Become an investor in Streetspace WSM's community house →

My friends, Dave and John are setting up a community house project on the Bourneville Estate in Weston-Super-Mare, one of the most deprived estates in SW England.

They need help the get the project off the ground - and are looking for people to invest financially.

They’ll take any support you’re willing to give, but are specifically looking for 130 people to invest £1000 to buy a house which will form a base for their work over the next 5 years. When the house is sold, you’ll get back a 1/130th share. If you think you could help invest, here’s the info.

Streetspace is a national network, which The Lab is involved in, that aims to change the face of youth work in the UK through innovative detached youth work and community-based projects.

Mark Yaconelli

Was at Mark Yaconelli’s day on ‘Tending the Adolescent Soul’ in Birmingham on Wednesday. Here’s some thoughts/notes.

Mark talked about the primary role of a youth worker (or perhaps any minister) as being a spiritual guide for young people - helping them to journey through the landscapes of their own spirituality. So much of what he said could apply to church leadership, pioneer ministry, community work - any role involving encounters with other people.

He also suggested that often our cultural responses to young people, as well as our youth work, is fueled by anxiety or fear, rather than love or trust.

Although the whole thing could have seemed a little ‘overspiritual’ at times (is it the film, Donnie Darko, which has the whole Fear vs. Love pseudo-Christian guy?), I quite liked his ideas, and in particular his kind of step-by-step model for interacting/developing relationship with young people:

1. See - See the young person through the soft eyes of Jesus
2. Be Seen - Allow yourself to be seen and accepted
3. Hear - Mark suggested that ‘Heaven is a place where your voice is heard, fully and properly’
4. Be Heard - Be heard and understood as a real human being, with weaknesses and flaws
5. Moved with Compassion - The natural response to seeing and hearing someone for who they are, and being seen and heard
6. Moved with Compassion - This compassion is then reciprocated by the young person in response
7. Acts of Kindness - The natural response to being moved with compassion for someone
8. Acts of Kindness - Reciprocated back by the young person
9. Delight - Delight in the relationship, in the encounter and in the other person - the natural response to an act of kindness from another

I could walk around inside religion and never, on any emotional level, understand that God was a person, an actual Being with thoughts and feelings and that sort of thing. To me, God was more of an idea. It was something like a slot machine, a set of spinning images that doled out rewards based on behaviour, and, perhaps, chance… If something nice happened to me, I thought it was God, and if something nice didn’t I went back to the slot machine, knelt down in prayer, and pulled the lever a few more times. I liked this God very much because you hardly had to talk to it and it never talked back.

— Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz (p.9)

Open discussion doesn’t exist

There is no such thing as a free debate or an open discussion. In their purest form, they simply do not exist. There will always be some subjects which aren’t up for debate, or some values which inhibit and impinge on others.

More importantly, there will always be some voices which are louder or more confident than others.

What I mean is that in every group, there will always be a small group of voices who feel they have more to contribute, or are in a better position to contribute, or are simply better at thinking on their feet, than the other voices in the room. This is the big flaw in the ideal of free debate, and in the discursive method.

So often, discussion is utilised over monologue with the justification that it is a more equal, fairer way of learning. I’m not sure that this is true.

Let’s discuss - but not because it is any more free, fair or open.

Your baptism is your commission.

— Alan Hirsch

What is the Gospel?

How would you describe the Gospel?

Every so often I go through a period of noticing people using the term, ‘the Gospel’. Recently I read an article online which used the phrase ‘Gospel fluency’, and asked ‘how fluent are you in the Gospel?’ More often than not, the G in Gospel is capitalised to indicate something important. Sometimes it is used to refer to something general to do with Jesus’ teachings, sometimes to a specific summing up of Jesus’ death and what it achieved.

What is the Gospel? How should it be defined or described?

Here’s some definitions which Google found me:

• the four books in the New Testament (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) that tell the story of Christ’s life and teachings
• an unquestionable truth; “his word was gospel”
• folk music consisting of a genre of a cappella music originating with Black slaves in the United States and featuring call and response; influential on the development of other genres of popular music (especially soul)
• religious doctrine: the written body of teachings of a religious group that are generally accepted by that group
• a doctrine that is believed to be of great importance; “Newton’s writings were gospel for those who followed”
  wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

• A gospel (from Old English, gōd spell “good news”) is a writing that describes the life of Jesus. The word is primarily used to refer to the four canonical gospels: the Gospel of Matthew, Gospel of Mark, Gospel of Luke and Gospel of John, probably written between AD 65 and 110. …
  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel

How would you define the Gospel?

Blue Like Jazz

Donald Miller’s Blue Like Jazz is one of those books I really should have read (based on it’s reputation) but hadn’t until now. Amy got me a copy a week or so ago, and it’s got me hooked. I love how honest and down-to-earth it is, and lacking in Christian jargon.

There’s something charming about the way he simply tells his story, without generalising or suggesting any life principles, or how to learn from his experiences.

I’ll be posting some quotes on the blog over the next few weeks.

Who are you? from Indexed.

Ha ha. from Indexed.

The new Lab website will be going online sometime towards the end of August / beginning of September. The new elegant design comes courtesy of Mr Matthew Way.