Women Bishops Controversy // A Response

The old “it’s-like-buses” cliché has proven true for the Church of England’s media presence this past fortnight. Wait ages for it to appear on the front pages, and then suddenly a new Archbishop of Canterbury is announced mere days before the synod vote on the future of women bishops. As you probably all know, the vote on Tuesday was not sufficient to pass legislation which would have allowed women to become bishops in the C of E.

As a Christian, I’ve been collecting my thoughts on this matter over the last few days, in order to present them here. I am not attempting to incite debate. I am writing in response to the reaction of the media, the public and my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. This is still a raw topic, one which must be addressed considerately and sensitively. I just want to share a few of my own thoughts about the situation as it stands. Hopefully, I can enlighten those who aren’t Christians about some parts of the situation, and encourage my fellow Christians about where exactly we go from here.

The Gospel + My English Degree

Books. I read them.

Amidst the crazy blur of activity I had in the closing weeks of summer, and the massively encouraging and productive ECU stuff that I was involved in during Freshers Week here in Exeter, it was very easy to forget that I actually have a degree to be getting on with!

I’m not going to argue with the stereotypes people throw at English students – they are basically all true. We have hardly any contact hours, you don’t NEED to do all the reading to get by, and you essentially spend seminars either whittling on about how much you love the Brontës, or shiftily trying to conceal the fact that you’ve never actually read the the Brontës (and nor do I have any desire to, thank you very much).

Contagious East // 2012 [After]

You know when you love something – a series, a band, the progressively dwindling collective IQ of the Big Brother house – and it just gets better and better until you don’t think it possibly can improve any more, and then somehow they pulls it out of the bag and step it up to the next level?

Basically that.

Contagious East this year was the best Contagious I have been on. It was probably the best week of my year. After four weeks of kids work beforehand, I was worried I wouldn’t get the full experience, but the Lord blessed me with enough energy to enjoy the week to the full. It was wall-to-wall brilliant teaching, loving fellowship, good food and quality Christian banter. Once again, I’m finding it hard to pick out the best things from the week to share with you, but here’s a rough idea.

Contagious East // Summer 2012 [Before]

Hogwarts, yes?

If you’ve been following my blog over the summer, you might have observed that things have been pretty non-stop. I started the holidays with 5 weeks of nothing, so it’s probably all been some kind of comeuppance.

My action packed summer continues this week with a return to Contagious East. Contagious is a Bible centred youth conference for 14-19s, originally set up by my uncle Trevor and two of his colleagues. Over the years it has lived up to its name  – there are now East and West conferences, as well as Contagious Nano for 11-14s and (making its debut this year) Contagious Scotland.

Fusion Camp // Summer 2012 [After]

I don’t think I’ve ever so readily fallen asleep on the sofa as I did when I got home on Thursday afternoon. I was absolutely knackered. But it was a beautiful kind of exhaustion. It was an exhaustion that was more than worth it.

Fusion Camp was a phenomenally blessed week. Thank you so much to those of you who were praying for us. There was a real sense of God’s presence in all things throughout the week, and I was just so encouraged and overjoyed by how clearly he was working amongst us and the 44 kids we took away. Slightly unexpectedly, we also had a strong sense of K’Naan’s presence, as his World Cup 2010 theme song become our Olympic anthem for the week…

<p><a href=”http://vimeo.com/10085362″>K’NAAN [Waving Flag]</a> from <a href=”http://vimeo.com/nabilelderkin”>nabil elderkin</a> on <a href=”http://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a&gt;.</p>

Fusion Camp // Summer 2012 [Before]

Dalesdown – where the magic happens!

It’s not unlikely that your life has felt pretty empty since my final post on Kids Club 2012. The Twittersphere has been mourning the acute absence of the #KidsClub2012 hashtag, and with the imminent closure of the Olympics, I’m sure you’ve been asking yourself over this weekend “WHAT IS THE POINT OF MY LIFE COME MONDAY MORNING?”

Well folks, the summer youth work odyssey continues. There’s a new hashtag in town. #FusionCamp2012 has arrived!

Fusion is the youth group run by my church for school years 3-6 (ages 7-11). I was a leader for two years before heading off to university, but have been drafted in again for the annual Fusion holiday.

Kids Club // Summer 2012 // Week 3 [After]

Would YOU leave this lot in charge of your kids for three weeks?

First thing’s first for all of you avid #KidsClub2012 fans out there – huge apologies for not putting up a “Before” post for Week 3. If this left your prayers haphazard and without direction, I am profoundly sorry.

Moving on. It’s over. It’s all over. Three weeks, 7:45am – 4:30pm, all day, every day.

I’m knackered. But it was all worth it.

It’s impossible to bring together all that happened during three weeks of Kids Club into one post. It’s even impossible to bring all that happened in one week together! So much has affected me and I’m sure the rest of the team – and hopefully the kids as well!

Kids Club // Summer 2012 // Week 2 [After]

I blame the kid I ran into.

Time sure does fly. At the start of Kids Club, three weeks seems like a mammoth amount of time. But now Week 2 has come and gone, it’s hard to believe there’s only one week left.

The second week of Kids Club is where signs of fatigue/general wear-and-tear begin to show. One particular sign of it was my first carpet burn, acquired Monday morning. To be honest, I’m surprised it took me that long, but it was a stinger and has now formed a tasty scab. It was definitely outdone however by the boy who, on Friday, acquired a huge carpet burn directly above his right eye 10 minutes into the day. Then, shortly before the end of the day, he whacked the same spot into the climbing frame, and so it looked as if he’d been in a rather vicious fight with someone a lot bigger than him. Explaining the epic injury combo to his mum was fun.

But aside from the usual bumps and scrapes, we had another hugely blessed week. God’s presence was felt and seen in so many areas. Here are a few!

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.