Prayer

This is the first week after a couple of weeks break. We continued with Prayer.

Been through the first bit. How is prayer seen by the wide world, media etc. How do we pray, when to pray why we should pray.

The we have looked at the boiler room, 24/7 stuff on the internet. Boiler room internet site is difficult for the youngsters to read. But we are going to visit one next week, so hopefully things will fall into place.

The subject of prayer seems easy at first - it's just talking with God, isn't it? But when you look at it further, there's so much more to it. The whys and hows influence what it means to us and why we do it...we see in films etc people praying when they're in deep trouble, or when we haven't revised for exams, but we know this is the only reason why and when we should pray.

But, over the next fews weeks (we may even need longer!) we will be working out how important prayer is to us and how and when we can do it.

See ya!

The Bible

Not long this week to get through the work to be done.

We are looking at the Bible. We have decided that the best way to communicate a lot of information is through a book rather than other means of communication (email, talking etc) We have played a whats in and out of the Bible (squelch won the chocolate delicous Pop Milk)

We have looked at the type of Book the Bible is.

History
Guide to Life
Songs and Poems
Prophecy
Beards
Stories
God talking to people
Smiting
Rules
Jesus's Life

We have looked at a old map and tried to compare it to the Bible is it relevent does it tell us what to do. We have decided that the Bible is like a compass which always tells us the truth.

It's there as a general guide: we appreciate sometime it may not feel relevant or give us answers that directly realte to our lives in this day and age, but if we look hard enough we can see that the general principles it promotes and teaches us are as relevant today as ever. We just need to try and understand what it is telling us and act upon that.

That's all for this week, but we'll be discussing it again next week. One challenge for this week is to try and read a psalm every day and come back next week and share what they've taught us...here goes!

First post

After encouraging all the youngsters to create a blog for their Youth Alpha course, perhaps I should create one as a leader. This is Kev and Lynseys blog.

We are already through about three sessions which we have split over about 10 sessions. The blogs seem to go down really well and we have started to comment on them.

We're using them to record what we've talked about each week and to invite anyone to make their own comments on our thoughts and discussions.

So far, we've look at who Jesus is, why he died, and how we can be sure of our faith (if we have one yet!).

It's been interesting to get different viewpoints from the group, as all of them have different ideas on what this faith thing is all about and how it affects tham (and us!)

We'd welcome any feedback, comments and suggestions on anything you think we could cover, suggest and discuss with the youngsters...our next seesion, over the next few weeks, is all about why and how we should read the bible.

Ideas welcome!

We'll let you know how it goes!

Kevin & Lynsey