Youth Blog

Meet Rosie………..Hello everyone!! I’ve been in Hoylake for about two (ish) weeks now - I still don’t know all of you and I don’t know how much you know about me either. Well here it goes… Rosie 20 years old I come from St. Ives but that’s the place not by the sea but it’s very flat because it’s in the fens in Cambridgeshire (it floods a lot!!) My Home Church is Huntingdon Methodist Church. I’ve been a Christian for 5/6 years. I’ve been doing youth work for about 18 months - one year in Manchester with the Pais Project and 6 months in Nuneaton near Birmingham in a YFC centre. 3 words to describe myself: Bubbly, Smiles, passionate. I dance, sing, play guitar, take photos and song write but not all the same time. I have Two Brothers Jonathan 22 and Richard 18 and my lil Sister Naomi 15 as well as my mum Sue and dad Mark. I love Music. My favorite bands / artists are; Switchfoot, Superchick, delirious?, Katy Perry, Little Boots, Girls Aloud, Skillet, Athlete, Jimmy Eat world, Jon McLaughlin, Michael Bubble, kings of Leon, Planet Shakers, Hillsong, Coldplay, Wombats, Yfriday and anything really just not rap or really heavy metal music. I love TV too my Favorite shows are ER, Scrubs, Friends, Heroes, Doctor Who, Top Gear, Torchwood, Grey Autonomy, Hustle, waterloo road, CSI, Numbers, Ugly Betty, and One Tree Hill. Favorite films of many are……Sweet Home Alabama, Moulin Rouge, Ps I love you, Walk to Remember, Jason Bourne movies, The Island, Confessions of a shopperholic and that’s just a few. I love reading to I’m reading a book at the moment about the Old Testament convent and Isaiah and Abraham etc. It’s by a guy called Rob bell (from the Nooma dvd’s) and it’s called ‘Jesus wants to save Christians.’

I was brought up going to the church but I didn’t get this God stuff I’m still Trying to tackle it today we will never stop trying to understand it really will we? It’s great cause we can learn from each other in many different ways and I feel it’s a lot about how we live out our faith with those around us and how we reflect God’s character and how we act. Whether that’s when we out after school or at the weekends even more when we are at school. I’ve always asked God how can I reflect Him to my friends who aren’t Christians and to young people who have know idea who He is?? Whether it’s when I don’t swear or if I’m Be respectful even if someone is getting on my nerves. I ask God why is it important that I share my faith with others - what does that do for me? Well imagine you have been given a really cool present or you’ve brought this really great Game or laptop you wanna Go tell your friend so much you wanna show them that your new laptop is a Mac book and it has an amazing camera where you can take very funny pictures of yourself. You would wanna tell everyone!

Hi Guys,

I would like any and all ideas for the Youth Part of the website.

Images, videos or games! Lets see what you guy can make it!

I cant promise all ideas will be included on the site but i will promise to help the while group oven these few pages!

Add your idea to the comments!

Hey guys,

Anthony has asked me to write a little bit about myself to help you get to know me, so here goes;

I come from a Christian family and ever since I was a tot I attended

I have been involved in the youth group at

During the summer holidays I flew off to

I became a committed Christian about five years ago after spending a weekend away with my youth group at a camp in Bala North Wales.

Over the last two years I attended

So how did I arrive at Hoylake?

Well I came to hear about the gap year course after talking with one of my youth group leaders who suggested contacting Martin Dickson at Wirral Youth For Christ (WYFC) to ask him about any voluntary work I could get involved with. Martin gave me details about the opportunity to work with both WYFC and St Luke’s. After praying about it I really felt God was telling me to go for it, so after meeting with both Martin and Anthony here I am!

I am really looking forward to gaining  lots of experience throughout the year, getting to know you all at St Lukes, and particularly getting to know all the youth group and building up good relationships with them as we share the next 12 months together.

Finally thanks to you all for this opportunity and the support I have already received from the Church

I hope that helps but if you want to know more just ask.

Jenny

So, we’re coming to the end of our Art of Connecting course.
To Recap:

My Story - we each have a story of our own, the overall story of our lives and our testimony of how God has been active and how we have met with Him.
Their Story - all of our friends have their own stories to tell, the experiences that they have had in life, the lessons they have learned and so on.
God’s Story - History is His Story, we know how throughout the ages God has connected with His creation right up today where He connects with us and wants to connect with our friends.

My Story is connected to God’s Story, but also to Their Story. Therefore if I go deeper into God’s Story - getting to know Him better and letting Him transform my life - and deeper into My Friend’s Story - building up our friendship, being there for them - then I will inevitably draw Their Story into God’s Story too.

To me, this leaves the simple question - how’s your art? Because art requires effort. An artist can’t half heartedly hold paint and a canvas and hope to see a masterpiece appear. They have to make a real effort.
How much effort are you putting into deepening your connection to God’s Story?
How much effort are you putting into deepening your connection to Their Story?
When you put your effort into these two things, you will be able to step back and see the finished picture - God knowing them, them knowing God.
Let’s look forward to, and put effort into, these masterpieces

I have recently become aware of a band called Bluetree and I have found out a few things about them, but one thing that has particularly stood out to me is the band’s name and the meaning behind it. During an interview with a representative of the Christian Music Community Cross Rhythms, the lead singer Aaron Boyd explained where the name came from and I wanted to share it with you:

“Bluetree stands for standing out. The whole concept of that is that, if you’re walking through a forest, everything you look around at is pretty much going to be green; green trees, brown branches, brown bark: you know, that kind of thing? But if you saw this tree that was bright blue and everything about it - leaves, branches, bark - was blue, it would stand out and you would stand and look at it and take notice of it. As Christians, Jesus Christ has called us to be salt, be light, in this world and really make a difference. So we want to go around and inspire kids to stand out whether that is in church or school.”

So I guess my thought is, when people see us or think of us, do we seem like a blue tree to them? Something that stands out as different in a world where everything else is the same. Because that’s what Jesus calls us to - salt, light in the darkness, a city on a hill.

Because I would love to be described as a blue tree like this

[There will be a copy of their album ‘Greater Things’ added to the CD Library, so if you would like to have a listen, it will be there from Sunday. And it delights me to have found out that they will be playing at Adoration :-D]

Hey everyone! I really don’t know how this blog is gunna turn out but hey, it’s the thought that counts! I’ll try my best to do a good one!
Ok, recently Anthony has been focusing on some of the Ten Commandments in a few of his sermons. So what I want you guys to think about is how often you try and apply the 10 Commandments to your life. I’m betting quite a bit that most of you haven’t murdered! But what about some of the other things, like lying, coveting and respecting your parents? Most of us break one or more of them every day, by doing things we don’t even realise. But we have to remember we’re not perfect and God will forgive us if we are truly sorry. That’s one of the truly amazing things about God, he loves us so much that he’s prepared to forgive us no matter what we have done.
I was thinking today about how easy it is to break one of the 10 Commandments. Really, to break just one of them, all you have to do is look at your friends new ipod and think, ‘I really want one of those, how come she can have one and I can’t?’ or tell your teacher your dog ate your homework when really its half done sitting on your desk at home when you couldn’t be bothered to do it the night before! It’s horribly simple, but I like the fact God has given us a challenge. Life wouldn’t really be that interesting without them! So this week, I’m gunna challenge you guys to think about things before you do them and try your best to stick to the 10 Commandments. I’m up for it! It’ll be really interesting to see how you get on so make sure you comment back! Have a good week, God bless.
Han xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I just want to share with you about a couple of friends of mine.

Back when I was in school I had a good friend called Bob (that is actually his name :-P). We travelled to school on the same bus and were in the same year, etc, and so we built up a good friendship and would chat a lot. Now, Bob would throw at me every argument he could come up with against God and want to know what the answer was. Fortunately, this wasn’t in a way that meant he was attacking me and it was rather in a way where he wanted to know more and understand how to others saw it - he went on to study RE/Philosophy at A-level. But he wouldnt accept the answers as such, he would always come up with another reason that it was wrong. When he came along to an alpha course at my church he sat in the talk and took notes on all the things that came up that he wanted to challenge. Over the few years that this went on it felt like I had gotten nowhere. Since school has finished we have kept in touch and seen each other here and there, but obviously not to the amount that we used to.

So imagine my surprise and joy to recently discover that, because of conversations with a friend at uni and people at her church, he has now become a Christian! I was gobsmacked to find this out, and I found it hard to believe - to be honest I found I was the skeptic in this case! But when we were speaking recently he was telling me about how he got chatting about God with a woman on the train and prayed for her then and there! How impressive is that?! I don’t know about you but I would find that a daunting idea, and here he is, the guy I thought would argue his way away from it forever, doing things for God that I find scary. It’s so cool.

Another friend of mine, a girl in the year below me who I also knew from the bus to school and who, to me, barely ever seemed interested in Jesus, has also recently become a Christian.

She has a background in the Greek Orthodox church, so any discussion of religion and she would have said she was a Christian anyway. She knew I was a Christian, but we hadn’t ever really managed to get into any sort of real discussion on Christianity. A couple of years ago she also got quite ill and it still affects her, and so she tells me that she used to think “God can’t exist because why would He punish me like this?”

So it was great to have a conversation the other day and find out that she’d really had these discussions with Christians that she knows through uni, she’d attended an alpha course after Christmas, and had realised that whilst, actually we do deserve a worse punishment, God loves us and has saved us through Jesus. She now can’t help telling everyone she meets about Jesus, and is fired up to see all of her friends come to know him too. The girl I could hardly ever talk to about God cant stop talking about Jesus. The girl who, to be honest, I found it hard or embarrassing to mention my faith to is fired up to tell everyone she knows without hesitation.

Both of these are people that I used to pray a lot for whilst seeing nothing happen, and people that I thought were hardly ever likely to become Christians. And they have surpassed me, both of them.

So be inspired. You may feel that you are seeing little fruit whilst you are in school, but be Jesus to people, and pray for them continually and faithfully whilst you are in the now. Even if it seems like nothing is happening I want to encourage you to keep being salt and light in your school - dont worry or be disheartened if it seems like you’re getting nowhere, because you dont know what difference it is making, or what seeds you are sowing.

And you never know, at any time they could turn around and quickly out pace even where you are in your walk with God.

So, considering how we’ve been thinking about staying connected to God - a little illustration to hopefully encourage you.

In a way, God is like mobile phone signal. “huh?” Ok, bear with me on this

The thing about mobile phone signal is, depending on where you are your level of signal goes up or down, and the quality and ease of phone conversations does too. And depending on where you are, you can find it harder or easier to talk to God.

Think about being somewhere where you have full phone signal. There’s no interferance on the line and hearing the person on the other end can be as clear as if they were literally stood next to you. The line connects really quickly, so there’s no waiting and you know that they can hear you as well as you can hear them. You are unhindered in your conversation. If you are at somewhere like Soul Survivor, etc, it can be like you have full phone signal - speaking to God can seem so easy, like he’s right there next to you, you know He hears everything you say and it’s like you can hear Him speaking back.

What about somewhere where phone signal is moderate? You can have a conversation with someone but the line isnt quite as clear, the line may have moments where you cant hear the other person properly or they can’t hear you fully, but mainly you can have a good phone conversation. This can perhaps be like our every day life at church or youth meetings - we can have full on conversations with God, even if it’s not as intense as at those festivals.

Then there’s low phone signal where conversations can feel really tough. Maybe there are times at school or work or wherever when it’s hard to even bother praying - it works, but it’s harder to do.

But even if you have no signal, you should be able to phone through to emergency services. And how true is that with God? Even in the most dire of circumstances, if you feel you are in the hardest place to talk to God, that connection is still present. You can get in touch with Him no matter where or when - it doesnt matter if it doesnt sound like the clearest connection, or it isnt in the easiest place, you can always get in touch with God. Always. With mobile phones there are places that you do fully lose signal (tunnels, etc) but thats the difference with God. There’s nowhere you lose touch with Him.

So I guess the final thing to say is, how much are you using your mobile phone to God? If we know that signal is always available to us, although how clear it is can vary, then how much are we speaking to Him? Signal is one thing but for a phone conversation to happen, we have to actually have the connection made and the phone to our ear - we have to be purposefully talking.

Cause here’s one last thought - He gives you unlimited minutes

So we all know about Sam, don’t we? He had an accident and it could have gone worse or better but thankfully he’s on the mend and he’ll be fine. Lately another of my friends has been in hospital, she’s ill too.Which makes me think… ‘If you were to die today, have you achieved all you want? Are you truly happy with what you’re doing?’ God wants us to be happy. He loves us enough to know each one of us inside out - all we do and all we say is seen before we act, by the one and only God. So surely we should do our hardest to be happy within ourselves?

God loves each one of us. He created us with values and norms and morals…
but most of all he created us with an ability to think and a conscience…

Oohhhh we love the conscience! It has this amazing ability to make us feel guilty, and in a strange way it is an odd way of God telling us we’ve done wrong, so fix it and the feeling will go away. (I think anyway.)
But mostly… God wants us to be happy. Happy within ourselves. Happy within our relationships. Happy with Him. But right now a lot of us are lost. I know I find it hard to forgive and forget, especially when I’ve done wrong and I have to accept it and apologise. (Which is most of the time… [rebel!])

Now find a bible quote… wait… wait… searching… found one!
Psalm 139 : 10.
It goes… ‘Even there you would guide me, With your right hand you would hold me.’

So… you’re reading that and thinking… no relevance. But there is! Haha! Basically I’m trying to say that God’s all around us and things are happening for reasons beyond our understanding, until the end when it will all fit into place. So by reading this it’s saying that God’s always there for us. It’s ok to be angry and scared with guilt but it’s also ok to forgive, although we find it hard. God will be with us all the way through.  

And it’s not meant to be easy, but it gets easier, and with God behind you watching you… surely its all you need? The forgiveness is for a reason and the in-between,
oh the in-between… most awkward, moodiest stage of all (I blame hormones).

I mean are you truly happy with your relationship with God? With other people?
And if you’re thinking ‘no’… what are YOU going to do about it? And that… is my challenge to you.

Emily

Hey guys

Taste and see is this Sunday, are you excited? I am. Unfortunately I don’t know what’s going to happen on Sunday, so it has made me think about unexpectedness, how do you feel when something happens that you just don’t expect to happen?

God is the ultimate unexpected random person because he does things that we wouldn’t expect to happen. When Jesus walked on water do you think that the fishermen expected it or was it something random that they couldn’t have even imagined?

This weeks blog isn’t aimed for thought provoking or life changing moments, its designed for all of you to reply and say what god has done with you that was random and unexpected, so read all the replies and be encouraged by each other.

See you all on Sunday