Thoughts of a work experience student (2)

Reality Check

I came to do my year 10 work experience at Nottingham YfC because I wanted something different from the norm. I wanted to get something else out of my week, asides from an extended knowledge of how to make coffee and use a photocopier…
And do you know what? I totally got it.
I’ve done almost three days now and I think the thing that has struck me the most is how so many churches and believers can work together, despite their different ways of doing things. I mean, we’re all a family, right? God’s family. And if that means meeting up in a café to talk about our lives, or making breakfast at a community centre, or playing table tennis with a group of teenagers, it’s all for God and through God and with God.
A couple of years ago my parents felt called to move to a new church and we visited a number of churches in Nottingham when making the decision. Recently I have also started going to a youth group at different church from my own. Through this, I have seen how easy it is to get caught up on all those little differences or ‘alternative interpretations’, which churches and youth groups have. I know I can definitely get absorbed in comparing and over-analysing. I spend time wondering where I really belong and which way is the ‘correct’ way of doing things, but this week has been such a reality check for me. It’s not about what youth group I go to or how we do worship at church or what refreshments are served after the service! The fact is: as long as we’ve got the foundations sorted, the little things are simply what make us who we are.
I have loved seeing how different people can just work together because they have one common interest, God. All of us can draw from each other and bless each other, whilst we worship and show his love in tons of different ways, that are as diverse as we all are from eachother. And I shouldn’t be wondering where I belong, because I am one of God’s children and that makes me a member of his family. That is where I belong, in the unity that is God’s family, full of wonderful people who love him just as much as I do!

Ephesians 4:4-6
You were all called to travel on the same road and in the same direction, so stay together, both outwardly and inwardly. You have one Master, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who rules over all, works through all, and is present in all.

Ephesians 4:15
We take our lead from Christ, who is the source of everything we do. He keeps us in step with each other.

Helena Gloeckner

The Best and Worst of ourselves

I don't mean to brag but i have just had the holiday of a lifetime. No it wasn't at a doctor who convention, although that would be amazing. After always thinking it was out of my league, a dream became reality and my family and I were stood in front of the Disney palace in Florida looking in awe. Ok I will stop bragging now.
The slight blip on the whole experience was our journey home. Just as we were a few hours away from landing, someone unfortunately took ill, so we turned round and landed at a little airport in a town in Canada called Gander. Unsurprisingly people were a bit frustrated and with most people having a lack of sleep tensions were higher than normal. I don't know what you are like when you are tired, but i struggle to cope with normality. I think there were around 550 others on that plane who had the same issue with tiredness. All this meant the atmosphere in the airport, getting off the plane meant there was a lot of pushing and shoving with people just in it for themselves, as long as they were ok, it didn't matter about how other people were feeling or what was the right thing to do. I managed to just sit back and watch rather than getting agitated and was amazed at how people swung from being nice human beings to everyman for themselves. Even after a couple of hours sleep at a hotel while waiting for food you saw some people pushing themselves to the front.
Then as we were sat in the airport the tide started to turn, there was a sense of community, a sense of everyone in it together, Not that i was there but it was what my grandparents used to talk about when they talked about the war. Community, you know what when people come together to serve each other rather than fight each other, when we put others first rather than ourselves first, there is something beautiful, some would even say you can sense the love of God.
I am sure when the stories of the early disciples in Acts get together they didn't always feel like it and the reality was probably they struggled in community as a lot of people do. Yet we look at what the power of community can bring: acceptance, love, joy and security. Is it no wonder that God loves it.

Richard Dawson

Sold out for the Gospel or Selling it?

When you become a Christian, you’ve been forgiven for all the things you’ve done wrong, you enter into a relationship with the living God, you’re loved and accepted, you’re destined for heaven. Amazing isn’t it? And I love sharing these truths with young people. I love giving them these gems of hope – telling them they’re loved when they feel like no-one cares about them. Telling them they’re accepted when they feel like they don’t fit in anywhere. Telling them they’re forgiven when they’re possessed by shame for the mistakes they’ve made. But that’s like showing someone half a photograph.

Do we tell them that when you become a Christian, you’re called to take up your cross and follow Jesus? To die to yourself. You’re called to serve others instead of yourself. You’re called to love the people who hate you. To forgive people who hurt you. My fear is we don’t. In making Christianity relevant to consumer culture, have we turned passion, love and community it into a cheap product?

And I find myself the head of this marketing committee. When asked how I changed when I met Jesus, my initial response was to say I became much more confident and happy in myself. I was no longer brought down by what girls said to me at school because I’d found love and acceptance in Jesus. But then I thought, when I met Jesus, I learnt to love the girls that bullied me at school, to try to think of others before myself, to be thankful for the good things in life – why weren’t these my first thoughts?

I fear that we’ve commercialised the gospel. That we’ve taken the radical out of history’s biggest movement. That we’ve religified an event that cut history in two. That instead of being sold out for the gospel, we’re trying to sell the gospel.

So what does it look like for you and me to take up our cross?

If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross, and follow me. If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it.
Matthew 16: 24-25

Becci Raine