Christmas all-age and youth talks

Posted on December 16, 2018 By Chris

Here’s some of my favourite Christmas and Christingle talks I have done over the years:

School Christingle service: the story of the Christingle.
Christmas talk: Chocolate Brussels Sprouts: this is my favourite Christmas talk – Chocolate Sprouts – I’ve used this in assemblies, carol services, across the age ranges.
Christmas Eve All-Age Talk: Christmas Selfies: all-age talk from the Christmas Eve Christingle service in 2014 themed around selfies.
Christmas All-Age Talk: What shape is Christmas? a brief all-age reflection on Christmas.
Christmas All-Age Talk: Highly Favoured: an all-age talk on the theme of favour looking at Luke 1 and 2.
Christmas All-Age Talk: Walking in the footsteps: Herod & Simeon: all-age talk for our children’s nativity service based on the response of Herod and Simeon to the first Christmas.
Christmas all-age talk: Christmas changes everything: an all-age talk around Jesus being the wonderful counsellor, the almighty God, the everlasting father, and the prince of peace
Do They Know It’s Christmas?: talk I gave at our 14-18 year olds alternative carol service on the Band Aid song.
Christmas Prayer: Give Thanks to God prayer for All-Age themed on thankfulness
Christmas Prayer: Let there be Light: All-Age intercessions based on the theme of light.

Crowdsource new Bibles for your church, school or youth ministry with GivingBibles.com

Posted on August 18, 2016 By Chris

GivingBibles.com looks a brilliant new website designed by Hodder Faith especially for churches or other organisations that need Bibles but can’t afford them. Perhaps your church needs to replenish its stock of pew Bibles, or maybe there’s a growing youth group you’d like to give youth Bibles to? There are 30 different packs and individual Bibles to choose from, from individual gospels to packs of 20 church Bibles.

Whether you need Bibles for your church or school, or even for an Alpha or Christianity Explored course, Foodbank, Street Pastors’ group or for a local mission, GivingBibles.com is the place to come.

Anyone can set up an appeal, and it takes less than 5 minutes – just select the Bibles you need and write a short pitch as you might on JustGiving if you were running a marathon. Then share your appeal with your friends via email or social media.

GivingBibles.com from NIV Bibles on Vimeo.

CANOPY youth work resource library

Posted on December 21, 2015 By Chris

CANOPY, the new FREE youth work resource library from Tearfund is looking for youth workers to upload their own contributions and ideas:

With a growing library of resources, CANOPY is already a great destination for youth workers to get inspiration and ideas.

We hope you find a home there too.

Every youth worker has a drawer full of engaging and relevant youth work sessions, written on scraps of paper. Why not give youth workers everywhere a present this Christmas, and add your own sessions to the CANOPY library. It’s so easy using our unique editor.

Build resources by adding modules, set things like title and hit publish. Let’s get sharing!

The Christian Youth Work Awards 2015

Posted on September 8, 2015September 28, 2015 By Chris

The Christian Youth Work Awards are open, so why not take a moment and think about entering a youth worker, a volunteer, an employer, a resource or a young leader to name just a few.

Here’s what the awards are all about:

The Christian Youth Work Awards are all about appreciating and celebrating the incredible work done with young people in churches and through Christian organisations up and down the UK. Thousands of youth workers, paid and volunteers, run clubs, Bible studies and groups every week. They spend hours talking and listening to young people, just hanging out. They don’t just give their time, they give themselves.

As Christians, working with young people is part of our service to God. We are motivated not just by their needs, but by our commitment to following in the footsteps of Jesus. We seek to do it in His strength and through His Spirit. We don’t do it for recognition and we certainly don’t do it to receive an Award. However, we also know how important it is to encourage each other in the Body of Christ, and that’s why these Awards exist. By highlighting just a few of those doing youth work, we hope we’ll inspire and encourage us all.

Nominations close midnight 20th September 2015

Aim Lower video

Posted on August 1, 2013 By Chris

I was reflecting on how we share our hope for children’s and youth ministry with the wider church today and was reminded of the Aim Lower video:

[youtube id=”mGpKH7MU4Sk” width=”580″ height=”337″]

The Aim Lower viral video was produced by the Global Children’s Forum in order to help communicate and popularise some of the key conclusions of the 2004 Lausanne Occasional Paper 18 (The Evangelization of Children). It presents the challenge of prioritising children within church and mission activities as well as adopting a new stance of humility in partnering to see this happen. This is a great tool for advocacy and is available in multiple languages!