New picture

I am currently working on my website/s and thought I would update the picture here, it may well have a complete overhaul at some stage as I try and fit it in with my site (that is very out of date and rubbish at the moment) so be warned, one day you may come back and be faced by something completely different!

Multi Media Prayer

Here is a link to the power point (with added notes) from my workshop on Saturday on multi media prayer, if you have a look please let me know what you think! I have had to remove several images due to size and also music due to copyright but the basic text is still there and details of what I have taken out so I hope it is still helpful.

School Discipline

This last Saturday was our church away day, I mentioned it a few days ago and will post up the notes from my workshop soon (possible even latter today) but I wanted to share this one great moment with you first. The day was held at Burford school, a school where I guess they take discipline seriously, I say this because as I wondered around the grounds (trying to get Charys to sleep in her pushchair) I noticed in the grounds a pair of ankle stocks, just bizarre I felt for a school. (I’m sorry the photo is not the actual stocks as I didn’t get time to take my own picture in the end.)

clowning around cont...

I said I would put up some pictures from the weekend and the stilts so here you go here are four images of me on the stilts and with my trainee ‘shortie’, many thanks to Al Cane for the images!

What I wish I knew...

Just came back across this article written by Mike Yaconelli, ‘What I wish I knew when I started in Youth Ministry’ it was emailed to me a few years ago, having found it I thought I should read it again (I say again I’m not sure if I did in the first place) anyway it’s great really challenging the reader about their own faith and walk with God, I would recommend it to anyone involved in youth ministry but especially to anyone just starting out or about to go on gap years etc. words I think we all need to address sometimes, and probably not just youth workers but for all of us involved in any aspect of ministry.

email - tech support needed

I just have to share this with you, we had a reply to an email arrive in the inbox yesterday the basic gist of the message please can you send me your email address as this would make keeping in touch easier!

clowning around

Well yesterdays fete went well, although very hot with all the gear on, I would put some pictures up but I haven’t got any at the moment, perhaps I get some up later! And thankfully no requests for anything to obscure or rude this year. This was followed by an evening with live music and food with friends on the field to finish of the fete with views over looking the hills really great day and evening sold 40 odd balloon models but no juggling balls!

Fat and Frantic 4

I have had a request about finding a copy of quirk from someone who no longer has their copy, the only place I have found is http://www.musicstack.com but this appears to be in Australia and they only seem to have vinyl so not probably all that helpful, the campaign to get FAF on iTunes never really took off as very few (in fact I think none maybe one) showed any interest we could start a petition here, please sign leave a comment to the affect that you would like to see FAF available on I tunes and then I can try and progress it from there. To the anonymous commenter who asked the question I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful at this stage.

Hot Hot Hot!

I have to say I do love this weather, but when I have to be stuck in the office it is not quite so good, yesterday afternoon with the windows open and the fan going full speed my office was just over 34 degrees not the best for a productive afternoon, I think if’s it’s the same this afternoon I may work at home, in the garden!
This weekend is the pre, Infants and Junior school fete (a joint affair) (unfortunately on Sunday afternoon as not to clash with something else happening on Saturday, can’t remember what off hand some sporting event or something.) I shall be doing the usual clowning bit (including opening the fete) my boys love it when I do the whole clowning thing because they get to call me ‘Silly Simon’. My concerns are heat, two hours on stilts wearing big hat and two pairs of trousers, I think lots of water will be drunk, other concern is what I might get asked for this year, last year one mother (of a child in Zac my eldest’s class (although he wasn’t last year)) asked for a black sward (fine) then added could I making kind of s**ual. So far the strangest request I have ever had (BTW I made the black sward as standard and asked no more.)

Multi Media Prayer

Our church is having an away day next weekend on the theme of prayer, we are going to start off all together then have some workshops before lunch, more after lunch and then a final time of worship together at the end. The afternoon workshops are supposed to be a bit more hands on and actually get some praying done and I have been asked to do something on using Multi Media in prayer, I have about 45 mins to try and get across something meaningful and help people to experience something of how we can us media in our prayer. I have some ideas as to what I am going to say and do but thought I would open this up and I’m sure others out there may well have some great ideas I have not yet thought of so fire away, I will post what happens after the day. Cheers.

It should be illegal!

Dave walker, the brilliant man behind ‘cartoonchurch’ and ‘we blog cartoons’ has come up with yet another fantastic look at society as we know it:-

Not that I have anything against people who choose to decorate thier cars with these pieces of tat but i'm sure there should be some kind of law against it!

The illusion of extended schools?

Sorry it has been a bit of a gap again, busy at the end of 2 weeks ago then a weeks holiday, great time of refreshing visiting my parents who very kindly got up in the mornings with the boys enabling us to get a little more sleep. So what has happened since I last wrote? Well there was obviously the Extended schools day, this was alright some good stuff at the beginning of the day especially coming to it from a position leaning more towards ignorance on the whole subject, however as the day went on we split into two groups one for our area and another for another groups of schools represented, here we had opportunity to chat and think about the way forward, this was great and some of it was helpful, unfortunately we had a facilitator who seemed to have his own agenda and actually we spent to much time talking About one issue that wasn’t really an issue and shouldn’t have been talked about this meant that some of the stuff we could perhaps have got done that could have been really helpful was not even talked about. I think our facilitator wanted to take us forward to somewhere we were passed. Oh well we’ll see what happens next, hoping to use the bus to gather information from some of the young people which should be good.
Back to work yesterday I was performing an illusion which went well but did bring up what I think can be a common issue. It was an all age service and the bit I did was something that the WHOLE church could enjoy (I’m not just saying that it was fun and something that was relevant across the ages) but many of the children have the attitude that church is boring and spend the service colouring etc. and so those who could have learnt and enjoyed my input were already switched off and missed it, how do we get around these issues without asking the children to ‘come and sit at the front’ which wouldn’t have worked in this situation anyway?