It’s almost Christmas.  For many churches that means nativity plays and carol services.  For Dunfermline URC those will come later so this morning presented a bit of a challenge.  How to preach on Christmas… before it’s Christmas.

This is what I came up with.  Your thoughts and comments are very welcome.

Sermon Text (for those who like to read)

When the world was dark
And the city was quiet,
You came.

Lawrence Moore’s brilliant lectionary blog Disclosing New Worlds is back!  A superb resource for anyone who preaches or who wants to get some great insights and commentary on the weekly lectionary passages.

This evening I’m meeting up with Thomas aka Headphonaught for a chat about Tribes (book or audio), the new book by Seth Godin.

Our chat is being recorded as part of the Something Beautiful podcasts so I’ll try to speak clearly and even make sense.  All I’ll say for now is that I liked the audio book and it resonates with lots of the things I’ve written about and spoken about over the past few years so expect lots of soapbox rants!

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.

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!!!

The URC is about to enter into the first year of its Vision 4 Life project.  When I say ‘about to’ that’s obviously church speak for in 6 months.

So hear’s my tuppence worth on V4L…

I like the idea.  I think that encouraging our congregations to engage with ‘The Bible’, ‘Prayer’ and ‘Evangelism’ is a good thing but it has to go beyond that to make any difference because I’m sure if this is seen as just another bible study programme or house group then the people who usually take part in these things will take part in this and nothing much will change.

Change is the goal.  Transformation.

OK.  That sounds great.  If the bible and prayer and evangelism are anything then transforming should be at the top of the list.  If not I think we have missed the point.

I got to have a look at some of the draft ‘bible’ material the other day.  ‘The Bible’ is the first theme.  My honest opinion?  Disappointing.  Very disappointing.

For me (and that’s the only opinion I can give) the materials look far too much like every other bible study I’ve ever seen.  And the bit that’s missing is the ‘transformation’.

The questions that never seem to make it into bible studies ar ‘So what?’ and ‘How will this change my life?’.  ‘What do YOU think this means?’ and ‘How does it help you understand your life and faith?’.

Those for me are the transforming questions.  I guess you might call it ‘contextual’.  I’m a big fan of contextual bible study because it is about you, your understanding, your insight, your life.  Academic theology is important but only if it informs how people understand their faith.

Jesus did contextual all the time.  He pointed to sheep, goats, mustard seeds, water, trees, wine, bread and said the Kindgdom of God is like this.  People understood because they recognised the context of the stories.  We don’t live in the Galilee of 2000 years ago so our context is different.  OUR faith has to make sense in OUR context.  That’s why churches are empty, that’s why fresh expressions of church appear.  People need to make sense of their faith in their life or else is makes no sense at all.  Faith stops being transforming and becomes an academic exercise.

So, if V4L is going to be Visionary and For LIFE then it has to help people make the connection.

This is our children and youth work strategy visualised as a word cloud by wordle.

I’m about to head off to Carberry Tower near Edinburgh for 24 hours to our Synod Programme Committees.

On the agenda for me are Children and Communion and Safeguarding as well as working with the Children and Youth Ministry Committee on our future plans for the Synod Youth Forum and some other stuff in the pipeline that I’ll tell you more about later!

iChurch is, in my humble opinion, the best idea I’ve seen in ages.

If you are a URC congregation who either wants a website but think it is too hard to set up and run

or

are paying for web hosting, trying to design and update your site and all that

then ichurch is the answer!  For a one off fee of £100 you get your own website with a yourchurch.urc.org.uk address, a site that is already set up and really simple for anyone to update.  It runs from the URC server so no web hosting costs or any of that website hassle.

It’s a brilliant idea and one I think every congregation should take up.