Having a Personal Faith

Something I’ve been challenged on recently is the idea of having a ‘personal faith’. It’s so easy to fall in to that trap of feeling like you know all there is to know about Christianity, so you must therefore have a really strong faith, right? Well, maybe. Doing a degree in youth work and theology at a Christian college often tempts me in to thinking that attending lectures, learning about the Bible, going to prayer meetings and being a Christian youth worker is enough. But I’m starting to learn that it’s not. My ministry needs to be rooted in my relationship with God; otherwise there is just no point. So, like any other relationship, a relationship with God requires sacrifice. That sounds brutal, but I mean it in the sense of sacrificing our time and effort to spend time getting to know God on a personal level. This means listening to Him and valuing what he has to say. Only then can we truly have faith, because God can do some wonderful and exciting things in our lives that we couldn’t even imagine unless we take time to invest in Him. It’s like; imagine that you had never tasted chocolate. So you read about chocolate and people tell you about how great it is. But only you know how great chocolate really is when you try it yourself. And let’s be fair, the rewards are pretty amazing! So today, I encourage you to think about how you can have a personal relationship with God, and go for it!

Charli Wood is key worker in Bilborough

She is also on the 3rd year @ MCYM

What have you been trusted with?

Writing a Blog always makes me reflect about what is important to me, important enough to write about and share with other people, so I was really glad when on our Notthingham Youth for Christ away day our boss, Richard said that the scripture for Youth for Christ this year was the "Parable of the talents" (Matthew Chapter 25 verses 14-28). This story really impacted me as a child, and challenged me once again when I read it with the team.

The story talks about a Master who gives 3 servants with a different number of talents, to one he gave 10, another 5 and another 1 before he went away. While he was gone the first two servants invest in their talents and are able to double their numbers. The Master is overjoyed, praises them and is able to share and entrust to them more of what he owns. The servant who had one talent didn't invest in his talent. In fact, he was scared of the way his Master ran his work/business so hid his talent in the ground until his Master came back to return it. As a result he was punished, his talent taken away and given to the one with 10 and he couldn't share in the Master's riches and was thrown into suffering.

This story reminded me that, in life, we are all different in our giftings and responsibilities, that God has made each person in a particular way. Our gifts, personalities, skills, styles, strengths, weaknesses, weird habits and relationships with people in our lives make us unique. It's not just what they are, or whether they seem a lot or a little that defines us, it's maybe even more what we do with them.

I used to focus on the last servant more than the other two who had used their talents. I used to feel sorry for him because he let his fear of a person (his Master) and a scenario (his Masters business) which was a misunderstanding in the first place, confuse and rob him of his duty, which was only to do the task right in front of him, to look after his talent. Because of fear and misunderstanding he missed out on the opportunity to use his talent, enjoy using and learning How to use it, reaping the rewards and sharing that, and more with his Master and the other servants.

This story reminded me again that God is a Dad, He is a loving Father. We may not always understand Him (the Master), in fact we CAN'T because He is an indescribable Being who controls the universe (His business) and we can't even control a fly or our lives properly, but we can know this: He has made us who we are, and there are things that we have been trusted with, people, jobs/chores, (home)work, decisions, opportunities and talents and if we are faithful with the few things right in front of us then when the time comes we can be trusted and blessed with more.

I hope this has blessed you as much as reading the story, and writing this speel has blessed me. Don't let life confuse you, don't be afraid, learn to enjoy who you are and what you have, and believe that He will always want to bless you.

Mona is key worker in Arnold

Being that someone

We all probably had someone in our Christian walk or just in our general life someone who has always been their for us. Someone that has encouraged , challenged, inspired you, someone that has not given up on you when your going through a hard time. I know when i was growing up having someone that was all those things helped me through life but most of all in my christian walk. This someone was a youth leader in my youth group. The way that she lived her life that reflected God and the way she never gave up on me even though i was a pain some of the time and tried to push her away she still stood by me.  She showed me that God to was all those things and so much more.

Working with young people i have noticed that encouraging them makes a real difference to them. Helping them reach their potential and not giving up on them when sometimes they feel everything in their lives is going wrong. Sometimes you might not see all the impact that you have on a young person but i know from my experience that the person that encouraged me has helped me get where i am today. 

I hope that in my life I can be that 'someone' who takes the the time to listen, to encourage to challenge and inspire someone and that the way I live will reflect God who is always that someone to everyone .  Can you be that 'Someone' ?

emily@nottinghamyfc.co.uk

Emily is our key worker in Inham Nook 

and is also our church resources worker

young people, the hope of our world?

I was glued to the television, nothing was stopping me from watching this. Yes I was slightly tired, it was about 12:30am now, but I was determined to see the end of the London 2012 Opening Ceremony. I had survived all aspects of the incredible, creative and wonderful ceremony even as others around me gave up and went to bed. All there was left to watch now was the lighting of the Olympic flame signalling the official start of the Olympic games. “Who was going to light it?” I wondered. Suddenly on the television David Beckham is seen driving a speed-boat towards the stadium with a younger athlete holding the torch. I thought “Maybe it is him, no big surprise though and hardly imaginative”. Then the torch is passed to Steve Redgrave and I think, “Ok this is it, this guy has got the most amount of Gold medals for Great Britain in history, no-one has been more successful, so it must be him!”. Steve Redgrave jogs into the stadium and I expect that to be it for the lighting of the torch but…it wasn’t…. Moments later Steve passes the torch to a group of 7 young people, aged between 16-18, who all have great talent and potential to represent Great Britain in the future. These 7 young people then light the Olympic torch signalling the start of the London 2012 Olympic games. Everyone expected ‘the lighting of the torch’  to be carried-out by a successful and experienced athlete who was known to all, instead 7 young people for 10 minutes left the world breathless with the hope that they brought to one of the biggest events around.

Last year at this same time of year, young people due to the riots were deemed “a lost generation”. This year a group of young people positively impacted the world. When young people are given the opportunity; and are empowered, loved and befriended; they can make a  massively positive impact to this world. The question is, are we going to let them? I urge strongly that your answer to this is a resounding “YES!!”. So this year at Nottingham Youth for Christ we strive to continue the positivity surrounding young people that this summer has brought, to empower a generation of young people to show the world what fantastic hope, creativity and love that they can bring. 

Mike Harrison is  NYfC's key worker in Nuthall and Kimberley

He started in September 2012 and   

is getting married in 2013

What is Faith?

Will has just come onto the Nottingham YfC team as key worker in Radcliffe and South Notts. In his first blog he talks about the idea of the Christian faith.

I remember in my first few months as a Christian a few people asked if I had Faith. My rather rushed but honest answer was “Erm…a little bit…maybe?”. I didn’t feel that I could answer with a simple “yes” or “no”, I was hardly a spiritual heavyweight but there was a little something there, enough to taste and want more of.

In life, everyone has faith in something or someone. By that I mean something that a person trusts in, relies upon, hopes in, and holds as the direction of life. Every second, we put our trust in something. Imagine you are sat on a chair, your body relies on the structural integrity of the chair to prevent your body from falling on the floor. Or imagine you run and jump. Wouldn’t it be odd if instead of jumping up and landing, you jumped and kept flying through the air?! It is our past experiences that guide us but it is our trust that empowers us in action. It encompasses everything that we see, do, feel, know and experience - an external authority but an internal compass; Faith guides and influences. Can you see how important it is where we put our trust and hope?

Faith affects its surroundings and can be seen through its effects – much like the wind. We can see the leaves being blown around or find it hard to walk into a strong headwind, but we cannot see the environmental air-pressures that cause it.

The book of Hebrews in the New Testament describes faith as “…confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see” (Hebrews 11:1). See how the writer of Ephesians is exploring how faith in God affects our daily lives? God is in everything that we long for, and everything that we don’t understand. He is our reassurance and promise of love and grace.

Back when I was young, everyone seemed to be using the phrase “Faith Grows”. In my early years following Jesus, I had experienced faith growing but didn’t really understand it until I had to start explaining Jesus to people. Faith grows by footsteps and conversations. It’s is a series of personal decisions that we make, to put our lives in the hands of our Father in heaven. Some decisions are bigger and more influential than others, but God loves it when we put our trust and hope in Him, however big or small the decision may appear to be. To Him, every faithful decision is beautiful. I

Faith is a relationship, flowing from one to the other; Jesus offers an eternal hope, joy, forgiveness, peace and love…it is our choice to accept and trust in His amazing love.

Will Lee

  

The Olympics: an opportunity for mission

Junior arrived in the UK in February to be part of The Nottingham YfC team. As part of his year he went down to London during the olympics to be part of the mission team in Newham. Here are his thoughts of the whole experience:

The project idea came from the local YFC team and from the National YFC willing to explore the unique Olympics time opportunity to spread the gospel to people from all parts of the world. Love E7 was a ten days evangelistic program in Newham running from the 24^th of July until the 2^nd of August during the Olympics time aiming to bless the community. Just to explain quickly the clever idea of the project’s name, E7 is the post code for place that we’d be join in, so the name Love E7 came from the idea of loving Newham and blessing that community.

I’ve heard about this opportunity from National YFC and I got really interested in serving God and help making a difference in Newham. Because I was at holidays and I hadn’t got anything planned for that time, I thought being part of it would be a great experience and a time to grow up in my faith. So I accepted the invite!

To help in Love E7 we’d got around sixty people, mainly youth, from the local community, from different parts of England and from other countries as well. Including myself, I think the Brazilian group was about 21 people, most of them couldn’t speak English at all! We’d got around 10 people from France and about the same quantity from Holland, but the Dutch people arrived just on Saturday the 28^th. One funny story that happened was that the staff team asked me if I could pick the Brazilians up and the French group using the underground trains. I thought would be easier to pick the Brazilians up from Heathrow than the French from a nearer station because of my issue with English language but I got a bigger issue with the Brazilian baggage. Each one of them was carrying 2 big suitcases and the journey from Heathrow to Forest Gate in Newham was 2 hours long, so it was really difficult! I lost them once on the underground, everybody got in the train and I couldn’t because I was helping to put the baggage in the train, so funny! But it ended up well, everyone got safe to Forest Gate station.

Talking about how we were acting, the staff team allocated all those people into teams of 7-8 people, so we’ve got 8 teams there, each one of them responsible for doing different activities in Newham that were; gardening, painting a bridge, street evangelism, litter picking, youth and kids clubs, sports day, dancing and drama on the streets. During the days, in every morning we were gathering together in one of the churches for a time of worship, prayer and training and then we were starting our activities in the community after lunch time. Thinking specifically about my own team, we were responsible for help running a kids club at one of the churches in Newham, and an Asian Youth Centre.

The experience helping in the kids club for 2-8 aged kids was amazing! The theme was the Olympics and every child was considered as an athlete. Everyone in the team had a responsibility and because I was a leader assistant on my team my responsibility was support the other four Brazilians in my team because of the language issue, doing the warm up at the beginning and giving out points for children who were behaving well or that did something really good during the activities. I was the first aider in our team as well, so I was responsible for safe and security as well. Through the days that we helped there we could enjoy our time doing dancing songs, face painting, bible verse’s games, bouncy castle, drawing, telling bible stories and more. At the end we summed the team’s points and we gave rewards for the winner team. I really enjoyed spending time with the children, I think it’s because I love playing with kids, they always make me laugh and it’s always fun. I would say that our impact in there was really positive, everyone was doing their best to make it good and I’m sure that the kids there could see how we can enjoy the life with God.

At the Asian Youth Centre, the aim was more about advertising than helping with the activities, so we were trying to take people’s attention to what was going on the place. Because the Brazilians on our team were part of a dance group, we thought would be good to use this skills to bring people’s attention. So we basically had the Brazilians dancing outside while the others were trying to talk with people and invite them to come along and enjoy the time in the Centre. It was a really good time, lots of people were stopping to watch the dancing and we had the opportunity to talk with those people and share our faith with them, even knowing that could be difficult because they were mainly Muslims.

If I would like to define what Love E7 was for me, I’d say that the program’s name really made sense, that I loved that community and I loved to be part of this amazing initiative and it definitely influenced my life and relationship with God. I feel more capable to share my faith with other people than I was before and I’m sure that it will influence positively in my youth work in Nottingham. If I have the opportunity to do this again, I wouldn’t think twice, I strongly recommend this kind of activity to anyone who wants to serve God and to spend time being used by Him.

If you would like to know more about the feedback that we’ve got from all the places that we helped with, there’s a video of Love E7 on youtube where you can hear more about it, just type in ‘Love E7’ on youtube and you’ll be able to see God’s action through us in Newham.

Junior Bittencourt

Work experience with Nottingham YfC

My week at Nottingham Youth for Christ has been a very fun week , I have had a great time and I have met a lot of nice people. In my week of being here I have done all sorts from doing lunch time clubs with the year 8 students at Chillwell School , to setting up and helping manage the football cage at Beeston. All of the workers here are very nice people and are very good to talk to. At the start when I picked to be here for work experience I was a bit unsure that I was going to like it, however I have enjoyed it so much and I am very happy I picked Nottingham Youth for Christ. Working here has changed my views of where I would like to work when I leave school because I have had such a great time. In my week of being here there has always been something to do but the main thing is everything I have done I have enjoyed.

I have met some really decent people whilst being here that I really hope that I will get to see again in the future. The most fun part of my week here must be the football cage, we managed to get a lot of different aged young people from Beeston and we had a great time playing football, I met a lot of people my age whilst playing at the football cage and we all had a fun time. Another great experience I had was interviewing  people who had applied to work with Nottingham Youth for Christ, this was fun because it gave me an opportunity to come up with some questions to ask these people but fortunately I had help from two other boys around the same age as me who helped come up with questions and also asked the questions. All together I have had a such a great time whilst being here and I would love to do something like this in the future. So I am very grateful that Nottingham Youth for Christ let me do my work experience here because its definitely gave me a new experience that I have enjoyed a lot. 

Zack Baskill

Year 10 Work Experience

Long Eaton School