How many people do you think know .....

Tell Me Something I Don’t Know Already

How about the Christmas story?
The real meaning of Christmas becoming buried under mountains of wrapping paper is no longer a big shock. And the TV specials being the focus of our attention rather than a dirty manger in a pile of straw is hardly breaking news either. But we know it’s there.
Even if we love God we can get a bit distracted in the Christmas hype, focusing on the mandatory Tesco shop instead of the nativity service. Finding the biggest turkey can make us forget the tins for the homeless dinner and the search for the new Nintendo can seem more urgent than re-reading Matthew 2. But what if you didn’t even know the Christmas story to forget it?
This week, chatting to some young people about Christmas, they were asked,
“So what happened at Christmas?”
“Erm, didn’t Jesus die?”
I honestly thought they were having a laugh. How could the BIRTH OF GOD pass them by? But it has. We could pass the blame book about, pointing the finger at politically correct school productions featuring reindeer instead of camels. We could turn to our churches and ask what’s gone wrong. And not forgetting the best scapegoat of all, we could blame the media for commercialising the whole affair. But the blame game never has a winner.
My Grandad was doing his Christmas shopping last year in the town centre. Even though he’s been married to my Grandma for forty odd years, buying her gifts remains a yearly struggle. Needing a rest, he stopped off at Marks and Spencer for a coffee and had to sit next to an old dear, there being no other seats available. They got chatting and he said,
“All this shopping and spending. People have forgotten the real meaning of Christmas.”
“And do you know the real meaning of Christmas dear?”
“Yes. Yes I do.”
“Well praise the Lord!”
Turns out this lady knew the real meaning of Christmas. But what if she hadn’t? What if she’d had said, “What is the real meaning that everyone’s forgotten?” What would you say? Well it all started 2000 years ago in a place called Bethlehem?
This December the world will be worshipping a whole host of gods, but the humble, loving carpenter from Nazareth will remain a stranger to many.

Becci Raine

*note the picture used was the only picture of the Christmas story on the first 5 pages of google images. hmm

eq:mission November

We kicked off our 2nd eq:mission 7am on 13th November. Once again only the YfC team knew where they were going as we started to drive out of Nottingham onto the M1, M42 and M5. We eventually ended up going through Bristol and ending up in Bath. We were being hosted by Bath YfC and St Michael's Twerton who were opening their rec house.

In the end 8 of us came from Nottingham to help St. Michael's connect with a local community close to the Church.

After lunch we went up onto the estate and started knocking on doors offering to do a free car wash. There was plenty of variety in the responses we received from no response to be invited in by the guy of the house before being kicked out by the woman of the house. Although saying that the conversation we had with the guy we had after this incident revealed we had given him a nudge in thinking about God and faith. At one point we had some children helping us wash the cars which was great and got offered cups of tea and coffee. While some of the team continued to wash cars and invite people to the opening of the rec house that evening, a few of us went down to the high street to offer free prayer and giving people chance to ask why we are a Christian. Although not a huge take up we had a great conversation with a girl from the local university who chatted to the group about how she was feeling lonely, and said she would maybe try out the church in the next few weeks.

After a nice McDonald's dinner we set up the rec house for the evening. There was a nail bar, DJ, recording studio with instruments, pizza, drinks and other food. there was a really good turn up and we were able to chat to a number of children, young people and families that we had met previously in the day, as well as some new faces that we invited in off the streets. There was a couple of young people who used to go to church as children but had stopped coming along since they started secondary school, but were interested in coming back along, along with a lad who was already planning to start getting involved in some music stuff on the drums and being involved in the St. Michael's community.

After a good nights sleep we then joined the St Michael's congregation for morning worship and then ran the youth group and helped with the children's work. For the youth group some of the group facilitated a discussion on what how we could bring Jesus into our schools and colleges.

We then finished with lunch before heading back to Nottingham.

Over the weekend Richard Wilson (the leader of St. Michael's) really encouraged the team by telling us that without them coming over none of what happened would have happened. It was an awesome time in which each one of the team saw not only how Jesus worked through them but also how mission can develop each of our faith journeys.

A big thanks to Melissa, Luke and Tristan from Bath YfC for their organisation and hospitality, and to Richard, his family and all at St. Michael's for letting us serve them.

For more pics see our facebook page www.facebook.com/nottinghamyfc

new team blog (2) Ant Stevens

Currently I am studying at The Midlands Centre for Youth Ministry (CYM) on the youth and community work with applied theology. I drive a motor bike and am originally from Birmingham. I have previously worked with YfC in Nuneaton where i was a full time volunteer for a couple of years. Within NYfC I work at Hadden Park school leading various lunch and after school clubs. One thing i am really excited about within the work i do with NYfC is empowering and equipping young people and other young adults for living a life of active faith, through sessions like eq:uip. I am also really challenged about how we need to disciple all kinds of young people within the drop in sessions I run. I recently went away for a couple of nights with the school and their year 7's. This was a great opportunity and i was able to start building some quality relationships with them. Please pray that these will continue to grow over my time here.