I have enjoyed blogging this year and it has helped me to reflect and explain my thoughts, but all things come to an end (thanks to Jonny Baker for the free year of typepad blogging).
I am now putting my online efforts into a new blog by John Wheatley and I. The Street Pilgrims blog will be used for updates on Streetspace WSM, reflections on mission and community living.
Links are below
I hope you can join me over there
The investment is to buy a four-bed house on the centre of the Bournville Estate in Weston-super-mare. Investors are needed to cover 130 shares of £1000 for five years. On the sale of the house, each share holder will recieve 1/130th of the total.
John Wheatley and I are setting up a youth work project on one of the most deprived estates in the south west - we're moving in, opening our house and meeting local people on the streets and in the communities of Weston-Super-Mare. Hope you can get involved.
Pledge your amount by going here and we'll be in touch, for more info visit www.streetspacewsm.org.uk
or Facebook event here
Churches. The very word can either fill you with a warm glow or a shudder of frustration. I encountered both in India. India is a country filled with many contradictions with extremities in wealth, language, educations, religions etc. This makes for a diverse and beautiful country. One church I visited was a small Tamil Church. The other was a large modern Church.
Tamil is a local dialect for Bangalore's region of India. The church was a small white building with corrugated metal roof. The people were excited to see us and kept playing down their "small church". While the majority of the songs & sermon were in Tamil it followed a Church of England order of service and they kept us up to date with what was going on. The time afterwards was precious, sharing cake, stories and even teaching me to play one of their drums.
The start of the large church had great visuals, videos advertising a youth camp and the values of the church. This was followed by a large band worship experience with a pentecostal summary where the minister sings and ministers alongside the band. The sermon was about corporate worship and how best to receive and participate in it with verses used as evidence throughout the whole Bible. From beginning to end not one person approached us, but we were directed to follow a sign for a newcomers meeting, we didn't.
The two experiences of church were so different and helped me understand what I think makes a great church and community. Small is beautiful & hospitable.
At the Kerygma Project a guy called Thomas came and told us his story. He gave a fascinating insight into how some Hindu's view Christianity, a view which I feel is very relevant to us today:
Hinduism has millions of "gods", all of which are characteristics or manifestations of the supreme spirit Brahman. It is a diverse system of thought and one in which the search for meaning is encouraged. The search for truth is the meaning of life, and hence the introduction of a Christian absolute is seen as negative. A Hindu Temple
An absolute is seen as the stagnation of life. Christianity is perceived to be uncreative, producing the same art, icons, music etc and if the point of life is the search, what can be the attraction to a stagnating Christianity?
If salvation was merely to sign on the dotted line and put your feet up I might agree. However the commitment to Jesus is the very start of the journey for truth and meaning in this life. The gospel provokes a new world view, asking us to love our neighbours and enemies
In post-modern thinking, with its similarities to eastern religions, I've found the consistent deconstruction of meaning is a belief set in itself, an absolute that is both attractive but difficult to undo. What if Jesus is understood to provide the tools for the search for truth. An absolute that allows one to continue to ask the hard questions but provide meaning to interpret the world around us.
My dissertation with CYM has been focusing on finding a name for God in youth culture, as a result a number of young people identified God (or their God/idol/characteristic/i got lost here) as MUSIC. Here is my strategy to engage with young people to raise self awareness & explore spirituality.
The rise in the consumption of digital music through the internet and personal players, is beginning to provide us with the ability to engage with listeners in depth. In the world of youth work this topic can be a daunting one with constantly changing trends and mediums. The data of a persons listening habits can be stored through the majority of applications using a website service called Last.fm and then used as a tool for spiritual engagement. Andrew Godwin has written a graphical program to crunch the data, called Lastgraph
Above is a graph of my years listening habits (April 2009 to 10), below I have zoomed in on the months of February and March 2010.
A number of avenues for investigation can emerge, some of these are suggested below;
Look at the musical ebb and flow of your life, times when you were away from your music, or reasons why some weeks you listened to far more (December in my case).
The moments when you started to listen to a band, was it a gig, a friend that introduced you, what memories does it bring back?
How has your overall tastes in music or listening habits changed, what does this say about you?
Compare your graphs with your friends or community, how do they compare? Are they also on the same musical journey you are on?
Think of a sad or hard moment in the past year. What were you listening to then?
If you experience God through music, are there any points you can identify that you were close to him/her?
Does your music taste accurately represent you as an individual
Click the Banner or go to http://davewilkie.bandcamp.com/ for a listen & chance to download.
All money raised will be going towards my getting me out to India to help with community projects in Bangalore click here for details
Thank you!
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