Go Underground

Website of the week is Underground - the youth and student ministry of Open Doors.

Open Doors work with persecuted Christians around the world - people who are being badly treated and imprisoned just vbecause of their faith in God.

The website contains lots of information on the situation of Christians around the world. It also has some events coming up and practical things that you can do. You can also sign up for their magazine and get prayer texts sent to your mobile.

There is loads of stuff there. Take a look.

Baptism

If you are considering getting baptised any time soon...

We are going to have a short session after church on Sunday to talk about baptism and think about whether it is right for you.

We are hoping to do some Baptisms on 4th November. But even if that is too soon for you and you are 'just looking' it would still be good to talk about it on Sunday.

The session should be all done and dusted by 1pm at the latest.

More details possibly here.

See you there!

Safe To Grow Policy

Finally got round to uploading the Safe To Grow Policy on to the church web site.

Whilst not very exciting, the policy explains our commitment to children and young people and gives us a benchmark against which our work can be judged. It is taken from guidelines issued by the Baptist Union, which are available here (or you can just go into the Youth Resource Room at church and flick through the big orange book in there).

My intention is to add extra notes to it over time, so that people can quickly view our progress in living up to the standards that we have set ourselves.

You can find our policy here.

Flocking

A Catholic youth group in America has come up with a brilliant fund-raising idea: Flocking.

For $25 you can nominate a friend to be 'flocked'. The youth group then sneaks out late at night and leaves a dozen pink flamingoes on their lawn for 24 hours. You can also take out anti-flocking insurance for $40.

The original news article is here.

A negative view of the idea is here.

Movie Night

As Bruce Almighty worked out so well last month, we figured we'd have another pizza^* & movie night.

The date for that is Thursday 12^th July (two days before the Fun Day). What we don't have yet is a film to show. Any suggestions? (should be PG, U or 12 certificate)

*With vegetarian, gluton-free and any other options you can think of.

STREETBRAND

There's a good-looking new faith-based magazine for teenagers just out.

It's very cool in that is actually an online magazine, i.e magazine format and page turning etc BUT readable. And the really cool thing about it is that its free!

To get it, all you have to do is click on the picture and register on their site. They also have a MySpace page and and a Blog.

Face Painting

Anybody got a talent for face painting?

We need lots of people to help out at the South Reading Fun Day on 14th July, otherwise we'll have lots of miserable children queuing for hours and hours.

If you have a talent for painting faces and you are of secondary school age or above (so that includes parents and other adults) please let us know as soon as poss.

Thx.

Soul Survivor

Hi all,

A reminder that if you want to come to Soul Survivor this year, you need to bring the form this Sunday (17th). If you have lost it, you might find a copy here:
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddtfn2d6_15cp2zhg

If you are not sure if your friends are going, why not call or text them and make them feel wanted.

My New Blog

Welcome to my new blog.

The reason for writing this is that loads of stuff comes my way most days of the week and I don't always have time to tell people about it on Sundays... Or if I do, they forget about it half an hour after leaving the church.

So this blog is where I'll post stuff that I think will be of interest as soon as it appears. Of course that's assuming you remember to keep checking the church website...

You can subscribe to this blog. There's some kind of rss feed thing on its home page, if you can get it to work. You can also find it on bebo, facebook, myspace and tagged, if you are members of those networks. Plus any others I can find.

That's it for now... See you Sunday!