PYV Summer Camp 2019 – Day Six (New Year’s Day)

All of life is worship and it's good to worship together

January 1 2020. It’s the final day of what has been a tremendous camp. Because it was a late night last night, the leader’s meeting and breakfast started later today. While that sounds like we all had a chance to sleep in a bit, we had to have everything out of our rooms before breakfast so it wasn’t much of an extra sleep.

I saw this verse of scripture on the door of one of the male dorms. It seemed appropriate today

If a man loudly blesses his neighbour early in the morning,
it will be taken as a curse.
Proverbs 27:14

Our study groups had their last opportunity to sit together this morning. The friendships that have been formed in these groups are friendships we hope will last for many years. More importantly we hope all they have learned and discussed will guide them to a deeper and stronger trust in Jesus and a clearer understanding of God’s will. The leaders of the groups have been faithful in helping your children understand the scriptures and how they apply to the lives of teenagers.

Have you talked with your children about their study groups?

After a shortened morning tea we walked up the stairs to our session room for our final worship session. We heard a short talk from Andy May to conclude his series where he has simply reminded us that God’s will for us is to know Jesus. We watched a recording of an interview with Sil Ruddle, who was the captain of the Australian Women’s Volleyball Team and involved in the Olympics in Sydney in 2000. She is now serving Jesus in Western Africa. She talked about determining God’s will for her life that led her to Africa and there were a few amazing statements. This was the stand out comment for me:

I went to SIM (Mission Agency) and said, “These are my skills. Is there an opportunity for God to use me and these skills?”

These skills were much more than volleyball. She had learned much about leadership while playing sport, but had also completed an engineering degree and had been working in water management for a few years. She had skills to offer.

Have you talked with your children about the talks at camp? Ask them about ‘maker; manger; cross; king’ and see what they can remember.

We also heard an encouraging testimony from Erwin Yii, one of our leaders. It is always an encouragement to hear about the difference Jesus makes in people’s lives whether it’s a testimony about coming to faith, or a testimony about growing in grace. Erwin has encouraged us all today.

Once again our lunch was fantastic with a choice of chicken or lamb on wraps, and then all the good things to put on top. The meals at camp have been great and listening to the conversations happening across the room over six days has been very encouraging. The campers did good work when it was their turn to set tables or to pack up dishes and wipe down tables.

From there we had our final time together to say ‘thank you’ to everybody who has been busy in leading different areas of camp. Our executive team led by Caleb Schulz; our speaker Andy May; the first aid team; pastoral care team; study and activity leaders; the tech team; and our musicians. (Apologies if I’ve forgotten anyone.) We also heard a bit more about YouthMETRO, and prayed for the group who have finished Year 12 and are graduating from PYV Camps.

This is a great group of young adults. Let's see what God has in store for them. 

I was flattered that some time was spent to say goodbye to me. My thanks to all who were involved in putting this together.

Then we had to pack up quickly and leave the camp as another group were ready to start their camp later that afternoon.

This camp has been eventful in unexpected ways with power outages and very hot weather. This probably helps to make it a very memorable camp too.

This camp is also my final camp as the PCV Youth Ministries Director. I am grateful to God for the opportunity that has been mine to be involved in the camps and to help point young people to Jesus. I trust that the seeds of faith that have been sown will continue to bear fruit for many, many years to come.

Ben getting everyone's attention.

The Executive Team did a great job before camp. And at camp. 

My last PYV Leader's meeting. 

PYV Summer Camp 2019 – Day Three

December 29 2019.

Sunday.

Today has been a day set apart for worship, the study of God’s word, and fellowship. We began with the leaders meeting and then into breakfast. Most people had breakfast today, but there’s always one or two who prefer to sleep in rather than eat. We all make our own choices.

The study groups today spent time considering the wedding at Cana and the implications for each of us. It has been good for the groups to look at a passage of Scripture like this (John 2:1-11) and recognise the generosity of Jesus at this wedding celebration, as well as the role of the servants in this story. When we link this to Isaiah 25:6-9 and the future promise of these verses, the story of the wedding is very relevant to us.

Our morning worship session today didn’t have any special guests which meant we could spend more time in singing and in listening to Andy’s preaching. Once again, it was worth listening to. We opened our Bibles to John 1 where those magnificent phrases that describe ‘the Word’ are written. Andy highlighted that the Word

• Was with God
• Was God
• Was there in the beginning
• Made everything
• Is the source of all life.

Not only that, the Word is personal – “The word became flesh and made his dwelling amongst us”

God’s will for us is that we should know Jesus.

Our time in the afternoon was taken up with five workshops. Campers had the option of choosing one of the five to attend. As ever, it’s interesting to see which workshops will be the most popular and today it was the workshop about Quiet Times with Andrew and Suzy Vines that drew the biggest crowd. Louise Goswell and I conducted a workshop on ‘friendship in the digital age’ covering things like social media use, sexting, and cyber bullying. We will repeat these again tomorrow, so I hope to be able to write something about the other topics then.

Free time gave people the opportunity to sit in the comfort of an air-conditioned dining room and play board games, or to play other games inside the stadium. I don’t know if any were bold (silly) enough to play outside as it was very hot here today. Others spent time praying together in our daily prayer meeting.

The evening session was a whole lot of fun. First, campers had the opportunity to catch aliens and rabbits. Clearly some of the aliens weren’t very good at hiding as they were found quickly, although one of them did take quite a while to get captured. He was better at evading the crowds. Once they were all found, we divided into two larger groups for the inevitable game of Capture the Flag. The sun had gone behind the hills and a cooler breeze was beginning to blow while we were doing this. It was wonderful.

Victory

Some youth take this game very seriously. This is evident in the care they take with forming a strategy, but it is most clear as they run full pelt down a hill to get to the flag, while others run at them to stop them. It was good to watch – and watching is all I want to do.

The Late Show tonight included the showing of videos that were made last night. It’s a while since we have done something like this at a Summer Camp, and I think video editing software has greatly improved since then. These short videos were absolutely outstanding. We probably won’t be able to put them on YouTube for copyright reasons, so trust me that they were great.

And I finally got to the couch for an interview. But just as we were about to start our convener came up to tell Shady that we were running late and needed to finish now.

We’ll see what happens tomorrow night.

Monday is expected to be a very hot day. We’ll do all that we can to keep everyone safe, including swapping our planned activities for Tuesday when it’s cooler.

Thanks for reading all this.

Brian.

Charging the Flag

Is Sherif conducting a choir?

The Settlers

"Hey Ure. Give us a wave."

PYV 2019 Summer Camp starts next week.

Friends and supporters of PYV. Thank you once again for your ongoing prayer for the youth of the churches in Victoria. I know that for many it has been a significant year. I hope for others it will end that way too. 

Next week our 2019 Summer Camp will be beginning at Forest Edge near Neerim South. We will have 185 people with us at the camp including campers, leaders, YouthMETRO trainees, and a few special visitors. 

Andy May is our speaker and we are excited that he will be able to help our young people with the topic of "Finding God's Will for Your Life". As some of the group are finishing school and determining what to do from here, it's an important topic. Speaking of that group, some of these people have been to every summer camp through their secondary school years and we will give them a bit of a farewell at the end of camp. Perhaps you could pray for them while your praying for Andy. 

Caleb Schulz is our convener for the camp and he - with the fantastic support of his executive leaders - have brought together a wonderful team to lead our study groups, activity groups, and workshops. You can find out more about the workshops at https://www.pyv.org.au/camps/summer

Chris Shaw and Nate Barbieri are leading the YouthMETRO trainees as they have their intensive week of theology and evangelism training. Many churches have seen the positive fruit of YouthMETRO over the years. Perhaps there's someone in your church who could be exploring this for 2021. It's never too late to start the conversation about that. 

We will aim to be posting a daily update on the Ministry and Youth Blog for parents and friends to keep up with what's happening. We invite you to enjoy this each morning - https://ministryandyouth.blogspot.com/

Please continue to be praying for what God will do at the camp. 

Thank you.

Praying or Preying? What will you be remembered for?

My title comes from reading an article in the Houston Chronicle titled "Preying on Teens". It is subtitled, "More than 100 southern Baptist youth pastors convicted or charged in sex crimes."

In the article, I was introduced to Chad who was hired and ordained to be a youth pastor. Chad had a good message for his youth group about abstinence, but he also preyed on some of the girls under his leadership which made abstinence impossible. Not surprisingly, Chad was fired by the church - though perhaps not for this.

What is surprising is that these church leaders who fired Chad didn't say anything to the next church who hired Chad to be their youth leader. You'll never guess what happened next.

Actually, you probably will.

I encourage you to read the article. It can be a little confronting, but such is the reality of our world.

Read it and learn two things.

This is why screening is important. 

When someone wants to be a leader with PYV (Presbyterian Youth Victoria) we ask them for some referees that we can talk to, and we ask which church they previously belonged to. In talking to referees we are able to learn about the character of the person who is applying for a leadership role. This is important. I might only know this person as an acquaintance. Maybe we've met at a camp or two and I have an impression that they are interested, and growing in godliness.

When I call their pastor, or youth worker, or an AFES leader, I get to talk to someone who works with them much more consistently. If those people have some concerns, then they will carry more weight than my initial impression. And that is as it should be.

We ask about a previous church so we can call someone from that church to determine if there were any circumstances that are important for us to be aware of. In Chad's case, if the second church had called the first church, and the first church had been honest, at least one girl would not have been abused. And if we can protect that one girl, we will.

In Victoria, we are required to have a screening program in place for anyone involved in ministry to youth or children. We will take that seriously.

What not to do if you're attracted to someone in your youth group?

I'd like to think that any youth leader would know how to answer this, but apparently not. And we can't say, "Well, they're just immature adults in a sexualised society" as though that makes it all ok. This article refers to Chad, who was 30 when he was doing this, and Gary, who was nearly 40 when he started cultivating his victim. She was 13.

There are reasons we tell youth leaders not to have one to one phone or messenger conversations with teenagers. There are reasons we tell youth leaders not to be alone in a room with a teenager.

Ensure your relationship to each of the young people under your leadership is above board.

You will destroy your reputation, the lives of the people involved, their families, and possibly the church community if you mess this up.

We are in a time now where such sins will not be covered up, where church leaders cannot cover it up without facing significant consequences themselves, and this is absolutely as it should be. May we never return to times when such cover-ups happened.


Another thing to note:

Are teenagers safe to disclose abuse in your church?

Do teenagers in your church community know that they can talk to someone if they are asked to do something they're not comfortable with? Or if they think their leaders are acting in ways they shouldn't?

You will probably say to me, "Of course. We always let them know they can talk to us if they have any concerns."

That's great. But I'd challenge you to be specific. Talk about sexting. Use the right terminology (you might need to find out what the current terms are). And if parents tell you they don't want their young teenagers dealing with this, get them to read this article. You see, if the 13 year old girl knew that what her youth pastor was doing was wrong, maybe she wouldn't have waited until she was 16 before she did raise the issue.


Friends, let's do all we can to help people grow in grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. And let's do all we can to keep these people safe.



Photo Credits:
Phone - Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash
Couple - Photo by Cristian Newman on Unsplash

Teaching Outside the Box - Chapter 3. The Interpretive Approach

I still remember the feeling. I had been trying a budgeting system, and it started off really well and it was making sense to me. Then we got paid and trying to add this to the system left me feeling like the people who knew how it worked must be on another planet. It made no sense to me!

Now imagine being 15 and hearing that you can get to heaven because a carpenter who was also a teacher was crucified around 2,000 years ago on the other side of the world. Would it make sense to you just because someone told you? Probably not.

In Andrew Zirschky's book "Teaching Outside the Box" he writes about five different approaches to teaching. This is the third of the five, and one that gets the imagination involved.

The Interpretative Approach involves more than just talking and listening. This approach involves the student in seeking to interpret and understand what they are reading and/or hearing.

Teaching teenagers the facts and content of the Bible is very important. The Instructional Approach imparts knowledge and understanding that students apply to their lives. However, the Interpretive Approach is more concerned with seeing youth interpret their lives through the lens of God's story, and thereby come to live out of a different view of self. (p84)

This might seem a bit strange to those of us who believe in the value of preaching, but properly understood there is no conflict. Rather, adopting the interpretive approach will strengthen what you do with the instructional approach. What makes the difference? (Here's where it might get dangerous)

Imagination is the key.

This means that we as teachers want to encourage the youth in our groups to make the most of their imagination as they hear the stories in the Bible. Jesus is clearly the master story-teller, and even while some of his stories have no reference point for suburban teenagers, yet we can still imagine what it looks like when a shepherd goes looking for that one sheep that got lost, or when a woman is looking for a lost coin in a dark room, or a father looking out for his son and waiting for his return. Why not ask the teenagers about those images in their minds, and what they see as they place themselves in these stories of scripture.

Keep in mind that the Holy Spirit is the great teacher, and that what we are doing is to prepare the way for God to open the minds of these young people. Zirschky offers three essential steps to the interpretive approach - Accept; Imagine; Release.

Accept

Accept the students' individual experiences and ways of seeing the meaning of their lives and the world, and invite them to share their thoughts. I think many of us might be a little cautious of this step fearing that they will be on the wrong path. Maybe they will be. But they will also be the ones interpreting their own experiences, and it would be good for you to listen to that.

Imagine

Now we get to help them to imagine a world that can be different, a world that is informed by a Christian narrative, a world where they begin to see God's values being honoured and lived out. This can be confronting because the world around them in reality is probably very different, but maybe there are some places where those kingdom values shine. Highlight these ones.

Release

The world of the imagination is often a very comfortable place, but we can't stay there. So we release the teenagers back into their own world, but now they will be looking at that world with a different perspective.


I think the Interpretive Approach is brilliant, but I also recognise that if this is the only approach you use, your teenagers will potentially end up with an understanding of God which is based more on their own thoughts rather than God's own revelation. Used in conjunction with the Instructional and the Community of Faith approaches, it will greatly strengthen their understanding of the text and their experience of God.

I want to be like this when I'm old.

This morning I read Psalm 71. I think this is a Psalm that relates to all of life as it speaks about birth (v6), youth (v5,17) and aged (v9,18). It was verse 18 that caught my attention though:

Even when I am old and gray,
do not forsake me, O God,
till I declare your power to the next generation,
your might to all who are to come.

Wouldn't it be great to have older Christians sharing their experience of life as a disciple of Jesus Christ? Of course, this assumes that there are older people who are disciples of Jesus Christ. I know there are because I have met some.

It also assumes that these people have something worth sharing. If you have been a worshipper of God through a life time, as the author of this Psalm clearly was, then you should have a lot of stories to share. So share them.

This verse also assumes that youth will listen.

So here is my prayer:
that youth will look to the older people of the church for wisdom
that youth will listen to that wisdom and learn from it
that older people will share their stories
that friendships between the generations will grow.

Then, when I am old and grey - though some might think I'm already there - I hope I will be able to continue to speak to youth about the glory of God. 

Intergenerational ministry - not just a fad.

“Intergenerational ministry is not just a fad and it’s not just a good idea.”

As you read that, you might not even know what it’s referring to. But if you’ve been a part of church life for anything more than ten years, you will know that many churches don’t have a good mix of generations. Some churches seem to have been caught in a time warp and now have people who are all of the same generation. Other churches seem to do a bit better, but still seem to have only two

generations – and both of those are over 60!

Some churches do have different age groups, but aren’t really intergenerational. These churches just have different age groups meeting in roughly the same place. And this thought has captured my attention.

Last week I took the chance to attend a training gathering on the issue of intergenerational ministry. It wasn’t a big crowd in attendance, and there was nothing unusual about that. What was unusual was the age of some of those attending. These women were the age of grandmothers, yet they wanted to know and learn about intergenerational ministry. It was like they were crying out that they don’t want the church to be a comfortable place for the over 70’s if it means it isn’t a comfortable place for the under 20’s and the under 10’s. God bless these women and their tribe.

At this training event, I learned the difference between being a multi-age congregation and a congregation that does intergenerational ministry. Put simply, a multi-age congregation has different ages involved or connected to the church, but those generations aren’t really involved or connected to each other. Is this really what a church family is supposed to be like? Or have we just swallowed western individualism without seriously thinking about the impact on the church? Have we even considered the impact this would have on the generations that will follow?

If you know me and my view of church life, you will know that I value intergenerational ministry and intergenerational worship. I have been challenged to see beyond the Sunday morning worship hour and instead consider the whole of church life. You see, as I have been thinking about how to rescue the church from separating the generations I have perhaps put too much focus on keeping everyone together on Sunday morning rather than sending young people away from the sermon. I still believe we should make that change, but that doesn’t do enough.

How can I help to make such a change? I’m still thinking about that. But I have been encouraged to meet with a group of people from other church denominations who also recognise that separating the generations hasn’t been the great solution we first believed it would be. To help get some things moving in my mind, and perhaps in yours, this site is worth looking at here2stay.org.au – not just because it’s Australian, but because of this:

This is a discipleship issue.