OK....here are the St Mary's thoughts. We're happy to sort out a prayer trail in the church on a Pentecost related theme (maybe something like Fire of God), for the kids to go round in small groups (stations to work in any order, so that several people can be going round at the same time)...
While that is going on, the hall is available for whatever activities you guys might have in mind.
Having not heard anything for so long, we'd rather guessed that you might all be too overwhelmed with life, coursework etc to go ahead on 11th, but are very happy to put something together now if that suits. We'll have the stations up for our junior youth group, Comitas, the night before (am I right Tim? - or is that a Friday week??) and our lot will be there for sure...Timing needs to be later, though, to free up the church after Evensong...8.00 start would be the earliest we could manage in church, though the hall will be fine from earlier.
My guess is that we gain and lose kids depending on venue and night,- so we should have our usual 2 dozen Koinonia members (give or take those with exam panics)...be good to involve some from the other churches to encourage them to actually get there.
Outreach rather a different matter...but then, I don't think we've actually engaged with new kids in any case yet...
Thinking aloud here. Tons on in the immediate future, so will hope to spend some creative time on this later on, if it sounds as if it fits in with your thoughts.

Well done, peoples!

I thought it went well last night, with one or two really special moments...The shared reading of Ps 23 and that guided meditation of a journey to heaven were real highlights for me (though another time, we could maybe have risked going a little slower) and the kids seemed to engage quite well much of the time. Hard to hit the spot when there were younger ones too,- though I'm sure they really appreciated the transformation of the hall and the good atmosphere.
I think we were more "on message" this time too.
Sorry our youth from St Mary's failed to show...there always seems to be a problem when we invited them to anything that's not on the usual night, and doubly so when it's not on "home turf"...
If we are going ahead with 11th June as discussed, we might do better then; but no rush to plan yet awhile, praise be!
Anyway, thank you everyone...hope you are having a relaxing Sunday afternoon :-)

Prayer stations

OK...we have 3 stations sorted and a 4th "under construction"

• Losing our way: a map and a compass, with a pile of small magets.....when you move the magnets, the compass needle gets confused as to which way it should point and swings round erratically. What distractions are the magnets that stop us from directing our lives towards God. Invitation to write some of these on slips of paper, and to take these to the next station
• Back on track: opportunity to shred the slips from the last station as a sign of repentance and new direction (I have small electric shredder which we can use) and to exchange these distractions for a bookmark (with cross) saying "I am the Way"
• (this is the one that still needs a bit of work) Images of people who are lost in various situations...addiction, violence etc and the opportunity to write a prayer for them
• Buried treasure: assorted Scripture promises relevant to the theme written on tiny scrolls and buried in sand box....these are directions and support for the journey

Hope that this looks OK and resonates with how the rest of the evening is developing. I'm not around an awful lot next week, and specifically I'm on CME all day Saturday, though I'll be there in time for an early evening set up I promise. But I do read my emails twice daily, and have a site feed to this blog, so will see anything new that gets posted....

More mullings...

A few more thoughts on the labyrinth....I would love to do it, and have some thoughts abuot stations that would work around our theme.There's a really good one in Jonny Baker's book involving a compass which points to true north, the direction we should be heading with God, and then lots of little magnets that you can use to pull it off course...people are invited to think of the distractions that away from God, and they could perhaps write them on a sheet of paper to be shredded at the next station [have small electric shredder which is always fun. Other possibilities might include looking for God's map for our lives in the form of buried treasure scrolls...[you see, I really can't bring myself to do alt.worship without at least some sand about the place ;-)]
Those could work as prayer stations around the hall, if we decide (as I fear we might have to) that a labyrinth is just not workable this time. The problem is more that we're likely to have a large number of kids wanting to walk it all at the same time which wouldn't really work.We could happily screen out the noise of the band using portable CD players with a soundtrack for the labyrinth, but you really can't have more than 4 people on a small labyrinth without them feeling self-conscious, which rather limits the impact of the whole thing. Very happy to hear if anyone has brilliant thoughts about how we could work round this...Otherwise we could do a labyrinth style prayer trail as a main focus at St Mary's in the summer, with other activities in the parish centre. What do you reckon?

How about a labyrinth....

Sudden thought....The one thing I'm good at in alt.worship is, of course, the labyrinth...the whole point of which is that you CANT GET LOST because the path leads you to the centre.



I've had to adapt it in most places where I've worked, as it does need a clear empty space (which St Mary's just doesn't have),- but if we could set it out properly, it would surely work very well with our theme.
Hannah,- would it be possible to use one of the back rooms at the foot of the stairs (Can't visualise them clearly at all) to set one up there? And if so, do they get used on Friday nights,- as actually setting up the labyrinth itself is a tad time consuming, and I am on CME training all day Saturday, so wouldn't be able to do it then.
If not, all is still not lost as it would be possible to outline the path on a large sheet or a large piece of hardboard or similar (I know there are hints on this in Jonny Baker's book...just no time to check it right now)so that it could just be laid down, and then the stations placed on it. Depending on what else we wanted to do, I'd suggest around 8 stations reflecting the theme...and would be very happy to deal with these. Just an idea, though. Let me know what you think.

Good evening and welcome

to our think spot.
Given the manic state of all our diaries, this may well be the closest we get to a conversation together before the next gd1 on 11th March at Holy Apostles hall. To be on the safe side, we've booked a follow up date for June 11th,- this one at St Mary's.
The March theme is "Lost?" and Dave is going to produce tons of wonderful publicity when he gets back from his expedition...
Meanwhile, please get thinking and praying and creating around our theme of life choices and directions.