yes, but is it worship?
The Weekenders tag line is ‘alter your horizons’. The intention was/is always to give the participants the time and space to be themselves, or if they prefer, to be someone else.
How is it then that in the only document we have published that states our intentions all we have undertaken to do is promise not to hurt them. That is our stated policy.
“Come to Weekenders and we will do our best to make sure that you go home unscathed”.
Perhaps I should change the publicity.
It is about time that someone exposed the utter drivel that is still peddled in churches around the country. Of course that someone, today, is me. So along with ‘churches are not the buildings, they are the people’ I would like to consign ‘children are not the church of tomorrow, they are the church of today’.
Bollox.
I am 42 and even I am not the church of today. The church of today belongs to my parents generation. And they are not going to give it up. For a long time this really mattered to me. It annoyed me that I wasn’t empowered to alter the way things were, to innovate, to modernise, to change.
Nowadays I couldn’t give a fig. The children don’t need the millstone of a dying organisation around their necks, they have enough to contend with (even if exams are much easier nowadays:-). So you wrinklies can keep your church, we’re gonna make one of our own.
Well said Whitney and don’t we all agree?
Perhaps not. I heard this on the radio this morning about an am-dram club in Derby that will probably end up not using kids in their shows because they have to jump through too many beauraucratic hoops to do so.
Then I heard this report about how kids mug for kicks where we heard how some muggings are not out of need but just for the buzz of the violence. Someone in the article suggested that these children ahd been let down by the adults around them so they took matters into their own hands.
I can’t help thinking that one of these stories is somehow symptomatic of the other. I am not suggesting that instead of puss in boots the am-dram kids will be doing gbh in boots but the more adults withdraw from working with children the more likely they are to do their own thing and we’ve all read Lord of the Flies….
pretty soon the only people that will be arsed enough with all the hassles of doing voluntary childrens work will be the paedophiles.
Little Johnny: Mummy can I go and play at Little Harry’s house after school?
LJ’s Mummy: of course you can Johnny.
LJ’s Mummy: Ah Little Harry’s mummy, my little Johnny wants to come round to play after school.
LH’s Mummy: right, well here’s my CRB check, oh no that’s no good for you, that one is for Little Jenny’s parents, anyway here’s my family’s child protection policy
LJ’s Mummy: Johnny, why don’t you go round to another friends house today?
Little Harry: Mummy, why doesn’t anyone come to play at my house?
