Kids Club // Summer 2012 // Week #2 [Before]

“Let us run”

Well that weekend went fast. Having spent Monday to Friday looking after children all day, Saturday and Sunday were to be 48 hours of kid free rest. However, Saturday ended up with me running the stilt stall at the church fun day and Sunday afternoon found me at a three year old’s birthday party. I’m beginning to think the Lord is telling me something.

You can click here for a review of Week 1 of Kids Club at Chessington Evangelical Church, but that’s old news to be honest. Quit living in the past. Right now, I’m all about Week 2.

I’ve never done all day, every day of the three weeks of summer Kids Club, and so it will be interesting to see how energy levels turn out this week. It turned into an active weekend for me, but two great and incredibly relevant sermons came up at church yesterday (one on John 8 and one on ‘Discipleship and The Mind’ if you fancy a listen) so I’m feeling spiritually refreshed and grounded for the week.

Kids Club // Summer 2012 // Week #1 [After]

Snazzy new orange polo shirts!

Well – what a week. I was so excited for this Kids Club, more than I have been about any previous one. This is probably down to me really thinking about what it is that I’m doing – serving the true and living God who made all things and died for me. The inner magnitude of Christian service was really pressed upon my mind in my first year of university as I got involved in different kinds of Christian service. To consider that, actually, God’s work is work that has effects lasting all eternity is mind-blowing. And he uses people like me in that! Having, to some degree, got my head around that fact, I was so up for this week.

Week 1 brought blessings, challenges, hilarity, injuries and some classic quotes. There has been a constant flow of updates on Twitter – #KidsClub2012 is the one for the next couple of weeks folks, get on it. Below are my thoughts on a few different aspects of the week.

Kids Club // Summer 2012 // Week #1 [Before]

<p><a href=”http://vimeo.com/25197747″>King’s Kid’s Club April 2011</a> from <a href=”http://vimeo.com/user7369561″>Chessington Evangelical</a> on <a href=”http://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a&gt;.</p>

This coming Monday, I’ll be doing what I’ve done every summer for the past six years. I’ll be getting up at 6:30am in the summer holidays to start three weeks of The King’s Kids Club.

Kids Club is a holiday club run by my church (Chessington Evangelical Church) during school holidays. During the summer we get about 60-70 kids aged 5 to 11 who we’re responsible for from 8:30am until 4pm. I actually grew up in the club, and it’s been my joy for several years now to be a leader in it as well. This year I’m a Team Leader, with slightly more responsibility (it’s essentially involved a lot of cutting and laminating, and if a kid in my team gets carried off by a large bird of prey, I’m in trouble).

Giving Up Gold [Lessons from Eric Liddell]

“The Flying Scotsman”

Despite telling myself I wouldn’t, I’m becoming slightly infected with Olympic excitement. After the sensational sporting spectacle that was Chelsea winning the Champions’ League, I thought that any other sporting event for the rest of my life would have a permanent air of anticlimax. Still, it’s all getting to me. Part of that may be to do with the time I’ve spent recently thinking about the life of Eric Liddell.

You may not have a clue who Eric Liddell was, so here’s a quick lowdown – at the 1924 Paris Olympics, Eric Liddell won gold for Britain in the 400m finals, setting a world record at 47.6 seconds. This cemented his well earned nickname “The Flying Scotsman” (which was also partly down to the fact that he ran like Phoebe in that one episode of Friends). But the thing that makes Eric Liddell stand out in Olympic history is that the 400 metres wasn’t even his primary race. He was a 100m sprinter. 

Eric Liddell was a Christian, and it was his conviction that he should not partake in competitive sports on a Sunday. This meant that he removed himself from the 100m, 4 x 100m and 4 x 400m races, and was entered instead into the 400m.

Whilst Britain was still predominantly a Christian nation in 1924, Eric attracted plenty of criticism for opting not to represent his country on Sundays. Instead, Eric spent Sundays at church, hearing the Bible preached, worshipping God and enjoying the company of other Christians, as he believed that the Lord’s day was a wonderful blessing God bestowed on his people.

Kings On Trees [Joshua 8 + 10]

“If a man guilty of a capital offence is put to death and his body is hung on a tree, you must not leave his body on the tree overnight. Be sure to bury him that same day, because anyone who is hung on a tree is under God’s curse” – Deuteronomy 21:22-23

During this year’s summer term, the hall groups of my university Christian Union went through Joshua 1-6. The book of Joshua tells the story of how, after the death of Moses and 40 years of wandering, the Israelites finally move into the land which God promised them.

It was a challenging series, generating lots of discussion all round – but it’s always great to be challenged by God’s word, and to learn increasingly that “all Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16-17).

As term ended, I decided to carry on reading Joshua alone throughout the summer. Term finished a month ago and I’ve only just finished Ch. 10, so it’s looking more like a year’s devotional plan! However, I have been struck by so much in the few chapters I’ve covered; so much so that, in a way, I’m glad I’ve gone so slowly, as it means things have had a good amount of time to lay themselves on my heart.

A Return! (After Much Thought…)

If a guy this smooth can get confused, what hope is there for the rest of us?

I’ve blogged fairly constantly for the last couple of years. Firstly, on my own personal page – mostly about music. Then, at the start of 2011, I joined the writing team of Tympanogram, a cracking US based indie music blog which you should definitely check out, if that’s your thing.

Once I started writing for Tympanogram, my personal blog took a backseat and eventually died out, but I was happy with the writing I was still doing. Tympanogram, however, took a brief hiatus earlier this year. It’s now back up and running, but I opted not to return to the writing team. It’s knackering keeping up with the constant stream of new releases in the indie music world, and I was finding it difficult to enjoy new stuff for its own sake (and feeling slightly guilty if I just wanted to spend a few days listening to Frank Sinatra or Simon & Garfunkel)

So it’s been a blogless few months. And it’s been a nice rest. But I’ve kept feeling a nagging feeling that’s it’s something I’d still like to do. Not music blogging, at least not for now. Instead, I’ve found myself feeling as if I’d like to start a blog related to my Christian faith.