The Youth Do

Met last night with a couple of guys who are heading up our Youth Ministry at MKCC. It is probably the area in our church that we need to invest some more time, talent and money to make it more effective.

Ryan & Sean are relaunching the youth programme. They are dividing it up into more specific age ranges. School years 7 - 9 and years 10 - 13. This will allow them to focus on each group a little more. They are kicking the whole thing off by hosting an evening for all the parents where the young people will serve food and take part in some music and dance. In this day and age its important to get the parents involved after all they are the taxi service to get they young people to church.



We are also planning some events later in the year. In June we have a visit of a great rock band from the states: Starfield. It was great to sit with them and start to plan all the logistics. Its a bit of a new venture for us in MK but I am sure it will be a great evening.

We've Got Mail

Started our new Sunday teaching series on Sunday. Had a blast. I set the scene for the next 7 weeks and talked about the subject "Too busy for God" based on the letter to the church at Ephesus in Revelation 2.

In preparing it really brought it home to me again that in our busyness, especially as pastors, in serving God that it is so important that we don't loose out on this incredible intimate relationship that we have with our loving Father. This quote really brought it home. "If we miss out on intimacy with God we are in danger of becoming like travel agents just passing out brochures to places we have never visited for our selves.

Next week we look at "Is the Christian life really worth it?".

Although preaching 3 times on one day certainly takes it out of you so I spent most of the day today at home. Also visited the dentist to get a couple of fillings ans spent most of the afternoon with a very fat lip with my wife laughing at me as I tried to drink coffee without dribbling.

Like i've never been away

Just returned from a week away on holiday over the Easter period. It was a great quiet break back home visiting my Dad in Inverallochy.

I've paid for it today though. With our annual event at Alton Towers less than 4 weeks away things are very hectic to say the least. Catching up on a weeks worth of e mails took a few hours.

Had a very productive day though. We are putting together a great new initiative in conjunction with our friends at Music Wire. An event programme which contains a CD. The CD is titled Ultimate Love and contains songs that tell the story of God's message of love and salvation as well as some notes on following Jesus. More of that later.

I also took delivery of printed backdrops for our new Sunday teaching series starting this weekend. We produced the graphics but they were printed in to giant banners and laminated by STW Signs. They have done some great work for us at very reasonable prices. Check out one example below.

Denomination: Dead or Alive

Since birth I have been associated with the Assemblies of God denomination of church life. My family were part of a the Cairnbulg AOG church. Once I had started to follow Jesus and knew I wanted to commit the whole of my life to His cause I left home to attend the national AOG Bible College, Mattersey Hall. On gradation I went to work in an AOG church, Milton Keynes Christian Centre. I now Pastor and lead the church with my friend and Senior Pastor, Mark Sherratt.

Unfortunately I never became an AOG minister. I had some difficulties with their statement of faith. I didn't really believe anything different to the majority of ministers and even some of the senior leadership but that did not matter. It was somehow OK to ignore the stated beliefs of existing ministers but a different matter for anyone wanting to join.

I've just spend a few days at their annual conference joining their business sessions as an observer. They were debating some changes which they felt that would bring the denomination into the 21st century and create a structure for the denomination to flourish in the future. It was interesting to listen to the debate and good points were made on both sides. In the end the conference voted for the change in constitution which in simplistic terms gave the leaders more power to lead. Which in the end I suppose is a good thing. You have got to give leaders the freedom to lead.

I was left still wondering its relevance to us as a church in Milton Keynes. (The views here are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of the whole of MKCC) It seems to me that denominations have to constantly try and prove their worth by creating departments and posts which they can point to and say what a great job we are doing.

The bare facts are that we are so busy trying to build local church here in MK that we have very little time to invest in a denomination. National initiatives just don't seem to connect with us or our people. Much of our mentoring and resource comes from other local churches such as Willow Creek, Saddleback, Hillsong and Abundant Life Church Bradford.

So I am left with the question I posed in my title. I suppose the answer is both. It remains alive to many local churches throughout the UK but it is also becoming more and more irrelevant to many.

What do you think?