The Holy Pasty?

Well I went away on holiday a couple of days after my last update. We had a nice time in Torquay at the Torquay Holiday Park, although suffice to say things could have been run SO much better there. It’s quite a way out of the town itself, there is no bus service and no shuttle of any sort, if you don’t drive then avoid this place for a holiday (seriously!) We spent four days away and during this time Sky were going to upgrade my Broadband over to their new Local Loop Unbundled system, excellent!

I came back from my holiday, I still hadn’t been feeling that well but tried to make the best of it. I tried to get online to check my e-mails, knowing there would be plenty but there was no internet connection. Looking at the router I had local access but no internet access, I quickly rang sky and told them the problem, and I was told it would be resolved quickly. I asked if it would be before the weekend but they couldn’t promise that.

13 days later, after running up a huge mobile broadband bill on my phone and adding to that a PAYG Dongle with credit and spending about 10 hours on the phone I was finally called up to see if my Broadband was working. It was! There was no apology, I was passed through to the customer services where they did apologise and credited my account with £10 for one month’s broadband!

I intend to write to Sky and ask for compensation for amounts that I have had to spend in order to plug the gap left by their lack of service, but we shall see what response I will get! Sky’s normal day to day service is great, but when you have a problem with them it’s like banging your head against a brick wall. There are so many levels within Sky’s system that you seem to be continually told your problem is being escalated, but you can never get to speak to someone who actually knows what is happening! Promised call-backs didn’t happen and it’s very frustrating. I feel sorry for the people at the other end of the line too because they have no information available to them on screen but they get the irate customers who have been waiting in a queue for 30+ minutes wanting to know what is going on!

To top it all off when you are waiting on the phone for someone to answer you have their recorded advertising over and over again telling you how great their broadband service is, and how if you want to check your account status all you need to do is go online! I CAN’T GET ONLINE, YOU’VE CUT ME OFF! ARRRGGGHHH!

The weeks have flown past with the Summer holidays now over, my son went back to school on Wednesday (although he has 2 inset days this week coming!) and life has started to return to the routine. However despite the poor weather the holidays had a lot going on. Trying to keep up with everything along with entertaining a bored five year old in the rain has been tiring, now I need a proper holiday!

Following Silverstone and the Eden Sessions which took a lot of time and energy there was a concert in Camborne where Superhero were playing. A good concert with a strong gospel message that was shared. A couple of weeks later there was Creation Fest which was held in the Royal Cornwall Showground, which is in North Cornwall, so not too far for us to get to. Before going to that we made sure that we had a new magazine that we could take and give out and we managed to give quite a few away there. The purpose of Creation Fest is excellent, it’s a mission, but it involves some of Britains best Christian bands that want to show the love of Jesus to people. There is some teaching, a skate park, kids sessions and the gospel is the common thread through the whole event.

For us it was a good chance to meet up with some bands and get some interviews. So some of the delights we have coming up when I have typed them will be interviews with Superhero, Four kornerz, Shell Perris (this will be in the next mag issue), Scott Cunningham and last, but not least a pro skateboarder called Zac. So that’s a lot of stuff to type, you can see why I am taking my time before moving onto that mountain!

Last week I was able to work on both stuff for the website and fulfill my evangelistic calling as I visited Crealy and Land’s End and in between I was involved in a youth mission to Camborne and Redruth. You can read all about Crealy and Land’s End on the Soteria Website (www.soteriamag.co.uk) and you can see some of my photo’s on flickr from Land’s End.

The youth mission was brilliant, although to be fair there were some niggles. One thing that was apparent though was that God was working through the young people of my church and another local church to reach out. In fact I think it is fair that God was also working through these young people to reach in, into themselves! There have been times when some of them have questioned their faith, however God proved himself to them again and again through the week of the mission.

40+ people were prayed for on the streets of Redruth, and two young ladies gave their lives to the Lord. Many people were healed, both in the team and others who asked for prayer. However the most amazing thing in my book was that 17 people came to the Friday night celebration in Redruth Baptist. At least 10 of them were skaters from one of the local Skate parks, guys that I didn’t think would ever darken the doors of the church. Something about the groups that went out touched them. During the day there had been some searching questions asked and in the evening these guys were encouraged to pray for one another and to share needs for prayer. Wow! God can do great things through us, we only need to be obedient and listen.

My one great concern about the mission was the need for more about spiritual repentance and healing that about the physical healing. It reminded me a little of the lame man that was brought to Jesus for healing and he said “Your sins are forgiven”, perhaps we need a little more concern for spiritual well-being than physical, but this will come in God’s time!

Tags: Belief, Camborne, Creation Fest, faith, God, healing, Mission, move, Outreach, Redruth, repentance, Skate

There seems to be a familiar line that has been cropping up recently when I have been speaking to people about what they do for God. Particularly those who try and reach people who are not Christians,and particularly younger people. If it hasn’t been said directly then it has been implied and the church needs to listen, I’m not just talking about my church, I’m talking about the universal church. We need to re-earn the right to speak to young people and non-Christians about Jesus and when we have earned that right we shouldn’t shy away from the opportunity.

In most cases there is a huge gap between the culture of the church and where young people are at. I’m not just talking about the demonised section of youth with hoodies and ASBO’s as a badge of honour. I’m talking about the average teenager who hasn’t been brought up through the church, and sometimes even those who have! We need to gain their trust and their respect before they are ever really going to pay attention to a word we say. Of course Jesus and the Holy Spirit can break through this barrier, but surely the burden of responsibility has been put on the church and more importantly the individual Christians to “Go into all the world and make disciples”?

There are people who are helping to make the message of Jesus death relevant to those outside the church walls. In the last few months I have met a number of Christian evangelists who work outside of the norm. Bands and musicians like Superhero, E Tizz and Jahaziel who use their music to earn the right to talk to people. All of them minister in different ways, for Jahaziel and E-Tizz they rap and use hip-hop, now these aren’t musical styles often heard in the church. However their lyrics are often lifted straight from scripture, and kids listen and respond, this is a positive message from a type of culture that regularly talks about cars, guns and girls. Superhero are a rock band who have fun, they put on a performance, there is of course Christian content in their lyrics and they write from that basis, but it’s giving people entertainment to earn the right to share Jesus with them for 10 minutes at the end.

Another impressive artist is Shell Perris, someone who is a talented singer, more in the girl-pop / rock-chick genre. She communicates truths through her music about self-image, she doesn’t need to be a Barbie girl, and this comes from a place of personal testimony. As a teenager going through a rough patch she decided to take control of her life and stopped eating, the one thing she thought she could control. She found God through the experience and now has a book and music ministry helping teenage girls with similar issues. However it’s not just the world of music, I also met up with a professional skateboarder called Zac Archuleta and during an interview this idea came up again. He pulls some tricks and is a name many boarders would have heard of, it’s something he likes doing and is good at, but he uses the platform to talk to the teens who love the sport about his love for God. He’s slotted into the pro-skating world, he’s got the look and the moves, he takes risks, all to preach the good news.

These people are great, but not everyone can be a pro-skater or part of a four piece rock-band to reach kids, but at the same time we don’t have to shut ourselves away inside four walls and have our little social clubs. The christian message was never meant to be about comfy chairs and nice flower displays. These are simply tools that we have developed to work with people of a certain age. There is definitely a place for these things, but at the same time we need to be using other tools to earn the respect of those outside the church. It doesn’t take much to find out what teens are watching on TV and watch something so you understand that world a little bit more, it really doesn’t take much to learn to love teenagers in the way God does. Of course it’s not everyone’s ‘thing’ but God’s heart is for young and old and at the moment the church needs to reconnect with a generation it is quickly losing. The bands and acts I have mentioned are one way, they can help a church earn that respect with the young people, but it is up to us to use that credibility and use it to disciple young people. To make them aware of God’s love before we bring them a list of do’s and don’ts.

Paul said “I have become all things to all men, that by all possible means, I might save some.” It’s about time we take this on board for ourselves to become light to a generation that is portrayed as loving darkness.

OK – Rant Over!

>мебели it’s the sixth of January so Happy New Year! Although I am not sure what is happy about it? We have already have had enough bleak news this year with multiple job losses, companies going into administration, the Israel Gaza hostilities and today is a truly sad day as the Woolworths finally closes it’s doors after 99 years of trading.

I feel really sorry for all those people that I know who worked for the company, given that I used to work there and one of my best friends still did work for them I know many of them personally. Of course there will be redundancy paid out for those staff, but that’s not exactly what anyone wanted, they wanted jobs and security. However thanks to poor management strategies and the general economic culture one of the mighty giants of the high street is disappearing forever.

As with the last post, this originally appeared in the Jan ‘09 Magazine…

Tags: Christmas, Jan '09, Magazine