Not bad - three days in and I have already got something wrong!!

the last notice should have said resource is on Tues 6th (as it is in the dates pages)

Mon 5th is of course powerhouse day!!

cheers

Jim

Having been through the process of the last 6 months of trying to work out the vision for the mix and more generally for youth outreach, we are wanting to concentrate on 2 strands:

1) firstly – building on the work and relationships with the young people we currently see at the mix  - this includes possibilities of mix every week, after school drop in once a week, workshops and small groups

2) secondly – more detached based youth work – going out on the streets and meeting and building relationships with young people where they are. This will include working alongside other agencies, for example we’ve had some really encouraging and productive chats with the local police.

We will be speaking more and asking for feedback and input etc at the next resource meeting (for all youth and children’s leaders) which is on Mon 21^st April @8pm in church

But in the meantime, part of the workings out of how we implement this vision is knowing what leaders / time resources we have available. Therefore can I ask you to give some prayerful thought to the following and let me have your response before Mon 10^th March (so we can get rotas etc drawn up ofr next term but also have an indication of where we go in the future)

       A) Are there any Saturdays between April and July inclusive that you cannot do?

     B)

1) Going forward from this point – do you feel called by God to be involved in this work?

If YES then………

2) Which area do you feel most excited about / gifted for / called to?

- the mix on Saturday nights

- detached work

- prayer

- leading small groups

3) what time commitment do you feel called to / are you able to fulfil?

          - e.g. Saturdays once a fortnight, every Saturday, one hour a week after school, Friday evening, etc etc

4) have you any other thoughts, ideas, comments, critiques etc you want to throw into the pot at this stage?

In the next few weeks we will pool this together and it will hopefully show some areas of opportunity as well as gaps to fill. We will continue to work on this and during this time, we really need and appreciate your prayers and input. There will be a meeting on September 2^nd at 8pm for all youth leaders to bring everyone up to speed, to pray and to move forward with this refreshed vision and with renewed energies and passion to see Gods kingdom come amongst the young people of Tonbridge.

Look forward to hearing form you

Thanks for all you do – it truly wouldn’t happen without you

Love

Jim                                                                                                                        

Hi all, just wanted to update you and ask for your prayers this Saturday evening as we begin some detached work out of the mix. The plan is initially to do this every Saturday the mix runs. Initially we will be going out, prayer walking and just having a bit of a 'reckie' to see where the young people are, who they are, what their needs are etc. We will continue to do this over the coming weeks as we begin to map where and when young people are hanging around. The great thing is that through the past years of the mix, there are very few groups of young people hanging around where we don't know someone in that group. This is a long-term work, but I'm really excited by it. Please pray for the team as they go out this Saturday ( Jim, Matt R, Paul T, Sam E, Lorraine D). Please also pray for the team at the mix (Gav, matt G, Denis, mark P, Fran).

Coming out of the prayer meetings we held last term and also from the input of the young people and you as leaders, we are beginning to get a clearer picture of how the mix and outreach work can develop.
Eventually we'd love to be running the mix every week, we are looking to do some after school stuff and we hope the detached work will also bear fruit. Central to all this though is the need for a prayer team. We feel it would be fantastic to have a group of people praying during the mix for the mix and for the detached team. We would really welcome your input, comments and ideas on all of this. If you know of anyone who might be interested in getting more involved with the mix or someone who might be interested in praying during the mix, please feed that in as well.

Many thanks for all your work and all your prayers.

jim

...or maybe just a sparrow from the embers......Hi all - good to be back(!) sorry for the gap in anything going up here, this is now rectified and we will continue to use this as a means to communicate, resource and dialogue with reference to life and faith - obviously with a particular emphasis on the ministry in and out of St Stephens with young people.
A quick glance down the side bars of this page and you'll see lots (well - more to come in the future) of links to other things. Down the right hand side of the page are links to the practical stuff - where to get hold of resources - either ones we produce in house (including rotas, cell notes etc etc) or links to external resources and youth organisations. You will also find links to do with the blog itself, so you can keep up with past comments, posts, search by category etc etc.
Down the left hand side you will find links to contact me, subscribe t this blog (meaning you get an e-mail when a new post goes up) ,various logos, images, You will also find links to do with the blog itself, so you can keep up with past comments, posts, search by category etc etc.
Confused?? The best thing to do is to play! Enjoy and please do leave comments, raise questions etc etc.

cheers

jim

Hi all, just to let you know, I'm revamping and sorting out this blog (as I hav the main youthstuff one)

will post again, when finished, but in the meantime, do make sure you are subscribed by entering your details in the box to the left

cheers

Jim Prestwood

Hi all, just to let you know, I'm revamping and sorting out this blog (as I hav the main youthstuff one)

will post again, when finished, but in the meantime, do make sure you are subscribed by entering your details in the box to the left

cheers

Jim Prestwood

Hi all,
hope you're all having a good summer
just to say you should be receiving rotas and a few other bits through the post or in your pigeon hole (so please check them!!) The term diary will also be available in church on 2nd September, or alternatively if you have publisher download it here - Download autumndiary07.pub (9634.5K)"
to the right, in the download section you can also download the rotas for this term.
the google calendar down the left will also keep you up to date with whats happening. In the meantime have a good rest of the summer - don't work too hard and look forward to seeing you all and getting going again in September!!

cheers

Jim

Hi all, the following has come out of chats with some of you, chats with young people, questionnaires to Sublime, prayer and discussion at our last couple of core team meeting and a lot of personal wrestling and prayer and seeking Gods vision for the work of the mix. What follows is a quick (ish) summary of something I would want to recommend to you, ask for your support in and invite you to get on board with. If however you would like to know more of the details or discuss anything further, that'd be great - let me know! Whilst at the moment, I strongly feel (as did the core team meeting last week) that this is the right way to go - I am open to the possibility that we have got it wrong and that we could well have missed something. To these ends I would really appreciate - more than that - invite your comments and feedback. With everyone so busy, I want to try and avoid sticking another date in the diary, so thought I'd try it this way - by simply clicking 'post a comment' at the end of this article, you can leave a comment which others also can see - and that way get a bit of discussion going. Alternatively - should you wish to feed in comments to me more privately - you can do so over e-mail (jim.prestwood@ststephenstonbridge.org)

Well ....that was just the intro (!)

Basically concerning the future development of the mix - the younger mix i thnk all agree is working well, has a good atmosphere is making some links into church stuff and should continue to run pretty much as it has done. In the future we need to work on links into church stuff and we could also use schools to publicise it -if we decided we needed /wanted to! Longer term - We would love to see the
younger mix running every week and I'd hope by Sept 08 at the latest - this was possible and we would have recruited enough extra team to enable this to happen. As such there won't be any upper age limit on the younger mix - as in the past this has not proved helpful. Due to the times and nature of what we offer - the age at which they stop coming will be self-selecting anyway.

The older mix / remix / cafe mix is a slightly different issue.
I have always said, the older mix isn't in its final format that it's on a series of steps to something else. As we seek God as to how we can best engage with those young people who are 'out on the street; those young people who are unchurched friends of churched young people and how best we can provide somewhere for the churched young people to hang out - I believe God has spoken to me /others  quite clearly through various words, pictures, bible passages, talks that it time for a change. Many of these words have been about new seasons, going 'out there' and not being comfortable.

Add in to this the lessons we have learnt from running remix, and the possibility of converting one of the halls into a more youth friendly environment (cafe style - sofas - bar - AV - etc etc)Also in looking through the registers, over the past year or two, whilst we have had a steady crowd, we have struggled to mantain much consistency in the attendance of individual young people - i.e over a term we see about 120 young people - only about 20 of those do we see more than twice a term.
Finally, the last few weeks, 2 or 3 of us have been walking round the park and the local shops and found big groups of young people (many of whom know us - a great legacy of what we have been doing the last 3 0r 4 years)hanging out.

To cut a long story short - we are proposing the following:
that from July 07, the older mix stops. That in place of the older mix, we meet together as a team to pray, plan and possibly do a couple of walk arounds.
That we launch something new in Nov 07 0r Jan 08 - with the cafe in place using it as a place for young people to hang out but also as a base from which teams 'go out' on a more detached basis. This would mean we would need a cafe team, a prayer team and a detached team. The exact details of this will need to be worked through and we will need plenty of publicity to keep people informed.

In some ways, it is a big step and we don't want to lose contact with those few we are reaching at the moment - On the other, I strongly feel we need to stop one thing in order to let a new thing grow and in order to take time out and make sure we are hearing God clearly in this. We also need time to enthuse and recurit enough team etc etc,

I hope this all makes some sort of sense, please, please come back to me if it doesn't or with any questions / comments. 
Finally, with the above in mind, please could you
a) confirm if you are willing to stay on team for another year
b) confirm the dates you can / can't make next term
c) confirm which age-group (session) you are happy to do - i.e. younger, older, both, either!!

Many thanks for reading this, would appreciate your responses as soon as possible

Thanks for your commitment and all you do - we wouldn't be having this discussion without you and the work you have put in!!

Cheers

Jim

These three words fit together in so many ways! But in this particular post they are linked by the fact that they are all up and coming training events :

1) Young people and worship - our next resource meeting for all leaders helping in any of the youth groups here. Just a reminder that it is on Tuesday evening at 8pm in the church. If you want to see one example in action, feel free to come a bit earlier and join in with the worship at the end of Souled Out.

2) The second thing, I want to plug is particularly relevant to Break:thru leaders and any of you who work with the under 11's. St Barnabas, Finchley are again hosting the New Wine Kids workers conference. This is a brilliant day with worship, teaching and ministry on working with children and young people. The seminar streams address a huge range of issues, topics and top tips. There is a special seminar stream for 11-14's leaders and also one for young leaders. In fact, we think its so good, we will pay for you to go! It's on Saturday may 19th and we'll probably head in and out by train. There will be forms available at both the childrens and youth re:source meetings this week but if you want to check it out in the mean time then click here

3) Finally, if any of you are interested in knowing more about prayer ministry, specifically healing ministry, St Matthews, Tunbridge Wells are running a series of training events including listening to God, why are some people not healed, pastoral prayer ministry etc.For more info click here

p.s. did you know that you can now listen to the sermons you miss when you are in groups, online or as I believe the youngsters call it 'podcasts'! click here

Right, that's about it for now - have a good weekend and see you at Re:Source, if not before!