A week at Moorlands

Last week I bought some playdough for my youth group, and I got very excited about it, so last week we made lots of playdough models during my Sunday morning youth group whilst we thought about what worship is.

My car was fixed last weekend just in time to drive it to Moorlands early on Monday morning. I had a whole week at Moorlands this week covering our New Testament module. We had lectures on the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) and 1Corinthians.
We spent Tuesday and Wednesday looking at 1Corinthians, and lots of really interesting discussions were had, and lots of challenging points came up, for example...

"Church growth should not only be about increasing the number of people attending on a Sunday morning, but about growing the church family you have, into a people who better resemble Christ. "

"If more Christians emphasized the truth that, what is fundamental to our faith is that we believe that we have all hugely messed up, maybe people wouldn't feel so judged by the church."

"We should never manipulate the gospel message to make it attractive. Committing your life to Christ might be the best thing that many Christians believe that they've ever done, but it is a huge decision, and new believers need to know the decision they're making. " 

"Salvation comes first, obedience comes later."

We looked at and discussed lots of really interesting topics, especially whilst we were studying 1Corinthians, like sexual immorality, women in leadership, covering the head in worship, and love, among many other things. We also got to learn a bit about what life was like in 1st Century Corinth which really helps to understand the text and to bring it to life.

On Monday, Thursday and Friday we studied the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke), looking at the differences and similarities between them, looking at some big questions like that arise from them, and studying a bit of what is known about the culture that Jesus lived in.

It was really good to get to spend some time with the people on my course, and to see some other students on my course who only come for block weeks. We had time every evening to catch up and socialize ... and to learn some weird new card games at the pub!

Being away from my placement for a week gave me a change to think about the position that I'm in at the moment. Sometimes I can't quite believe what I'm doing now. A year ago I never would have thought that I would be the sole youthworker at a church. Just a few months ago I was thinking of turning down my offer from Moorlands and I had no idea what I was going to do after getting back from Uganda. Although I knew that there were lot of things I could potentially do, the one thing that I had pretty much written off as something I was incapable of was youth work. But now here I am! God equips the called eh?!

So after lectures on Friday I jumped in the car and just about managed to miss the rush hour traffic on the way to Basingstoke. I stayed there for a night to visit Mum and Dad which was really nice. We just had a chilled out evening and a nice meal and it was lovely to have a cuddle :)

The next day, after a lie in and another chilled morning with Mum and Dad, I drove down to Southampton to see Esther on my way back to the Island. Just before I had to leave to catch the ferry, we decided that we still wanted to spend some more time together, and so Esther made a spontaneous trip to the Isle of Wight with me for a night. It was lovely to get to show her where I'm living and working, she got to meet some of my friends here on Saturday evening and then she came to church with me this morning and got to see my youth group and meet a few people.

I got a bit excited by my new playdough again, so for my youth group this morning, we spent time looking at the nativity story and then making playdough models and taking photos of them acting out the story. Great fun! :)

So it's been a good week! I'm now back on the island for another couple of weeks before I'm back in Basingstoke for Christmas.
Please  pray for me this week...

- As I write a talk that I'll be giving at a youth event on Friday

- At Rock Solid on Thursday

- And just generally that God will use me this week and that I'll enjoy it :)