Changing endings

One of the things that marks the start of the Christmas season for me is the vast array of high quality and big production adverts that are released by large companies, all trying to compete for the biggest chunk of the 16 billion pounds people in the UK will spend on Christmas presents this year. The Coca Cola advert is probably the most famous, and this year the John Lewis advert has impacted lots of people with a great message of how giving is better than receiving.

I know there are many more adverts to come, but there is one that has struck such a chord with me and has reminded me why I do what I do, and why the work of Youth for Christ in the city of Nottingham and beyond is so important. It is an advert for Barnardos:

In youth work, you hear lots of stories. Some stories are funny, inspiring and happy and others are just heartbreaking. The young people that we work with are all on a journey and they all have a different story. Some of the beginnings to their stories have not been good ones. Some people in the lives of those young people think they know what the ending to their story will be. Some people in the lives of those young people have even told them what their ending will be. Some of those endings are not good.

For us at Nottingham Youth for Christ, we believe in a God who specializes in changing the endings to people’s stories. Jesus set people free, healed and restored, turned the world upside down and changed the lives of thousands even millions of people and he is still doing it today.

By listening, loving, caring, creating, laughing, hoping and praying with young people we are here to empower them to change the ending to the story they are living. Sometimes this takes years, sometimes we may never know the ending would have been different without our involvement and sometimes it doesn’t work and the ending is just as heartbreaking as the beginning. But we know we make a difference, we know God is at work in the lives of young people in our city and we are privileged to be a part of it.

Jo Dolby

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

What do you want to do?

We have a choice don't we? Well, life is about choices, from whether or not to have breakfast (you can't stop me having mine), to whether we choose to believe someone or not. I chose to collect all the dr who dvd's, yes the classics as well as the new ones. It was a decision i made, it is not a popular one in our household, as they have now been banished to an upstairs cupboard, but i will complete, yes i will complete.
We do 2 things this time of year. We look back and reflect and see what has gone on, and we look forward. This time of year we can choose something aswell. We choose to focus on one of those 2 things. We either choose, as we reflect, to stay in the past and to live our lives with no vision and expect nothing to change and we decide that we cannot influence anything, because we cannot make a diference. We live on past guilt, on past decisions that may or may not have gone well. We can spend our lives in the past. We can also choose to do the opposite and live for what we dream, what we would like to see in 2010. i suppose this is what new years resolutions are about. We can expect great things, we can make a difference and we can dream dreams.
Problem is, we have to hold them in the balance. I know people who do live in the past and are scared to dream, don't feel like they deserve happiness because of what has happened in the past. I also know people who live in past glories and will never admit that the dream is over but live on what has happened. Then again i know people who don't learn and who just keep making the same mistakes, over and over again, without realising they are going over old ground.
I would love to hear what your dreams are for this next year, maybe they are built on regrets of the past year, or maybe they are taking what has happened in the past and moving them onto the next level. Someone once said(someone very important), without vision the people perish. what's going to happen to you in 2010?