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.

Where has the time gone!?!?!  I’ve known about NYA2008 for ages and been working on it for months and I’m still not done!  How come?

I got the programme information today and it looks amazing!  Some really good stuff happening about mental health and the human library sounds fascinating.

My sessions?  Well, Authenticity, Information, Privacy and Participation are our headings for an adventure in Social Media.  Sound interesting?  I hope so.

I’ll be blogging as we go along and posting on the wiki.  If you’re not coming you can follow the back-channel chat (or just backchat) on twitter.  Follow us over the weekend, or say hi!, using NYA2008 in your tweet.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about last night’s thoughts and I think my obsession with this event is about making a difference and seeing the value it has.  If not then it really is an obsession and I need help!

Now, no more of this procrastination.  Back to work!!!

It’s 4 days until the Church of Scotland’s National Youth Assembly in Dundee.

If you follow my blog or my twitter feed you will probably have noticed that this event seems to have taken up lots of my attention over the past couple of months.  I wanted to try to write about why that might be because it’s not like me to get so obsessed with a project.

We have history

Lots of history.  Yout Assembly has defined some pretty important points in my life.

I was a delegate/participant/sent to the first of the modern Youth Assemblies in 1994.  I was still at University and my dad was on the presbytery committee that got the job of sending someone.  He didn’t look much further than the other side of the dinner table.  I went, I liked it, I got picked to present a report from that Youth Assembly to the General Assembly.

I got a job with the Church of Scotland and became part of the team that delivered the event and spent a year talking Guilds into raising money to support it.

I was even put in charge of running one.  2001 at West Park in Dundee.  Possible still the highlight of my career so far.

All good so far, but then for a number of reasons I wasn’t at or was only partly involved in the next few.  I felt disconnected from the whole process but in many ways I think that was a good thing.  Distance gives perspective.  At least that’s what I thought.

Then I was invited to speak at the celebration of the 10th NYA a couple of years ago and thought that was the end of that.

I’m Back

I was surprised to be asked to this year’s NYA.  As I said, I thought I was done with it.  But apparently not.  I’m leading a team (that in itself is worth a post) who will deliver and resource ( I hope) a series of discussions on Social Media.  We’ve not been able to meet in real life as a team so we’ve used a wiki to plan and I’ll be doing the delivering and the whole team will be doing the resourcing of the conversations.

So what’s big deal?

I seem to care.  More than I think I should.  And I don’t know why. I’ve set up the event wiki and a planning wiki, a flickr group and some other stuff.  I’ve made suggestions about the event way beyond what I would do normally as an invited guest.  I’m not sure why.

One of my frustrations with FURY Assembly (the URC’s version) is that I don’t feel that the skills of the CYDOs (that’s me and my colleagues) are used effectively.  I think NYA is better at providing an informed and really challenging environment.  Not that I’m trying to big up myself.  I’m pretty terrified of this task and maybe that’s why I’ve given it so much attention.  Social Media is something that interests me but I’m not an expert.  I’m an enthusiast.  I see all kinds of possibilities and pitfalls and I think I get some of the challenges for the church but that needs translating for an audience of young adults.

Or maybe it is to do with investment.  I know how this event changed my life.  I probably wouldn’t have worked for the church if I hadn’t gone to that first Youth Assembly.  So, given the opportunity, perhaps I want to make the same kind of investment in this group of young people.

Maybe it’s about me wanting to impress my former colleagues and the new guys.  I used to do your job or something like it.  Performing in front of your peers is always pretty scary.

Maybe I should get some therapy and find out what it is about this event that gets me worked up!  But it does.  So the next week is going to be interesting, not least because I’ve still not finished my sessions.  I’m going to try to blog the process because it’s an interesting event with interesting people and I want to see what it stirs in me and if that helps me make some sense of how this thing affects me.

Oh, it’s in a 4 star hotel with a pool and gym and a spa.  Just thought I’d mention that!

Sometimes it takes me ages to get something to the point where I know what it is and where it’s going.  My preparation for NYA2008 has been a bit like that.

The Church of Scotland’s Youth Assembly is in 3 weeks.  It already seems to have consumed much more time than it really should have.  I’m leading a team who are facilitating 3 two hour discussion sessions about Social Media.  I think part of the problem is that the topic is too interesting for me.  I’ve found myself off on all kinds of tangents but I think the main problem is I haven’t been able to see where it’s going.  Not so much the presentations.  I think the information about Social Media is is fine.

I know what I want to say, but we started with 4 topics which have kind of merged into 2.  Now I’m not sure how to manage that!  Oh well, more thought required.  I think if we can nail the discussion points the rest will follow.

So, why is Social Media relevant to the church?  Answers please…

John has blogged his thoughts HERE.  Well worth a look as usual!

I’ve been invited to head up a team delivering a debate stream (I’ll explain in a minute) at the Church of Scotland’s National Youth Assembly in September.

The debates have in the past followed a fairly traditional model where people would be given written information prior to the event, someone would present more information on the topic at the event and then participants would ask questions, discuss and decide what they think.

This year there will be four debate themes; The Media, Healthy Relationships, Sustainable Living and Future Church.  I’m involved with The Media one.  Each theme will have four sessions lasting 2 hours each to explore one aspect of their topic with around 60 young adults.

So, we’ve decided to take an adversarial approach setting our sessions up as discussions around the opposites like control v democracy.  We’re also going to concentrate mostly on ‘new media’.  Should be fun.

We’ve decided to use a wiki to both provide information beforehand and to post what we come up with during the event.  More on that nearer the time.

Today was the end of What Do You Think? (WDYT?) and the beginning of General Assembly.  At WDYT? this morning we had a look through the report of the Youth And Children’s Work Committee and had a mock debate to see how the General Assembly works.  A coat stand was employed as the microphone and it was amazing to see how quickly people started treating it like a real mic, standing close and holding on to it as a comfort blanket!

After lunch we had a ‘break’ until General Assembly started at 3.30pm.  The break included creating a display of youth and children’s work and making sure everyone got checked back in and registered and stuff.

I decided it was my duty to make sure JB and LR got some well deserved time off so they were dragged kicking and screaming to the nearest golf course for 18 holes.  We played at Silveknowes on the banks of the River Forth and somehow managed to escape the rain which was falling all around us.  A good time was had by all I think.

Tomorrow sees the Assembly start in earnest with Youth & Children’s Work tomorrow morning.  I’m not allowed in the hall so I’ll be hanging out in the foyer watching the live feed on TV.  The most important thing for consideration tomorrow is my job title so check back to see it we get something shorter than Youth And Children’s Work Development Officer.  I do hope so.  That one doesn’t fit on forms!

T in the Park (Scotland’s amazing music festival) is also on this weekend so I’ll be watching/listening/wishing I was there too.  It’s online and on TV & Radio.  Feeder are on now rocking up a storm.

Tomorrow sees the start of the URC General Assembly.  This year’s venue is nice and close for me!  It’s Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh so I get to come home and night and sleep on my own bed which is always a bonus.

Assembly will debate 45 resolutions including a chance on Saturday morning to affirm the existence of the Youth & Children’s Work Training and Development Team, of which I’m a member, and with any luck shorten our job title!  The YCWT team (as we’re known) has been reviewed recently and this Assembly will discuss some of the recommendations of that review alongside a proposed ‘Vision for Youth & Children’s Work’ which I really like.

The early part of this week has seen What Do You Think? gather almost 40 young people from around the UK.  They come together to get to know each other before the General Assembly, read, study and discuss the reports and explore some of the big issues around the church and the world.  The FURY (Fellowship of United Reformed Youth) reps are usually the best prepared of all the delegates and this year is no exception.  They take their presence very seriously and I think show the church a great example.

You can download the book of reports from the URC website.

There is free wi-fi at the conference centre so I’ll try to keep you up to date with the highlights but I’m not a member of Assembly so won’t be allowed into the Assembly itself.  I, and all the other hangers on, get to watch on the overflow screen.

Maybe I’ll hang out with the Children’s Assembly instead.  It’s bound to be much more fun!!!