Tim Abbott

Prayer Spaces in Schools workshops

Prayer Spaces in Schools, Scotland, launched last weekend at the St. Mirren Football Club. About 60 youth schools, Alpha and SU workers enjoyed the surroundings of the Director's suite, hosted by Debbie Meehan, leader of 24-7 Prayer in Scotland. I was there with Phil and Catherine from the Prayer Spaces in Schools team to share some stories, offer practical wisdom and run a demo of some of the activities that we've used in a school prayer space.

Compared to the normal car load of resources we cart around, I managed to take 9 prayer stations in a suitcase on the plane, though Debbie did provide a bowl, stones, trays and sand. The idea of developing a "Prayer Room in a Suitcase" is very tempting! It proved to be a brilliant and inspiring day. There is a real buzz of mission activity in Scotland led by some very talented, creative and Godly people.

 

This Saturday, 5th, I'm off to Oxford to take part in the "Transform" one day event for Christians in Education in Oxford where I'll be helping to run a seminar on Prayer Spaces in Schools. More details here.

 

Then on Saturday 12th I'm leading a half day training event in Bristol for youth & children's workers, local church volunteers, and teachers. I'll be working with school prayer space practitioners Catherine, from Oxford, Joe from Gloucester and Jo from Cheddar so there will be loads of stories, examples and wisdom to draw on and I'm really looking forward to meeting up with lots of people and the whole experience of learning from one another. It's from 10 - 1:15 at Woodlands Church. For more info download the flyer (pdf)

Beloved 3

Latest news from the third "Beloved" self esteem course for girls created by my colleague, Amy.

Beloved @ Thurstable: Session 1

 

Sex, Porn and Teenagers

Sex, Porn and Teenagers is a documentary on Radio 4 tonight at 8pm.

Writer and presenter Miranda Sawyer also has an article in The Guardian here. She concludes:

I wonder whether sex education classes shouldn't take more account of modern life. Knowing what a sperm and egg get up to in the privacy of their own boudoir is all very well, but understanding that if you let yourself be videoed having sex that film can be used against you is perhaps more useful. The fact is that some of today's teenagers are zooming straight past spin the bottle to specialist interest. And we aren't helping them learn how to deal with it.

I'm out at our termly Youth Leaders Gathering tonight, so I'll have to listen to the podcast.

h/t Sarah Smith Oasis Esteem

Squeezing out spirituality

One of the reasons we run Sanctum is that we believe passionately that young people are naturally spiritual; it's just that life progressively squeezes it out of them. Children engage naturally and easily with opportunities to be spiritual and to reflect on spiritual things. Young people less so, but it's still there. But spirituality is not something that people "grow out of", like belief in Father Christmas, as if it's a right of passage to adulthood. We know this because of the number of people that become more spiritually aware as adults, one example being the number who become Christians as adults from a totally non-Christian background (like me).

Sanctum (and other expressions of prayer spaces in schools) are about re-awakening the spiritual pulse that beats within children and young people, be it ever so slight. We're seeking to give young people a glimpse of the connection between the spiritual and their everyday experience. So much of our schools work is simply passing on information about God - our great hope, or vision for a prayer space is that young people experience something of God.

Anyway, all this is by way of preface to a fabulous post by Dave Csinos, among other things a researcher of children's spirituality, titled Educating out spirituality. He writes:

So, spirituality isn’t something that we achieve—it’s a gift from God that is woven into the very fabric of our innermost being. We can provide opportunities for children and youth to have spirit-to-Spirit connections with the One who gave them the gift of spirituality. Spirituality is something that can change, grow, and form. But it can also wither and fade away. To paraphrase Robinson’s words “We don’t grow into spirituality. We grow out of it. Or rather we get educated out of it.”

The whole post is relevant not just to the work we do in schools, but to the way we help our children and young people to grow in their relationship with God.

[h/t Youthblog]

Rachel Warwick on young people being spiritual

There's an Interview with Rachel Warwick, creative spirituality practitioner on the Sophia website bringing some wise and insightful reflective thinking on the subject of young people being spiritual.

Drawing on her experience of running Breathe and Orison, two highly regarded resources for helping children and young people engage with spirituality and prayer in schools and colleges, Rachel explores the difference in response between boys and girls, and the challenges and benefits of stillness to young people.

Diocesan Youth Leaders day worship

On Tuesday I was taking part in a Chelmsford Diocesan Youth Leaders day hosted by our three lovely youth advisers, Andy, Alice and Rachel. As well as being there as a youth worker I was also co-leading an afternoon session on Prayer Spaces in Schools. Arriving early we set up 7 Sanctum prayer stations in about 20 minutes thanks to the amazing CYO team who made the whole operation look like a well rehearsed military exercise.

Here's a run down of the worship time I led for the first 30 minutes of the day.

1. Slowing down

I used A Breathing Prayer by Christine Sine (h/t Jonny Baker) printed out 18 times, each printout having a different line in bold. (I'd also produced a few plain copies as there were just over 20 of us). We prayed through it one line at a time read by the person with that line in bold on their copy, leaving a whole breath (breathe out, breathe in) between each line to give the prayer the right 'pace'. The printouts being randomly distributed among us which enhanced the sense of a community at prayer, rather than reading round in order.

2. Sharing stories

I showed a Keynote slide with photos of signs bearing these words

Love, Joy, Sadness, Peace, fear and doubt

and asked people in pairs to tell a story from their work with young people that’s inspired by one of the words. Then to pray the simplest prayer for the other person.
They were then asked to tell a different person a different story from their walk with God that’s inspired by the same words, followed again by praying the simplest prayer for each other.

3. Silent meditation on John 15:4-8 "Remain in me, and I will remain in you..."

4. Using plain white tiles and coloured Sharpie pens people were encouraged to create a coaster that reflects the questions:

In what way do you want more of God?
In what way does God want more of you?

with Kim Walker, "I have found" playing in the background. Although this only gave us about 6 minutes, looking around later there were some truly inspiring tile coasters heading back to various parts of Essex and east London. My prayer is that they will continue to inspire people in their walk with God and that God will surprise them with his answers and his presence.

Beloved

Beloved is a new five week course for Year 9 girls that Amy and Rachel are running for an hour after school with up to 12 girls. Over the five weeks they explore a range of different issues that girls face that affect their body image and self-esteem. The course has been enthusiastically welcomed by the school and although it's only just started, news leaked out and there are a couple of other bookings already.

Amy is blogging progress each week. She gives an introduction here and news of the first week here. It's already looking very positive.

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.