What’s the Matter with our Children

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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

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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).

“Luke, I Am My Father”

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OK, a slightly odd take on the trinity! 🙂 (with a Star Wars tip)

“I am my father”

However, it is a serious point. The majority of Christians say that God is three persons in one, according to the standard doctrine of the trinity which was formed in the early centuries AD.

By the way, I would define a person as being a individual with which one can have a relationship that is distinct to other individuals that one can have a relationship with (but perhaps in the same group).

However, I can’t see where we get it that God is three persons.

I can see that God presents himself as three persons (God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit), but I’m not quite sure that I can make the leap to say that he actually is three persons, especially when you get phrases like ‘I and the father are one’ (John 10:30) (or in the context of a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away ‘I am my father’).

I think that I prefer the less well defined understanding of God, that he presents himself as three persons – as opposed to the definition that he is three persons. I’m not sure that we are supposed to understand the mystery of God quite that well.

If we really thought that God was three persons then we wouldn’t say things like ‘God is my friend’, which is a phrase that is grammatically incorrect if he is three persons – because ‘a friend’ (singular) implies one person with the emphasis on both the word ‘one’ and the word ‘person’. Only persons (or should I say people, which is the plural of person) can be friends – organisations or other units cannot be friends, as friendship always entails a relationship with a person (or relationships with people) – so either ‘God is my friend’ (one person) or ‘God is my friends’ (three persons) would be correct depending on your concept of God.

If we look at history we see God presenting himself as one person and then presenting himself as three persons. God is the same throughout eternity, so we cannot assume that he changed, but rather it is merely the way he presents himself (for our understanding) that changed – he used to present himself one way and now he presents himself another way – neither way being incorrect.

What is perhaps unfortunate is that perhaps the ‘three persons’ doctrine was rather pushed by various people through history to the extent that any other interpretation has been pushed to the margins. This has perhaps even lead to certain groups coming up with wildly different understandings of God, that they think avoid the contradictions of the ‘three persons’ idea – groups such as Jehovah’s Witnesses who don’t believe that Jesus and the Holy Spirit are God.

Anyone got any firmer pointers as to why we should believe that God is actually three persons?

SALT Oslo

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I have uploaded the slide from the sessions (see talks and Presentations) I did earlier in the week on Youth Ministry in Post modern culture. The first session is look at the links between youth ministry and emerging church, there is also some stuff on contextualisation, theological reflection and church. So it is quite a big file with around 80 slides.

Church Worker Wage Levels

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There is an interesting call from Church Action on Poverty to ensure that the hourly wage of Church workers meets a minimum of £6.80.

This is expanded on by Ekklesia here.

This relates to my recent item Exactly Who is Doing the Giving?.

My two comments are:
1. The Poverty line in this country is a relative income which is a certain proportion of the average (or perhaps median, I can’t remember) income. This is a bit bizarre because as society gets wealthier the poverty line moves up – so getting further and further from the ‘real’ poverty line. Some countries use a ‘real’ poverty line where the calculation is based on people being able to afford certain basics including food and shelter.
2. Providing the legal minimum wage to a worker is often a way of getting a balance between the worker giving and the worker being provided for (and the providers of the wage doing the giving) – see my post mentioned above.

For a Christian worker to get a high wage and then give money to other things is very tax uneffective. For example the incremental tax rate (including tax credits, NI contributions, etc.) for two parents (of two kids) on the minimum wage is around 62% – i.e. if they earn an extra £1,000 in one year (perhaps doing overtime, or perhaps through a pay rise) they only see a net increase in income of £380. This is a massive tax rate which is interesting to compare with the rate of tax refund on ‘Gift Aid’ giving of only 22%.

Basically if you want to give it is better to be able to do this by accepting a lower wage (and effectively giving of your time to some degree) than having a higher wage and giving money. This is more tax efficient to the tune of £400 per £1,000 extra pay (in certain circumstances).

Press Release

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Young People As Prophets

www.ypap.org.uk

To coincide with the launch of the Grove Booklet, Young People As Prophets, Frontier Youth Trust (FYT) is delighted to launch a new web site initiative to help young people speak out on issues that are important. Bishop Roger Sainsbury (chair of NYA and CYM) is one of the authors and he says, “I hope this booklet and web site will be used by youth workers to encourage young people to speak out in the tradition of the young biblical prophets on issues such as poverty, racism, the environment, injustice, peace and the worship of money and power. Our world needs their revolutionary voices as much today as it did in biblical times.�

Young people are often denied the opportunity to have their say. Even when they do speak their voices are often pushed to the margins and paid lip service. The YPAP web site gives the opportunity for young people’s voices to be both seen and heard and also enables young people to see what other young people are saying.

Dave Wiles, Chief Executive Officer of FYT and co-author of the YPAP Grove Booklet is delighted that the new web site has been officially launched. “This web site is a valuable tool in helping to get young people’s voices heard. I would encourage all those who work with young people to invite them to make use of the site.�

The web site is free, easy to use and also offers youth workers some free resources and tools to help young people take advantage of the opportunity to speak out. The Young People as Prophets web site can be found at www.ypap.org.uk

The ‘Young People as Prophets’ Booklet can be purchased from Grove Booklets on 01223 464 784 or e-mail: sales@grovebooks.co.uk

Further Information from:

Frontier Youth Trust

Unit 208b

The Big Peg

120 Vyse Street

Birmingham

B18 6NF

0121 687 3505

www.fyt.org.uk

Frontier Youth Trust is a Christian network dedicated to advancing the Kingdom of God by supporting, resourcing and training those working with and on behalf of disadvantaged young people. FYT is working with young people at risk towards justice, equality and community. Company Number 3264908 Registered Charity number 1059328.

Charity Fundraising Costs

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As we all know, most charities spend a proportion of their income on generating further income. Also, we are aware that charities cannot spend 100% of their income on fundraising, otherwise they would not be spending any money on their charitable purpose. So there must be a level at which fundraising expenses are acceptable.

However, there are hidden fundraising ‘costs’ that are not on the accounts sheet. For example Christian Aid displays the following figures on their site:
Out of every pound we receive, we spend:
* 52p on long-term development projects
* 17p on responding to emergencies
* 12p on campaigning and education
* 18p on fundraising
* 1p on administration

The unseen item is how much resource do external fundraisers contribute. We can see that Christian Aid spend 18p in the pound on fundraising, but in addition to that we have the time and money that external fundraisers (the people who do sponsored bungee jumps, etc) commit to fundraising for Christian Aid. This time and money only adds to the 18p in the pound fundraising figure above – the money raised is already accounted for in the above figures. So even though these people are acting on behalf of Christian Aid, their expenses (and time) are conveniently off the accounting sheet.

To better appreciate the amount of resource that a charity (including it’s supporters) is actually spending on fundraising you need to estimate the time and money that is off the record.

From the figures available for Christian Aid (for example) it is very difficult to assess this cost as their income stream does not differentiate between income from external fundraisers and income from fundraising where the costs are directly to the Charity itself (e.g. the cost of letters asking for money).

For the estimate it is worth including both the time and money of the external fundraisers (this is what is accounted for if the fundraiser is an employee of the charity, after all). If we monetise the time spent by fundraisers then at a guess I would estimate that the final figures must fall into the range of 20p to 35p in the pound compared to the 18p in the pound published figure.

Please don’t assume that I’m questioning the published figure – I’m not. I’m just trying to add to that figure the fundraising costs that are external to the official Christian Aid organisation as incurred by it’s external fundraisers.

So, if we could actually have a reliable estimate of the true costs of fundraising by charities what would our response be? Charities that spend a large proportion of income on fundraising are criticised for that and they usually attempt to reduce that proportion.

There are probably some charities that have no ‘off account’ expenses for fundraising, but probably also other charities that have no ‘accounted for’ fundraising costs because it’s members freely give of their own time and resources to fundraising (i.e. it is all ‘off account’). Just because they can claim zero pence in the pound fundraising costs does not mean that they (in the larger sense than just the accounted for organisation) has zero fundraising costs – it always costs money to receive money even if it is just to check your bank statement and to write it into the accounts. The time and money of voluntary fundraisers should be taken into account by donors, in just the same way donors are interested in the official figures.

So bear in mind that a charity with a zero fundraising cost may, in this slightly different way of looking at things, actually have a 50% or higher fundraising cost.

Here the Charity Commission states that it will take up complaints where people identify that “fund-raising or administration costs that are excessive”.

The Meaning of Life and the Practice of Christianity

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An interesting and thought provoking answer to the question of ‘why is there suffering if there is a God’ is the line that life does not gain meaning from wealth, happiness, toil, oppression, slavery, hunger, life or death but rather is about the eternal matter of knowing God. This relates well to the idea that it is the showing of love, not the relief of hunger, oppression or pain that is important. Whilst we show love through doing these things for others, it is the love that is the point of what we do. The means are the actions we do, the end is the love we show. Oppression and suffering are facts of life, they aren’t about to go away, they have to be lived with.

The freedom that knowing God brings transcends things like oppression and suffering. You can be free whilst still oppressed, have peace whilst embattled.

Now a question that I see as deeply linked with the above is ‘how can we show God to people’?

One thing that most Christians seem to do is to attempt to change people by imposing laws on them. Many Christians see value in trying to get ‘good’ laws brought in. This is because they see that those laws can bring a ‘good’ result and relieve things such as oppression, slavery, hunger or death…

…oh, aren’t those the things that we said weren’t actually meaningful in the big picture and that it was only showing love that was meaningful?

So perhaps imposing our morals on others isn’t beneficial to them because it doesn’t bring people into a relationship with God… Perhaps only showing love is actually beneficial?

I’ve put the word ‘good’ into single quote marks above because I’m using it from a very human perspective of what good is which contrasts with what I believe God’s view of good is. I believe that the only way to do good in God’s eyes is to do His will – doing ‘good’ things isn’t actually good if it isn’t out of obedience to God.

Serving Up the Communion

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Suddenly it dawned on me this morning during communion at church how odd it was that they only had appointed deacons serving communion to the congregation. I guess that this is a legacy of the Old Testament ‘High Priest as intercessor to God’ thing.

To be honest all they do is go to the end of the row so that it can be passed along – it’s not even as if they have some magical incantation to make as you receive the bread or the wine.

Seems a shame to keep this tradition – which seems unnecessarily exclusive.The Last Seduction full