1 location
Good venue

The market place was in a good space and the big tables worked well for meals.

The Food was ok.
No coffee after meals seemed strange for a hotel.

Some of the workshop rooms were too small for workshops they hosted.

2 programme
Mixed
The physical programme looked good, perhaps it could be printed on glossy paper?

Ceildh/pub quiz - missed the pub quiz. Not sure it worked.

Optional worship times
Good/fine.
Seemed (understandably) constrained by venue restrictions,

Morning prayers sat am
Informal to the point of seeming unprepared. Took a slightly bizarre turn with invitation to confession of secret sins or headaches part.
In general fine

Rural youthwork workshop
Good/Fine
Some useful questions

Zoo
Best bit of the weekend.

Main sessions sat am,pm sun am
Key note Speaker spoke entertainingly and told nice stories. Not sure his message actually fitted into what the weekend needed to say to the audience.
The band musically were fine, although they only reflected one way of worship.

3 Scottishness
Good to see that workshops were mostly run by Scottish based youth workers but I think my main reflection was the conference didn't feel particularly Scottish. Deep Impact is marketed as Scotland's national youthwork conference, but I felt it lacked a distinct Scottish voice. If it was there which it may have been, I couldn't find it.
The worship sessions seemed to be based on a vineyard churches model of worship, (Californian 70's Jesus people).
The speaker was English and all his examples were English, entertaining and fun but English.
Is there a distinctively Scottish model of worship which could be used? What would that look like?

4 Development
I wonder how different the programme was in form and structure from the first deep impact? Not too much from my hazy recollection. I wonder if there is scope for a radical rethink and reorganising of the programme.
I may have missed it, but there seemed a lack of edge to the conference which is the raison d'être of youthwork?

the weekend conference seemed to go well, and people seemed to enjoy it. I enjoyed parts of it as well and hope this feedback can help the consideration and planning of the group who organise the next one.

Intro: Been thinking about worship quite a lot since Deep Impact 2012. Partly because i realised it reminds me of spring harvest 20 odd years ago. Partly because it challenged me in an unexpected way. These thoughts are rawish & unexplored. probably containing badly made points so feel free to ignore them. They come with a little experience of standing in pews, worship services and events, and some of organising and leading worship in a few contexts.

what is worship?
worship is time spent noticing God.
It can be done privately or corporately
Private worship it can include personal bible study and prayer times.
Corporately it can include liturgical action such as praising, thanking, invoking, confessing, proclaiming, interceding, and blessing

Worship within an congregational setting is not a private event.
Obvious right? If you gather with a group of other people, the relationship is public.

I do wonder about the individualism of worship. Particularly within songs, songs which refer to ‘I’ or ‘me’ and my relationship to a God. This can be helpful in songs of intimacy and praise, hymns and prayers of lament and confession.
Does this creates a false understanding of the privacy and intimacy of that moment. If I consider that during a public time it is actually a safe environment to have one on one time with God, how does that regard and speak of the others within the church?
The oft quoted ‘where two and three and gathered’ provokes the question about how God deals with each person within that. this questions has some momentum when each member of that group could be worshiping privately and individually while part of the whole.

Privacy
When we gather for worship, we gather.

We.

We bring our experiences, reflections, happiness and sadness and join together. That joining to notice God can mean different thing to different people but we do things together. Inherent in this is a public notice and reaction. If i do something in a congregation there is an expectation that people will notice and and expectation of a reaction. a smile, a nod, a frown, perhaps a stolen moment of commentary. That is part of a group coming to notice God. The reality that we can notice God in each other.

When David danced in front of God. He did it publicly, literally in front of everyone, (leading the soldiers back from battle). And others started joining in. The story goes that one of his wives looked out the window and saw him and was shocked, catching him later and asking about his actions.

When we join together, we are public. We are deliberately not private. Our gatherings are hopefully advertised, inviting people into churches to be with us. We look for critical engagement with those who have not joined with us.

Privacy is a hot topic with the CCTV, interweb, human rights and personal safety issues involved in the discussion. But privacy in a large gathered group is much harder to contend with. What does this mean for those whose job it is to lead a group in worship. it means our outlook and focus should be on the appropriateness of action within our gatherings for our culture, for how each action helps us notice god, & how we can notice God in a way which causes us to think & play.

Social Media
It would be easy to point to Social Media as something which disrupts our ability to notice God. It is endless and constant in the demands it makes our our time and our skills. With blogs to read (yes, Irony), RSS feeds to check, twitter to update, Facebook to update, thinks to re-tweet, like and comment on. Taking time to notice God seems entirely counter cultural.

For years Christianity especially has dealt in social media. First Communion Cards, Footprints book markers, entire shops of books and things to communicate publicly. With the advent of mass recording, Conferences & Festivals have recorded talks and concerts and sold them to those present and those absent, right up to and including dedicated radio and TV stations across the UK.

The problem comes with the speed of current social media. Twitter expects updates within seconds of each other. Facebook, within minutes. With this speed comes a lack of control. Anyone can say anything, picture anything, and have shared it with millions of people within seconds. This is no possibility of editing the message.

This immediacy gives rise to fear. The real risk of a negative getting out is realistic. Yet social media has the ability to bring those absent physically, into worship. Enabling for joining in and enriching our noticing God. It allows for those opting out of the worship to engage with those within in. It allows for dialogue.

Public worship invites comment and social media provides one of the main ways currently to comment. As a force with the ability to instantly allow for the engagement of a large group of people, it is unbeatable. As a aid to our efforts to notice God in a corporate spaces it is a tool which feels under used, with this great possibilities

This week’s new group is Beer’n'Bible

Yeah it is a mixture of Beer and Bible.

The first one is tonight at The Clydesdale Inn, Lanark, and hopefully we will have a few people who want to come along, have some bible things and some beer things. My aim is to have some space to question, discuss and work out things, if you believe nothing, everything or something.

Don’t know quite what to expect, just trying to work out a couple of format ideas depending on who turns up. What ever the outcome, it should be fun.

oft of an evening, I read the Harvard Buisness Review, this one is from september 2008. Contained within it is a great article from Ed Catmull, Pixar Studio President, called, “How Pixar fosters Creative community.” As part of the article, he outlines some of the Pixar communities shared beliefs;
- Talent is Rare
- Management’s job is not to prevent risk but to build the capacity to to recover when failures occur.
- It must be safe to tell the truth.

it sounds pretty awesome but i wonder how well each of these would change into some of the communities i live and work in.

but it was the statement directly after these beliefs which caught me.
- We must constantly challenge all of our assumptions and search for the flaws that could destroy our culture.

how, what, hi. [puzzled but curious face]

Love it, but could this apply to the communities i am a part of.
i wonder how this could work within a church community?
(sounds as unlike general assembly as anything could be.)
my wanderings are under formed but are wondering.

more later

recently i was asked this question. Please write a few words of your personal story describing something of your own spiritual journey.

recently I have been reflecting on my attitude to work and how this has been influenced and shaped.

“One of the best reasons for being a Christian, as with a socialist, is that you don’t like to do any work.”(Terry Eagleton, Reason, Faith & revolution: Reflections on the God Debate. Yale, 2009)

Yet the understanding of work has been changed and taken beyond the way Jesus lived to become more in the image of Paul. I have respect for Paul he was a great organiser, preacher and worker. Yet I find I cannot square the accusations leveled against Jesus of being a glutton & being an layabout, and fraternising with low in society with a work ethic which seems to encourage a drive towards self improvement and a burgeoning middle class aspirationaism.

I believe there is nothing wrong with being middle class.
I believe there is nothing wrong with self improvement.
I believe there is nothing wrong with work.

However there does seem to be a disconnect between an example of the word becoming flesh, which took time to travel with people, and spent time with the people no one else would, and faith community which implicitly, and sometimes explicitly esteems high paid jobs, professionalism, and a ‘protestant’ work ethic.

I see the faith and beliefs I hold as something integral to me and as I reflect and think about who I am, and what that means for myself and how I act, I find more incongruence. As such I have decided to make a change, to live life differently to follow Christ and his example in a different way. And see how that goes.

So I have quit my job.

And work/ faith/life may never be the same again.

(NB On the notion of spiritual Journey, I find it unhelpful. I think that it can lead to a sort of spiritual tourism. I think our theology (belief/understanding of God) is very influenced by our place. Where we are, how we engage with the world and conversely how the world engages with us. Unhelpfully spiritual journey seems to transcend reality and condemn our life experience as a moot point, unless it can be spiritualised.)

Of course I could be wrong on this and reserve the right to be wrong!

MY life is changing for the better, of this I am sure. Yet i find it hard to adequately explain whats happening.

the headlines.
I have stopped working for The Salvation Army In Easterhouse.
I have accepted a part time position at Greyfriars Church in Lanark.
I am going to become a stay at home dad for my children.

Who?
me, scott paget I wrote a letter of resignation to The Salvation Army, Easterhouse.

What?
I am stopping work for the Salvation Army. This is good, and hopefully a good thing which will have a knock on effect to the work i can and will do, moving forward the future i hope i will have.

why?
Cause it will be fun.
Over the last few years, in discussions with my wife, I had said it would make sense for me to be the one who stayed at home. Money wise that made sense. But working worked for me. it forced me to interact. It gave me a sense of joy, something to do and do well. I wasn’t able to opt out of life. I have to be careful about who and what I am.

So when this wee job came up, i went for it. I got it and start soon.

When?
In about a weeks time.
About 4 months ago i discovered my boss, who had been joking about moving was actually moving. (we had suspected!)
Then 2 months ago I spoke at Third Sunday, the plan was to have a pretty straight church style service, but it was on one of the 10 commandments, “do not lie”. Sounds pretty straight forward right, do not lie. I couldn’t do it straight forward, How could I stand in front of a group of people I cared about and tell them not to lie when I do lie. As I thought about it I felt honesty would be best.
So I took it as a confessional/analysis talk, where i discussed and looked at why i and others lie. How we can change and the place of grace/Holy Living. It went well, I felt, it provoked questions in those that were there. Some people were complimentary and some wanted to chat further.

As a planning group we met to discuss what had happened and how people had felt about it. By the end of the meeting I was left doubting my approach, where I was and what I was doing even attempting to talk to others about this stuff.

It was clear I needed to review what I believed, why I believed it and what that meant for me as a worker. As a reflective practitioner i took this opportunity gratefully and used it as something helpful and useful. I went through that process I realised that working was a not something I wanted to continue. That changing my life would be beneficial for me, my family and for those I worked with.

How?
Stopping work will be hard, but will give me more time, and space to be, within the family, and myself.

As i write, I wish I had more answers, but I am in a place of reflection and change.
“Isn’t this the place we’re practicing belief
Seems we’re always looking at the door In hopes for so much more
And the stories in my pockets are the best I’ve ever lived”

so I am almost home,
I am excited about the possibilities it can hold.
I am excited about eh new job.
I am sad to leave somewhere i did a good job.
I am sad to leave something i had committed to.
I am hopeful & unsettled.

If you are passing, knock the door, or ring the bell.
It would be good to see you.

Changes.
They come in some unexpected places.

You came to take us
All things go, all things go
To recreate us
All things grow, all things grow
We had our mindset
(I made a lot of mistakes)
All things know, all things know
(I made a lot of mistakes)
You had to find it
(I made a lot of mistakes)
All things go, all things go
(I made a lot of mistakes)

I was working 1 to 1 with a young person who came up with three rules. I came up with seven others (I had a fair idea where the session was going), so here fro you i present our rules for a group of survivors lost on a desert island somewhere.

1 – No eating people
2 – No murder.
3 – Only talk about yourself in the third person
4 – create tribes
5 – rotating leadership structure
6 – share food
7 – compusary fitness classes
8 – no ugliness
9 – national dance to be performed everyday.
10 – you must keep the rules

If you would like to come and live on our desert islan I am selling tickets at £1000000000.99 per person, available from the usual outlets!

I doubt any of them make sense, in a joined up sense but in my brain somehow they make sense….
– Steve Jobs thoughts on using flash in iPhone, iPod and iPad.
– A small section in the Andrew Marr show (BBC Sunday mornings) on the relationship between MP’s and the electorate.
– The current tranche of press releases from The Church of Scotland on the future of the CofS
– and an ecumenical meeting of clergy with the local Community Planning Partnership.

Something has to change.
I was thinking this as I sat in a two hour meeting between staff and clergy, and local political instruments. In the meeting the head of the local Non-Government Independent Charities which are core funded by the Local Government, (do you see what they did there?), saw an impotent, poor excuse for a meeting. I found the whole thing disappointing.

on reflection a couple of things hit me.
- we had chosen to engage, but the relationship was not an even one. we were being regarded as useful information and propaganda sources, but not ‘partners’. The power relationship was skewed so far out of kilter
- secondly our engagement had been needy. As minorities within the relationship, we had gratefully taken everything we had been given with a respectful and humble attitude. (Just like Jesus?) My friend came up with the paraphrase of Jesus ‘Innocent as lambs, slippery as fuck.” In our meeting we had got the innocent bit right, but the slippery, well we were probably grippy rather than slippery.
- thirdly our engagement was uncreative,without focus or agenda, and chaired in a bizarrely partisan basis by the chair who was part of our group.

something needed to be changed. Yet I am unsure how to articulate the change which is necessary.

I dont think my experience of this is unique, but when i then read the mass of press releases coming out of the Church of Scotland in the run up to the general assembly I began to wonder about how universal these thoughts are.(CofS have been talking about money, how they do church, part time ministry, Gay clergy. Just about anything they can.)
As I have read things from press releases, quote for ministers, and leaks from reports, I got that feeling again. As a pew dweller I have no real power within the church. Everything is decided by committee, (the essence of Presbyterianism) at local, and national level. this give democratic authenticity to decisions but there seems to be a general unwillingness to change. My problem here is my understanding of any church as the only institution which exists primarily for the benefit of those outside it.
Engagement is on the established terms.
creativity is not a noted by product of any committee meeting of any sort.

something needed to be changed. Yet I am unsure how to articulate the change which is necessary. (I am unsure I have articulated the problem well!)

Some light as shed on this by the small section in the Andrew Marr programme, where they did a bit on the relationship between the MP’s and the electorate. its basic theory was that the electorate think of it as an upper class lower class relationship. (MPs upper class, electorate Lower class) yet politician after politician, in their memoirs and comment thought of it more as the relationship between the masters and servants, with Mp’s being as the servants.

I am unhappy leaving that expressed view unchallenged, but when you apply that thinking or position to the CCP or the CofS, the power dynamic changes, and the opportunity for change becomes something which can be worked towards. the problem then is how to make change happen and something creative for those involved.

Hence the inclusion of Steve Jobs open statement on the relationship between Apple and Adobe. It does several things very well. It outlines the problems, and outlines the future course of action which seems sensible given the argument simply put forward.
(You can read it here. Thoughts on Flash @ Apple.com
His comments are accurate, seem reasonably considered, yet clear and decisive action is called for. Change is advocated for.

My dominating thought though reading this was who is doing this for that meeting we had, who is doing this for the CofS assembly stuff i have been reading, (even who is doing this for the MP’s). something needed to be changed. It was articulated well the change which is necessary.

I wonder where else that is done?
I wonder where else that is done creatively?

My boss is moving to a new church. I will have a new boss.
His name is Roger.