I just spent the weekend at Youthwork - the Conference in Southport. There's a whole blog in talking about theplace and all that but I'm not going to go there. I wanted to note the people. It was such a privilege to be able to go and serve there (I was running a prayer room and doing a couple of seminar bits).
Things that leave me humbled:
there were 1400 people there, mainly extra time church volunteers. These are amazing people who give up their time, their homes, their money to serve young people. I felt humbled (and a bit fradudulent) that they were listening to me and my friends.
it occurred to me that there was a huge amount of experience, wisdom and God in that gathering. There was also a huge commitment to learn and to grow. To watch as people engaged in gathered worship, to be part of that was huge.
my interns- well not mine but I took a couple of my trainees with me: they were great. They got chucked in at the deep end and were amazing. Thank you lovelies!
that God, in his infinite (and slightly unfathomable) wisdom would allow me to speak into that place, to bless and to serve.
A week today, when all the furore has ebbed and the markets have bottomed out, our nation will awake to the sounds of bugles and church bells as we commemorate 100 years from the start of the Battle of The Somme. I am an historian by background, and the Somme for me is emblematic of a human tragedy that need never have happened. My reading of it is this: we began a war from a variety of odd alliances and murky motivations, capped off finally by a sense that no-one had the will to stop it. In order to give the war effort impetus, posters, propaganda began to be bandied around about the enemy, about what they would do to children and how they needed to be stopped. It worked as a recruiting effort- young men, boys, and women all joined the war effort. They joined as an act of patriotism, tinged yes with fear, but also a sense that it might be the right thing to do. They joined from across the country- but at the heart of the front line forces were thousands and ten of thousands...
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