125 years ago in a church hall in Glasgow William Alexander Smith gathered together a group of young men because he was worried that there was little for boys to do and that idleness would lead them into trouble.

Sound familiar?

What became of that meeting was the Boys’ Brigade (note the position of the apostrophe!), an organisation which has endured the decades, serving countless boys like me.

I grew up in the BB.  My parents and their friends started a company when I was 5.  There was only a short time between then and my 18th birthday when I wasn’t a member and that was because we moved house.  I have many brilliant and precious memories of my time in the BB, as both a boy, an officer and in my present role as a denominational youth officer.

I was at the youngest boy at the Centenary international camp at Scone Palace, I spent four of the worst days of my life on Arran completing my Duke of Edinburgh’s Gold Award, I was awarded my Queen’s Award and our company won the Battalion Flag and the National drill competitions.  I was one of the people responsible for Crossover, a weekend festival of music, worship and activities attended over its 10 years by thousands of young people.

Those are all great memories but the thing I remember more are the people.  John Shaw, Iain Barnstaple, Iain Patterson, George Arbuckle, Eddie & Rita Wright, Liz Laird, Alex and Margaret Linton and so many other grown-ups who invested their time and energy in me and my friends.  I remember the Boys too.  The older boys I wanted to be like, my peers and those younger boys entrusted to my care in my squad or at camp and later the boys of the company I was an officer in.

The BB gets a hard time because of the drill and the uniforms and the caricature of the shouting officer.  Those are things that are easy to mock but they are far outweighed by the good things.

‘The promotion of the habits of obedience, reverence, discipline, self-respect and all that tends towards a true Christian manliness.’  That is the object of the Boys’ Brigade.  Those are bold aims.  High ideals.  I wonder often if I live up to them.  But I also know I would be a different person in probably a different place in the world if I had not been a BB.

I’m pretty sure that if grown-ups are willing to invest some of their time and energy in the Boys of the Boys’ Brigade, or Pilots, Scouts, Guides or Girls’ Brigade then the world would be a better place because the same problems that Smith wanted to address are still the problems of our world all those years later.  Boys with nothing to do and no-one to take an interest.  Boys lacking in confidence, skills and self-respect.  Boys who don’t get enough exercise, who have few friends and who know little about faith.

Perhaps this 125th anniversary is an opportunity for the BB to look back at all that has been good and take those lessons forward to create a Boys’ Brigade for the next 125 years.  I do hope so.

No, there isn’t any.

The last Ryder Cup Sky had a great live online video stream of the Ryder Cup.  Not this time.  I don’t want to buy Sky Sports.  I want to watch the Ryder Cup.  I can watch Champions League football for £5 per game so why not golf.

Come on Sky.  Get it sorted and stop this nonsense.  If I was American I’d get FREE live streaming on the PGA site.

Chris posted this wee snippet of interestingness about the possibilities of a Scottish Greenbelt.

Greenbelt Scotland
You might have missed the informal session at the Festival but we’re investigating the possibility of a Scottish version of Greenbelt. Many Scots don’t come to the Festival because there is no August Bank Holiday and they don’t want to take their children out of school. There are no definite plans, but there was enough enthusiasm from the session to want to take a further look with anyone who might be interested in getting involved in supporting, planning, volunteering or even just attending a Greenbelt Scotland*.  You don’t need to be Scottish — some at the initial meeting came from the north of England, it might also appeal to the Irish to come across the water. If you are interested and would like to be kept informed of any plans, send an email to
greenbeltscotland [at] greenbelt [dot] org [dot] uk
So that we can keep in touch. Another meeting is planned in the Autumn somewhere in middle Scotland–we’ll keep you posted.

I’ve been talking to people about this for years.  I think it would be amazing to have a Scottish Greenbelt and I think that some of the events like Crossover, The Big Saturday and the National Gathering have shown the potential for some decent numbers of Scots to gather for a festival type event.

I’ve emailed to join the list so I’ll keep you posted!

Not so much an upgrade as an add on…  Two chances for you to explore some nice tools for getting your church / group / self online.  We’ll explore WordPress, the power behind this site and iChurch, as well as some social media tools.  Both the Glasgow and Edinburgh workshops are limited to 8 people and you need to bring your own wireless enabled laptop.  Both workshops are free.

To book a place email me at the address on the poster.

I’m not generally prone to being miserable.  Sometimes quiet but not usually sullen.  And I’m not today.  I’m feeling ok, not up but certainly not down.  So why the self reflection?

Well, I’ve just left my feedback on the NYA over on the planning wiki and I’ve highlighted all the things I thought could be better.  I’ve just read it back and I sound like a right moaner.  What’s that about?

Is that my gift?  To point out the flaws?  That seems to be how I approach most tasks I’m presented with, at least to begin with.  I do the ‘reasons why this won’t work, but I also try to do ‘ways to make it better’ too.

I didn’t have a mountaintop weekend.  It had its moments.  Quite a few.  But it also had its shortcomings.  That’s not a criticism of the overall event, just a recognition that in my opinion some things could be better.  I’m happy to say how they could be better too.  So maybe seeing the negative is a positive.

I’ll go finish my half empty cup of coffee now.

The rest of Sunday’s session went ok I think.  We got into some of the upside to Open Source church and talked about how we could use social media to continue (or start) conversations like we have with Facebook and Twitter.

Sunday night was Christmas!!!  We had a full Christmas dinner with turkey and all the trimmings followed by a Hootenany, a party where people get up and entertain the masses.  It was great fun with ‘The Unknown Magician’ and Ishbel’s completion of Tam O’Shanter definately the highlights.

Monday was debate day.  The deliverences (motions or statements) were presented by Avril for Healthy Relationships, Me for Media, Kenny for Sustainable Living and Angus for Future Church and you can see them on the wiki.

There was lots of discussion and lots more around the social media one than I thought there might be.  People were really in favour of the church engaging with the web and the communication tools available.  We suggested a weekly ’sabbath’ from tech to remind us that face to face relationships are important and that we shouldn’t be at the beck and call of our email.  I got the feeling people didn’t really get the idea of a sabbath with some people thinking we were suggesting not using technology on a Sunday.

We tried using twitter as a back-channel with NYA2008 as our keyword and put the feed on screens at either side of the room.  It worked really well… but around lunchtime got very silly in a hurry and was pretty distracting so the screens went off.  As you will see from the previous post we got pretty prolific… and made it to the top of Twitter’s trending list.

Thoughts of moving on filled the end of the day.  We recognised Robert Paton, a young disabled man who through his faith, his dignity and his quiet persistence has changed both the Youth Assembly and the General Assembly to places which are much more aware and welcoming of people with disability.  Robert has reached the grand old age of 25 and is too old to return next year.  He was presented a ‘Friend of the Youth Assembly’ award and during communion he and those others who are too old to come back next year were annointed and prayed for as the step out beyond the community into the next phase of their church life.

Communion ended the day and included another great input from Mark Yaconelli. It was great to meet Mark and I wish I had more time to speak to him.  I met his dad Mike years ago and suggested that Mike come to Youth Assembly.  We met at Greenbelt and even though Mike was 10 minutes from doing a session to hundreds of people he insisted we go and find somewhere we could sit and talk.  Most people give you their agent’s email address, but not Mike.

Mike sadly died just six weeks after his trip to Scotland and Mark told us how much the chance to visit Scotland had meant to his father.  Mark was presented with the same gifts we presented to his dad, a bottle of finest Scotch whisky and a quaiche, a Scottish cup of friendship.  A fitting gift for a gifted man.

It’s too soon to reflect with much clarity on the weekend but there are some things that will probably occupy my thoughts over the next while:

Did the new debate structure work?  The programme felt too full… was that just me or was more space needed?  Are deliverences the best was for Youth Assembly to say what it thinks?  If they are, is there a way to not spend all of the discussion changing a word here and there?  Could the debate teams have been a little more informed?

My personal reflection would be that I didn’t seen to have time.  I’d have liked to speak to more people, especially Mike.  I’d have liked to relax a bit more but I think that may be my fault.  I did get to spend a little time with Neil, Laura and Chris and I valued that.

My favourite part?  Staff worship, especially the first service where we were commissioned.  Linda created a space where we were affirmed and equipped and valued and heard beautiful words and thoughts from the Psalms.

It all seems like a bit of a blur.  I feel as if I’ve been here forever and it’s only been 2 and a half days.  It’s not one of those ‘when will this end?’ kind of events, just one that has you up at 7am and not in bed until very late.  When you get to my age that starts to take its toll!

Saturday

Saturday was a much better day than Friday.  As you would expect, people had some time to get to know each other a little better and so there was a much more settled feeling to the day.

Mark Yaconelli was first up with words which brought tears.  He spoke about Sabbath, about being loved and being free.  He told captivating and moving stories of forgiveness and wholeness and of brokenness.  How often do we stop?  Just stop to let God catch up with us and to love us?  How often do we look around?  Are we missing our lives as we race through them at break-neck speed, too busy or scared to stop and look around?

Follow that!

A two hour chat about social media seems strange and very inadequate but none the less it was productive and the people in our group this morning engaged with the topic with thoughts on creativity, collaboration and authenticity.  I’m glad I spent the time reorganising and the structure helped I think.

For me the rest of the day was one watching, talking and swimming.  It was good to meet some old friends, some new ones and to take some time out for a swim.  Good to stretch and work some joints and muscles after sitting on the floor for most of the day.

The evening was spent at a Burn’s Supper with haggis and poems and some brilliant speeches.  Star of the show was Ishbelle with a superb performance of Tam O’Shanter.  A ceilidh was to follow but not for us as lack of sleep caught up with us.

Sunday

The sabbath day dawned far too early!  This was to be no day of rest with two debate sessions today.  Mark Yaconelli spoke on Peter and Cornelius and their battles to overcome their traditions and accept each other and to work out how the gospel was to work in a new world with new rules.  He also spoke of his surprise at how many people had told him that they managed to hold back their tears yesterday when he spoke.  His questions was ‘Why?’  Why would you want to hold them back?  Why are you scared of your emotions?  Why do you hide from your brokenness?  Isn’t that where we find healing and strength?  Isn’t that where we need God most and are most likely to meet him?

Again our session followed straight after but this time one of the event sponsors, The Scottish Bible Society, were to take the first hour to give their thoughts on Media and the Bible.

It was one of the most frustrating hours of my life.  Social media was compared to the Tower of Babel, a man made enterprise of arrogance and self-importance.  A place where man is more important than God.

I disagree completely, not just on this interpretation of social media but of our culture and the place we find ourselves in with God.  This is not the days of Babel.  We in a world that follows both Christ’s death and ressurrection and the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, both of which have changed the way we relate to God and to each other.  That’s how I began our half of the session and I went on to make the case for the benefits of sharing our creativity and collaborating on our journey of faith using tools like social media to help us on that road.

I’ll write more tomorrow as it’s far too late… so, to be continued…

So, 24 hours until NYA2008 begins.  How am I feeling?  Well I’m just beginning to get excited after a day of not really caring much.  I guess that happens when you’ve been working on something for a while and it eventually comes around!

This event is a bit of an technology experiment.  We’re using multiple platforms to enable people to read, write, tweet, comment and generally say stuff about the topics up for discussion and it would be great if you wanted to get involved in that.

You can see the topics we’ll be talking about and when through the links in the blog.  The blog should be pretty interesting with a range of people sharing their thoughts.  Your comments would be very welcome!

Hopefully you will be able to see some of the comments and questions on the twitter feed.  Feel free to follow NYA2008 on twitter too and send us some messages!

Finally, there will be photos on the NYA2008 flickr group or search for nya2008 tags.

So, I’m off to pack soon.  My sessions are about as done as they are getting for now.  I’m hoping they will evolve with the conversation over the weekend too.

So what does one need to make all this happen?  Well, a laptop, a camera and a phone.  Seriously, that’s all.  You could even do without the camera if your phone has a decent camera.

I’m getting excited.  And nervous.  I’m still not done!

Today’s news is that NYA2008 will have its own blog with a team of bloggers posting their thoughts and impressions as we go through the weekend.  We hope to have some thoughts from our keynote speaker, Mark Yaconelli, some delegates new and old and maybe even some of the event team.

The blog is over at http://nya2088.wordpress.com

I’ll also be blogging here throughout the weekend.