Some Interesting Discussions on Evangelism

There's some interesting blog posts on evangelism out there at the moment. They're all well worth a look...

Dave Bish explains how DISCO is the reason he doesn't do evangelism...

Hugh Bourne is thinking about how we need to engage with different student mindsets in our evangelism on campus... He's started by thinking about how we engage with students who are really success driven.

Mark Driscoll talks with Philip Jensen about Sydney and, amongst other things, how we're going to get young men into the church. He's talking specifically about Sydney, but I think some of it still applies to us here in the UK... (be warned this is a 25 min video!)

Gaz Leaney wonders how to teach the Bible effectively to people that struggle with reading...

A Bit Of News On Holiday Club

For a bit of background to what I'm talking about, check out the third paragraph in this post.

Wow, what a week! Year 6s are seriously hard work at times, but are great fun to work with. We had about 30 mins each day to go through some key themes of what it is like to be a Christian. The whole week had an Olympics theme and we looked at how the Christian life is just like a race.

On the first day we looked at Paul's conversion and chatted about the good news that Jesus died for our sins. A few of the kids were really challenged by this and felt that they wanted to make a decision right there and then to become Christians - flipping exciting, bearing in mind this was just the first day!

On the second day we chatted about the need for communication with God through prayer and studying the Bible. Particularly cool to see them understand the need not to pray and bring everything to God that way and it was great to remind them that God speaks through the Bible - something young people can sometimes forget (or not even be told in the first place.)

Third day was all about persevering til the end of the race. We talked about why Paul was prepared to continue on his missionary travels even though there was a very real danger he would be killed.

Final day was all about being part of a team and the need for Christians to be part of a church. It was really cool to be able to dispel some crazy ideas they had about church and basically show them that the church exists to help us finish the race together and to bring other people into the race!

It was an exciting week - especially seeing some of my group become Christians! Its easy to forget how awesome, exciting and utterly absurd God's love for us is, but seeing people realise what God has done for them in Jesus is a pretty good reminder! It was also a real privilege to be able to show these kids really important things at the start of their Christian lives!

Time for an update

Well, it's almost a whole month since I posted on here so I think it's about time for an update. A few questions need answering: What have I been up to lately? What am I up to now? What will I be up to in the near future?

In the past month I have been on a family holiday in Port de Pollenca, Mallorca. Apparently it was voted the best holiday destination by readers of Sunday Times in 2001. We already knew that it was nice as we've been there before. This time round was very pleasant, if a little bit on the hot side of things! The best bits of the holiday were being able to hang out and chat with my Dad and siblings, spend time chilling out before Relay and finally being able to start reading my way through my ever increasing pile of still to be read books.

This week I am helping out at my home church's holiday club, Go For Gold. We're going for an Olympic theme for the week and looking at the parallel between Christian life and running a race. We're looking at the life of Paul as shown in Acts, although how much depth you can go into that with children age 4-11 is debatable! I'm fortunate to be in the year 6 group with kids aged 11, so there should be some scope for opening the Bible and discussing things with them during our team times! If you're wondering about the Argentina flag below, each group is a country, and seeing as my co leader is Spanish and (much to her annoyance!) Spain was already taken, we decided on being Argentina!


As of August 26th I'm heading off up to the Quinta Conference Centre in Shropshire for Relay 1 - the conference that marks the official start of my year on Relay! I'm really looking forward to this coming year and I'm so excited that it's almost begun. I've not even started and I've already been challenged about how much I trust God: this year I have no other option than to cling God for help with my finances.

UCCF ay that ministry and living costs for a Relay worker add up to around £6000 and although I've raised part of this from working, most of this is coming from friends and family that want to support me during the year. Raising financial support is a strange thing to do - I know so many missionaries that would testify that God has provided for them, but when it comes to trusting God to provide for me, I often doubt that he's able to. I guess it's easy to trust a tight rope walker until you have to be carried across by one! Despite my embarassingly small amount of faith in him, I've seen God arrange for about 70% of the £6000 to come in which is really incredible and just shows that he is completely trustworthy and able to provide when it comes to these things.

I've read a bit about J Hudson Taylor this summer, and he summed it up nicely when he said "Our heavenly Father is a very experienced One. He knows very well that His children wake up with a good appetite every morning...He sustained 3 million Israelites in the wilderness for 40 years. We do not expect He will send 3 million missionaries to China; but if He did, He would have ample means to sustain them all...Depend on it, God's work done in God's way will never lack God's supply."