Tim Abbott

Chaplaincy

Helpful thoughts about chaplaincy from Sarah Brush, inspired by Bishop Alan, and particularly the idea of a chaplain being a "spiritual interpreter".

Is evangelism child abuse? ... some thoughts...

Following my "link with no comment" yesterday, highlighting the forthright discussion that Internetmonk has stirred up about whether evangelism is child abuse, here are a few of my thoughts about this from our perspective.

As someone who has been involved in mission to young people for many (many!) years I believe that any kind of youth event has to have the following features. Advance information should be available to parents and make clear that the event is organised by Christians. Invitations to young people should make them aware that there will be more information about the Christian faith to help them decide if this is for them. I don't think it's appropriate to ask young people to make a decision to become a Christian at an event that is highly likely to be their first exposure to the Christian message and, crucially, is outside of any meaningful connection with a community of faith.

In our schools work (11's - 16's) we see our role principally as inspiring young people to develop a curiosity and hunger to find out more about a relationship with God - getting them to ask, seek, knock. This takes into account the fact that they are still developing in all sorts of ways, including their beliefs. So we are clear and confident about our faith in Christ and how that works out in practice, and we hold firmly to the principle of conversation and dialogue that allows the young people to express their views openly.

We have no right to be in schools - it's a privilege. We earn that privilege through being the best educators and youth workers that we can, by respecting the young people, the staff and the wider school community. Everyone knows we are Christians and we're often invited in specifically because of this; sometimes we're invited in simply because we are good news. I think the day is slowly coming when the 'traditional' routes into school life will no longer be available to us, the clasic 'proclamational' opportunities of lessons and assemblies. But I'm beginning to wonder if this loss may actually create a greater gain as we explore new ways of helping young people explore and encounter Christianity, as many are already doing.

I believe that children and young people can make a decision to follow Christ at any age. But we need to recognise what's happening for them developmentally. Jesus instruction to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength hints at the different aspects of our nature and personality that are involved. As young people grow up it's quite possible for them to love God at one stage of their lives and then to move on from that stage leaving the faith that was attached to it behind. We're trying to walk with them, helping them to make sense of the Christian message at every stage of their lives.

I'm concerned when Christians effectively abandon these principles because they have a 'captive audience' or some kind of historical or cultural advantage, even in private or Christian schools. It's just too easy to take advantage of the situation and veer into manipulation or coercion. All this produces is flash in the pan conversions or deep seated resentment against Christianity. But when a young person is inspired to ask, seek, knock, their discovery of God will be entirely in harmony with their own development and, with the right support of others from the community of faith, they stand the best chance of becoming disciples.

Spiritual England Conference

Last Thursday Amy and I took part in a conference in London on "Creating Spiritual Spaces for Children and Young People" organised by Spiritual England. We were there to do a 20 minute presentation about Sanctum, our prayer room for schools.

As might be expected, the event welcomed a fascinating variety of people and organisations. There were several Christian contributors, as well as ourselves, and a good number of the delegates came from Christian settings, all of which pointed towards a healthy engagement in the clearly rising tide of interest in spirituality in the UK.

Our 20 minute presentation, which included running one of the Sanctum stations as a plenary reflective exercise, seemed to go down well, judging from the feedback and the number of people who came up to us to chat about it afterwards whenever there was a break. In turn we were inspired by several of the contributions of others, in particular Clive Erricker of the The Children and Worldviews Project, Nigel Pimlott of Frontier Youth Trust and Anne Davies of Jigsaw4u.

Spirituality can be a bit of a borderless ocean with everyone having a different idea about what constitutes the spiritual and what doesn’t. There were a few contributions that were, perhaps, spiritual but not in a way that we feel comfortable with. And there were a few contributions that we found inspiring, though, to us, not obviously spiritual. However, the whole day was marked by warmth and acceptance and we were glad to be able to be there representing just one practical way in which Christians are helping young people engage with the spiritual and ultimately, as one of the stories we shared illustrated, with The Holy Spirit.

We believe it's important that Christians stay engaged with events and networks like this for there is nothing to be gained by staying away or by pronouncing judgement, as some might wish to do. We desire to judge others less, and proclaim the good news of the Kingdom more so the opportunity to take part, to present something of what God is doing through his people, to listen to others, is precious and I, for one, am grateful for all that Anna has invested in Spiritual England and for her invitation to us to contribute to the day.

Vetting & Barring workshop

Yesterday I spent half the day at a well run workshop on the new Vetting and Barring scheme orgainsed by ECVYS (Essex Council for Voluntary Organisations).
Speaker for the day was Simon Morrison from the Home Office who did a great job of explaining clearly something that could have been very tedious. The question and answer session in particular shed some useful light on how the scheme will work in practice.
Keep an eye on the ISA website.

We love our youth worker

I was greatly cheered to receive news that the web site for weloveouryouthworker is now up and running and is full of useful stuff.

This simple idea introduces a seven point charter for churches to help them achieve the highest standards when employing a youth worker, so if you're anything to do with a church that has, or is intending to have, a youth worker I heartily recommend that you pay a visit.

You can download the charter, Powerpoint and Keynote presentations to explain it to your church and some of Dave Walker's beautifully crafted cartoons, like this one...

Spiritual England

I was in London on Tuesday meeting up with Anna Lubelska, Director of Spiritual England. Spiritual England, in partnership with National Children's Bureau, is hosting a conference, "Creating Spiritual Spaces for Children and Young People" in London on Thursday 21st May.

There will be a range of seminars and workshops aimed at chiildren's workers, youth workers and those invoved in primary and secondary education.  Nigel Pimlott of Frontier Youth Trust will be speaking about, and running a workshop on, Spirituality and Youth Work. Nigel co-authored Glimpses, the spirituality workbook, for the National Youth Agency.

I will be there with some of the CYO team running Sanctum, our prayer room for schools, during the workshop sessions and over lunch time as an example of what can be done to create a short term spiritual space in secondary schools.

More info in the conference flyer here (PDF).

Youth work and social media: boundaries

Jon Jolly has posted here about the issue of how we set boundaries in our online interactions with young people, citing a forum discussion he kicked off at UK Youth Online.

Here are a few thoughts from our experience, which may have turned into a bit of a ramble, but here goes anyway.

Within CYO our approach is to attempt to replicate the boundaries that we set by, for example, not giving our personal mobile numbers. In practice this means using work email addresses rather than personal ones. When it comes to social networking we do not admit young people (under 18's) that we work with as friends on e.g. FaceBook. Although it hasn't come to it yet, if we felt the need to set up a social networking space, we'd do it in our professional rather than personal capacity. A social networking space in a youth work context will naturally appeal to the same good practice guidelines about how much you share with young people to preserve professional boundaries. So, what photos you post (if any?), what you say in messaging, how much info you add to your profile, how often you update it or are available for IM chat. The guidelines we follow in other aspects of professional youth work practice convert fairly easily to this kind of Social Networking as long as it represents our professional persona.

Most IM clients allow you to save the message log and if you're using instant messaging with young people I would suggest it's good practice to save conversations; just as one would log phone calls, make a record of texts sent / received and save emails.

Collective, the girl band that work in partnership with us, have set up a MySpace page to allow a level of social networking with young people they meet. In their case it's a bit easier and less 'personal' in that they always present themselves as a band and never as individuals, so when replying to young people's emails they sign off as 'Collective' rather than as the person writing the email. If you're the only or main youth worker then obviously this isn't an option - you've got to sign off as yourself!

As above, none of us, including the members of Collective, accept friend requests from young people. However, it's a feature of the internet that if they want to, anyone can find you. We had a very persistent young person who managed to follow a long and ingenious trail to find out personal details about one of Collective.  I would therefore advise anyone, whether working with young people or not, to be circumspect about what they post and where, youth workers especially.

We need to exercise care in what we post - this obviously includes things like blogs and Flickr accounts. There's a whole load of photos I haven't posted to my Flickr account, some for artistic reasons (!) and some because they include people and I want to retain absolute control over how / if I use them, who sees them and in which context. You don't have to post everything; know yourself and be aware of your motives, just as you would be in your work with young people. And be very careful about what gets uploaded to YouTube!

I blog with clear reference to my employer, CYO, and use my work email address, so although it's my personal blog I need to post with regard to the way what I say will reflect on CYO. Anyone can read it, including my Trustees and young people so I seek to post in a way that would not cause problems if one of the young people we work with came by for a look. This means no names of young people and often insufficient identifying information (e.g. name of school) to ensure that if you didn't know the situation already you wouldn't be able to derive missing information.

Any major flaws, or advice you'd add? You're welcome to comment here, but you could also pop over to Jon's blog or the UK Youth Online forum.

Independent Safeguarding Authority

The Independent Safeguarding Authority scheme will go live on 12th October 2009 and covers every person who wants to seek paid or voluntary work with children, young people and vulnerable adults. This gives us all another 18 months or so to get sorted.

• Once in place employers will only be able to recruit workers or volunteers who are ISA registered.
• There will be a one-off lifetime registration fee of £64 per individual. Once you're registered you stay registered with ISA.
• Instead of a number of different lists for various types of offence, the ISA will hold a single list of those barred from working with children and vulnerable adults.
• Where new information comes to light about an individual, the ISA will inform the employer (unlike the current CRB check which is only true for the day it's issued).
• Employers will have a duty to report certain concerns or disciplinary issues to the ISA.

You will still need to do a CRB check on appointment of new staff, but ISA will effectively provide ongoing monitoring of people involved in work with children and vulnerable adults.

As ever, more info is on the Independent Safeguarding Authority web site or the excellent CCPAS site.

You've just murdered Beethoven (or history, as it turns out)

We're doing a lesson with Year 9 groups at the moment on the Christian view of abortion which seems to be working very well with students and staff. Anyway, one illustration we're NOT using is the one that goes something like this...

If you knew a woman who was pregnant, who had 8 kids already, three who were deaf, two who were blind, one mentally retarded, and she had syphilis; would you recommend that she have an abortion?
If you answer "Yes" you've just murdered Beethoven.

There are two reasons why I've come to conclude that this is a ridiculous contribution to any discussion about abortion.

The first is that the story doesn't match the historical facts. Maria, Ludwig's mother, had seven children in total of whom only three survived infancy; tragic, but not uncommon for the time. Ludwig was the second born and the oldest of the survivors including his two younger brothers. Although his father is known to have been harsh and prone to drunkenness, there is no record of syphilis or mental illness in the family, though Ludwig later suffered from Hepatitis and probably from Systemic Lupus Erythematosus as well as the onset of deafness from around the age of 30.

The other objection I have is theological. At one level, aborting Ludwig would indeed have denied us the music of Beethoven. But it didn't. God has not given us the option of living in every possible outcome from every possible decision ever made in history. What if Hitler hadn't come to power? What if my parents hadn't divorced? What if that person had left for work 2 minutes later and not been killed because of a careless driver? What if Judas hadn't betrayed Jesus? What if...? Are God's plans so easily derailed by our stupidity, ignorance or rebellion? I somehow doubt it - I believe God is bigger than that, more capable, wiser and all this in ways that we can't fully fathom. Stuff happens and as it does, God walks with us shaping our lives for the best and guiding history towards his intended destination.
Did God have plans for any of Ludwig's brothers or sisters beyond a death in infancy? It's a huge question with profound implications - I don't know. But I suspect that the tragedy of their short lives did not limit God's plans for the rest of the van Beethoven family, for history or for us. God is not just creative, he's re-creative, or redemptive.

There are bigger questions here too, about the limits or otherwise of God's plans and the age old debate about how much is down to him and how much is down to us.

But please don't give me any nonsense about Maria van Beethoven aborting any of her children - that's just shredding good history for the sake of a shoddy illustration.

There's stuff about Beethoven here and here (as well as lots of other places!)
Also, check out truthorfiction.com for this and other possibly unreliable stories.

Saturday 9th

On Saturday Tom, Amy and I were at Kingsland church with about 200 others for Facing the unthinkable, a 4 hour child protection training seminar for Churches run by the Churches Child Protection Advisory Service. CYO is registered with CCPAS to keep us up to date with child protection policy and to do our CRB checks.
David and Pauline Pearson bring over 30 years experience of child protection, and it shows. What was essentially a four hour lecture on child protection could so easily have been tedious; I've heard a few people speaking on the subject who seem to have had some kind of interest bypass op. But David and Pauline are great communicators, blending essential child protection information with practical worked examples taken from real situations that they have had to face or advise upon.

In the evening Diana and I went to the Colchester Boiler Room Community feast, a meal and prayer event as part of the 24-7 Prayer tour.

Each table had a 'host' representing some aspect of prayer or ministry within the town and between each course people were encouraged to move to a different table to meet others and hear about that particular ministry focus. Some of the things that members of the local Boiler Room Community are doing include a couple currently visiting Uganda and a group going out to a Mediterranean country soon to set up the first prayer room in that country. Phil from 24-7 spoke, bringing us back to the timeless principle that effective mission flows from prayer, illustrating this with examples from around the world. A helpful reminder to us about how we fulfil the calling the mission that God has placed on our hearts.