Keswick 24: Hope-filled conversations with our children
Amy Smith
We were off to the zoo! My four young children were in the car, we’d waved Dad off to work, the buggy and picnic were packed. As we reached the motorway, a little voice, full of worry, asked: ‘Where are we going and how long for?’ In all my preparation I’d missed a key moment – I hadn’t talked to the children! Four little people had no idea what was happening.
For one little boy, for whom all the events of moving from foster care to his new adoptive home was a conscious memory, this was a problem. He was understandably worried that he was leaving home and might not see Dad again. Without his question, I might have missed what was going on. Instead, my awareness of my son’s heart meant I could wrap him in a hug and say: ‘You are our little boy, God has given you to us and us to you, you are home with us.’
youth ministry
Do we need 'less Bible' in our Youth Ministry?
Robin Barfield
Evangelicals love the Bible! We know that God speaks through it, and we love hearing from Him. That’s why we love being ‘Bible-centred’ and we are keen to make sure that shows in our ministries and our programmes. This is all wonderful but I wonder if sometimes, in youth ministry, we push this dynamic too far in a way that hampers what we are doing.
Part of the problem is that we can easily lose sight of the dynamic which the Bible sets us. In the 70s and 80s the Bible became a book about us. The reaction to this was that in the 90s and 00s we were told this was wrong; the Bible is a book about God. This has led to a model where the adult teaches, and the young person passively sits and listens. Rather, the Bible is how God speaks to us. There are two people in this encounter: the giver and the receiver. What is occurring when the Bible is opened is that we encounter God!
Tackling heavy topics in our youth groups
Anyone who has prepared a youth or children's programme for a church weekend away will know the feeling: your minister is due to chat to the speaker, and once they have, you will have your theme for the weekend.
We try to teach the youth and children the same thing over the weekend as the adults, so this is a big moment - if the theme is Jonah, you're laughing; Lamentations (as we once had) - less so! So you can imagine how I felt when the theme came through as "learning to groan well," looking at three tricky psalms of lament! My initial thoughts were "no thank you, let's do something completely different," but my fantastic team convinced me to think again.