'NiddriePastor' Tagged Posts (Page 3)
What Happens When Your Church has No Christian Youth?
by Mike Stark (Children’s, Youth & Community Worker) Historically, we haven’t had many ‘Christian’ young people in Niddrie Community Church. We have a vibrant and active work among children and youth in the community, yet this is almost exclusively evangelistic, rather than…
Evangelising the Young on Housing Schemes
by Mike Stark (Youth & School’s Worker for NCC) I recently attended “Deep Impact”, Scotland’s National Christian Youth Work Conference in Aviemore. I came back refreshed, inspired and excited about all the work ahead. I’ve got a lot to reflect on over the next couple of weeks: the people I met, the things I learned, and truths I just…
How Social Media is Changing the Way we do Youth Ministry
“I’d die if I didn’t have my BlackBerry.” Recent comment from young person According to the news, a UK survey shows that TV is being pushed aside by mobile internet devices in the lives of young people. Among 7-16 year olds, 61% have a mobile phone with internet access, and use that phone for an…
Should we care about the regulative principle?
This is an interesting debate in the context of housing schemes. There is a helpful discussion starter to be found here on the topic.
13 Ways the Church can Respond to the Needs of Bankrupt Britain!
I read a book this week called, ‘Bankrupt Britain: An Atlas of Social Change’ by Daniel Dorling. I, along with Ed Stetzer, have an unending fascination with statistics. I am also extremely sceptical of 95% of them at least 86.3% of the time. Some of the figures quoted are mind-boggling,…
Youth Groups That Do What They Say On The Tin!
In the UK, there’s a product called Ronseal. It’s a popular varnish/wood stain product available in most hardware stores. Their advertising strap line is really well known: it’s supposed to be simple, straight-forward, and down-to-earth. “Ronseal: It does exactly what it says on the tin.” In…
Is Our Kindness Helping Or Hurting People?
What enters our minds when we think of inner city housing schemes, council estates and/or projects? What do the residents need to alleviate the problems they face? It is easy to try to appease a guilty conscience by doing ‘good stuff’ in these areas. Maybe helping out in a children’s club or doing some other community project. Social projects are two a…
‘Off the shelf’ Christmas assemblies for schools
Being the new chaplain on the scene, it falls to me to deliver this year’s Christmas assembly in the local high school next week. The expectation is for me to deliver a short seasonal message to a large group of teenagers (who don’t really want to be there) to help them think more about Christmas.…
Christian Youth Work : Developing Healthy Partnerships
One of the things that we notice about the young people in Niddrie is that many of them like bikes, both the pedal kind, and the motor kind. So bikes present us with a great opportunity for contact with many young people and also with other organisations working in the area. As a church, we want to…
Should the church help young people into work?
If any professional ever had a claim to the title ‘Jack of all trades’, it would surely be the church Youth Worker. What other profession can boast such diversity in roles as: counsellor, entertainer, artist, cleaner, cinematographer, people manager, taxi driver, web developer, teacher, caretaker,…