ralph seems to prioritise working against legal abortion and homosexual marriage. Ralph claims that the ‘Conservative Coalition’ et al don’t just focus on those two issues but work on many (which is the ground that Jim wants to claim).
What I don’t get is why they both want to impose their moral views on the USA. They both think that the US needs moral guidance from the top and that it needs to be legislated for. It’s as if they want to usher in a Holy Kingdom of America.
Whilst a great set of laws does seem to create a lovely society to live in, I can’t get my head round the idea that we, as Christians want to impose our morality on people who don’t want it. I mean, it’s not like it makes people better at the level of their relationship with God. It might seem, from a human point of view, that it is a good thing, but the only good thing is to have a relationship with God and to do his will – that is the only good in our world, everything else is a cheap imitation that doesn’t really bring life at all.
Jesus lived in a country that was occupied by foreign forces. Did he bother himself with that? No, he knew that freedom wasn’t in the laws of the land, but could only be found in a relationship with God. Did he try to control people by imposing laws? No, he came to make the law (and indeed laws) obsolete – to bring God into our hearts. He worked from the bottom up, not the top down. He aligned himself with the downtrodden. Even when he did get to talk to the most powerful men in Israel, he didn’t try to get them to alter their laws, he stood quietly, a testimony to the new Kingdom that he was ushering in, a Kingdom that stood in contrast to their kingdom.
Have a look in the ‘Government’ category of this blog for more on this topic.
Talent – Young People in Action
Dave Wiles (FYT The Haunted World of El Superbeasto download ) and Tim Evans (Worth Unlimited) are walking/hitching between, Bristol and Birmingham, and then heading north with only £10 in their pockets, collecting stories of hope from young people, once back they aim to release the stories to the media to counteract the predominance of negative coverage that young people seem to attract. They are in part lauching a new youth initative fund, that is to be raised by young people for young people. We are giving away £1000 to youth groups in £10 notes with the challenge to turn it into £100 by Christmas to fund the trust, if you want your youth group to get involved contact Nigel Pimlott. If you want to hear from Dave and Tim they are being interviewed tomorrow on Radio 5 Live (medium wave 693 and 909) between 10am and 10-30am
Extract from the Project Outline
Talent Young People in Action
Introduction: Frontier Youth Trust (FYT) and Worth Unlimited are two organisations that work with and for young people on the margins of society. We have joined forces to create a trust fund that will be controlled by young people – for young people and which will enable them to act on their own concerns. We are tired of the negative stereotypes of young people and want to enable them to demonstrate that they are a positive force for change in society.
Creating the trust: In order to create the Young People in Action Trust fund we are giving away £1000 in £10 notes! We are offering 10 to any of the youth projects/groups that we link with and are asking them to take 3 months to turn this into as much as they can. As Christian organisations we see this as related to the parable of the talents (see Matthew 25:14) however we are quite happy about the double meaning in that we believe in young people and want to give them an opportunity to demonstrate their talent. We want to end the 3 months of talent multiplication by December 2006 as a symbolic gesture to celebrate Christmas. Just imagine if each group raises 100 with their 10 this would launch our youth led trust at the start of 2007 with £10,000! We also intend to continue fund raising to enable the trust to grow.
Young People in Action: We hope that the youth projects that FYT and Worth involve, in partnership with local youth workers, will catch the vision and show off their entrepreneurial skills. We will provide an ideas pack and guidelines for youth groups to use as they seek to invest their talents, but some of the ideas that have already emerged include:
Creating and selling hand made Christmas cards
Running a fare trade caf in a local hall
Selling hand made jewellery
A cake stall
Make over stall
Creating and selling a book of youth poetry
Organising a fashion show using charity shop clothes!
What we hope is that young people will invest their time and energy in some kind of action that will be fun and which will raise awareness of their potential as well as funds!
To launch the initiative the two directors of FYT and Worth Unlimited will be given £10 to go on the road for a week in order to collect 100 stories of hope about young people as a sponsored activity. During this time they will travel to Bristol, Cardiff, Birmingham, Liverpool and Glasgow with no resources or arrangements other than contact with several local youth work projects, radio stations and their £10! Tim and Dave see this as an alternative model for Christian leaders to promote their ideas a substitute for large scale Christian conferences! The book with the stories of hope will be on sale during October.
The best youth work event in the world (probably)
The planning for the next Occasion is well underway. It is shaping up to be a truly excellent event again. If you are involved in youthwork anywhere from Gloucestershire down to Cornwall, or Dorest etc this is the event for you. The feedback last year was outstanding and this year with opportunities for young leaders, extra time volunteers, and full timers it has to be the place to be. The event truly does create a sense of Occasion last year the training was great and the lunch was memorable (taking everyone out to lunch for a great all you can eat Chinese). Follow the link to book a place BUT HURRY!
Meals for Families
Following on from my thoughts that lead to this idea I would like to explore a measure that might help and also encourage families to spend more time together.
What I’m imagining (speaking as a non-cook! Oh dear!) is the provision of cheap, reasonable quality meals, for families. To qualify for access to such meals you would need to turn up as a minimum of one adult and one child. The meals would be on one or more weekdays and would be available between 5pm and 8pm. Payment for the meals would be necessary except in exceptional circumstances. It would be attractive because the family would need to make less effort to have a meal and yet still have a meal at a very reasonable price.
This would appear to improve contact between family members (addressing the issues outlined here) and also be a way to create relationships between church people and non-church people.
Would be interested in your comments.
What Poverty Today?
If we strip out the UK government definition of poverty as being those households with an income of lower than 60% of the average UK income, then we are left with the question of what poverty is there in the UK today?
In theory UK welfare and bankruptcy laws should provide for the needs of daily life, such as food and shelter. However, I do recognise that the application of this theory is fraught – I have personally had to spend time helping a friend claim what was due her (after she had suffered injuries that had made her unable to work). It’s as if our society wants to make it as hard as possible to keep one’s head above water in difficult circumstances.
So apart from money troubles due to the lack of help available to get the benefits of bankruptcy or welfare (and these are far from insignificant matters) what poverty do we have today?
My post the other day about the well-being of our children made me think that perhaps a large problem was the amount of time that family members spend with each other.
This is essentially what is behind the ‘Keep Sunday Special’ campaign – the idea that families need to spend more time together. However, because I don’t see any theological reason for Sunday actually being a special day, then I would rather tackle the issue directly rather than attempt to tell people that they shouldn’t work on Sunday. The church needs to wake up to the needs of those that work on a Sunday and change from having what is generally regarded as a key time within the church on a Sunday morning.
So I guess it comes down to providing for people’s poverty. If the poverty is a lack of quality time together then do things that enable people, from diverse backgrounds, to be able to have that time together.
Whilst I’m not sure that I would back a ‘keep dinner special’ campaign or a ‘play boardgames instead of watching TV’ campaign there are surely things we can do.
What are the things that are eating into people’s family time?
- Sports
- Watching sports
- TV viewing
- Ready meals and easy snacking
- I’m sure that there are many others…
… but that last one gives me an idea:
Meals for Families
I think that that will need to be my next post!
We are the Prisoners of Our Debts
The title “We are the prisoners of our debts” is an interesting quote from an article in The Telegraph.
Other quotes include:
“most sensible thing might be to borrow no money, to rent a place to live”
“how, short of living for 20 years in a tent, we could ever save enough money to buy a house outright”
“we screw up our courage to the sticking point and embark on a reckless gamble”
“if our income falls, and house prices fall, what then? We lose everything”
“one has taken out an excessively large mortgage, one finds oneself condemned to earn an income to match”
“Excessive debt is the mighty engine which has kept the British economy going”
“no choice because most of them were up to their eyeballs in debt. To go on strike was not an option”
We have friends (a couple with their second child on the way). They have never had a mortgage, he just worked hard and long and they now own (outright) two houses. It may not seem possible now, with house prices so high at the moment, but it is possible.
If you do take on debt it is always very sensible to remember that it is a speculative gamble. Nobody knows the future. Nobody knows whether they will be able to continue earning, nobody knows whether what they borrowed for will hold its value. Be prudent give yourself room for a fairly bad case scenario.
If your house is respossessed the lender can still come after you for the outstanding debt.
I don’t think that it is outright and always wrong to take on debt. I don’t think that we can put God in a box like that – but we must be sensitive to His will and do what we believe He is asking of us. Remember that debt can force you to carry on earning when maybe God is calling us to something else that might mean giving up our well paid jobs.
Great opportunity for young people to get their voice heard
Dave Wiles from FYT and Roger Sainsbury have a meeting on 13th October with (Stephen Timms MP and Chief Secretary to the HM Treasury) to talk about issues relating to YOUTHWORK and GOVERNMENT FUNDING.
FYT are collecting young peoples views on the Young Peoples as Prophets website here and so we have a great opportunity to get young peoples views heard.
The extract from the Young people as Prophets site says
If you are a young person and want someone in POWER who has a say in how this country spends it’s money Dave will take any comments you post directly to him. If you are a youthworker, start exploring this issue with the young people you work with. Post your views under the category Politics/Funding Youth work.
What’s the Matter with our Children
I’ve just written this news item for Ekklesia.
It highlights the fact a number of problems related to the well-being of our children in the UK.
For more information read the author’s version of the report here.
What is particularly interesting to me is are the results showing that young people in their upper teens have the second lowest measure of combined career aspirations (amongst those studying) and employment (amongst those not studying). Also, whilst UK children live in homes with by far the largest number of rooms per person, this material wealth isn’t translated into general well-being or a responsible attitude to the future. The study shows that the country ranks at the bottom for family structures that are beneficial for the development of children. The UK’s children do not tend to eat, or even talk very much with their parents. Not only that, but their friends are relatively unkind and unsupportive. Children from the UK also have the riskiest patterns of behaviour including sexual behaviour and drug use.
The report states
“there is substantial evidence that children in single parent as well as in step families tend to have worse outcomes than peers living with both biological parents (Kamerman ‘et al’ 2003; Rodgers and Pryor 1998).”
and
“The family constitutes the most important mediating factor for children’s well-being. An analysis of BHPS youth data found a significant association between the quality of parent-child relationships and young people’s subjective well-being (Quilgars ‘et al’ 2005). Orthner and Jones-Saupei (2003) point to the importance of good family communication for getting children into activities and educational opportunities ‘that will help them succeed’. Qualitative research shows that poor adolescents who have a trusting and supportive relationship to at least one parent are better able to deal with problems (Hoelscher 2003).”
and
“According to an Irish project on child well-being children see friends next to the family as the most important factors for their well-being (Hanafin and Brooks 2005). In fact friendship, the possibility to spend time with friends, to have fun and share problems is of high significance in children’s lives. A ‘best friend’ is often the only person with whom children talk about difficulties they have with their family or friends while being part of a wider group of peers strengthens feelings of belonging. Children are at risk of exclusion from their peer group if they stand out in one way or the other.”
and regarding risky behaviour including sex, drugs and alcohol:
“Adolescence is a time in development in which risk behaviour is very common and young people often engage in it hoping for some positive gains like acceptance in their peer group. In this they tend to underestimate the risks they take.”
This makes pretty bleak reading for UK youthworkers, but it does give us a measure of where we are, what we need to achieve and some issues to tackle
Jesus is God
I’ve often pondered about the statement that ‘Jesus is God’ and in relation to my recent post on trinity I noticed something interesting (I’m sure that many have seen this before!):
We could imagine God to be this entirely spiritual being who, whilst he created the physical earth, he was not physical himself.
An interesting statement in the Bible about Jesus is:
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. (John 1:1-2)
and making it clear that the ‘Word’ is Jesus:
14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
(a link to this chapter)
Jesus wasn’t an add on to God, he was always there (whatever that means!). So for God to appear on earth as a physical being shouldn’t be a surprise because God always encompassed both the spiritual and the physical.
What is interesting to me though is that through a demonstration of his physicalness (Jesus the Messiah) he bridged for us the divide between the physical and the spiritual domains – they became one domain. As Christians we are already in the Kingdom of Heaven.
There is something significant about God bridging the spiritual and the physical by appearing in physical form and then giving us his spiritual form (the Holy Spirit) to be with us in our physical form in our new found spiritual existence – we became spiritually alive.
There is no longer a gap between spiritual and physical. There are no human high priests anymore to connect us to God, there are no ‘holy places’ any more – everything physical is also spiritual. Our spiritual worship is our very physical act of sacrificing our lives (Romans 12:1).