Nude Noah

Tags

naked people, Noah

Tomorrow I’m speaking at a school to year 9 and 10 on the passage where Noah get’s drunk and falls asleep naked. If the students don’t laugh, this one’s gonna be awkward.

Bad Dream Again

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bad dream, bush dance, Lord's Prayer, schools, year eight

So back in 2010, when I was just a newbie to the preaching in schools game, I posted about visiting a school and finding out I had to preach in 10 minutes. It was like a bad dream.

Today it happened again, only worse. I went to a primary school chapel, and I had a talk ready. It was on the line from the Lord’s Prayer “Give us today our daily bread”. Unfortunately while I was sitting in chapel the teacher leading chapel told the kids how today they were going to learn about “Your will be done”. Oh. Bugger.

I had to speak in three minutes, I had zero prep time, I had not talk. This was definitely bad dream material except I wasn’t naked. At least, if I was naked no one mentioned it, and forgetting to wear clothes is usually something people point out to you.

What seems to have happened was that the visit I was on had been rearranged a few weeks ago. Instead of being booked to come in a few weeks they moved me to today. What I didn’t register is that when my date changed so did my chapel topic.

As I sat in chapel I contemplated just doing the talk I had planned and apologising that I stuffed it up but for some reason I decided to make up a talk right there in chapel. I probably had 3 minutes between when I found out the topic and when I had to get up to do it. Happily the talk I had prepared had elements I could import, and the rest, I just flew by the seat of my pants. Or I by the power of the Spirit. Or somewhere in between.

I don’t think it was my greatest talk ever. But then again, it wasn’t the worst. It was probably the best one I’ve written in three minutes. The chaplain came up and said he liked it, so I appreciate that, even if he was just being a polite Christian.

I’ll aim to not have that happen again. I guess I learnt to check topics when dates change.

The other thing I learnt about preaching today that if you say, in reference to bush dancing, “doing Strip the Willow with an old lady is not my idea of fun”, you will inevitably lose every year eight boy in the room. Who’d have thought?

Kind Words and Outtakes

Tags

affirmation, kindness, March Photo Scav Hunt, school

Today I was at a school and a Dollarmite came to visit. It was totally exciting.

I took a photo which I thought I could use for the Scavenger Hunt, but I realised that it would only get me 3 points so I decided I’d go for the Geocache. That’s 20 points.

So here’s the photo. I’ve edited it a tad so that I’m not breaching privacy. At least I hope I’m not breaching privacy now.

What I liked about this school today is that I sat through two assemblies and all the teachers were really affirming. Often I find I’m in a school assembly and the students get a telling off for their uniform or the rubbish in the playground or something. Today I heard about how the school was working on being kind. In the High School assembly for year 7 and 8 the Principal told them all how much the teachers enjoyed teaching them. He then asked some of the teachers to tell the students what they enjoyed about teaching them. It was nice to see.

I’m pretty sure there’s a place for giving students a bit of telling off, but today it was nice to see the adults just being kind and affirming.

Tick Tock

Tags

meetings, minute by minute, school talk, Subway, talks

Here’s my day, so you can tell your friends:

5:50am – Wake up to alarm
5:50am – Fall back to sleep
5:56am – Get up
6:50am – Leave for School 1
8:15am – Arrive at School 1
8:30am – Speak in School 1 Chapel – Years 7-9: 1 Cor 15:50-58
9:00am – Leave School 1 for School 2
9:20am – Arrive at School 2
9:50am – Speak in School 2 Chapel – Years 5-12: Sex
11:00am – Speak in School 2 Chapel – Years T-2: Luke 5:1-11
11:40am – Speak in School 2 Chapel – Years 3-4: Luke 5:1-11
12:20pm – Speak at School 2 Lunchtime group – Years 7-12: Luke 23:32-43
1:10pm – Leave School 2
1:20pm – Subway Lunch
1:44pm – Leave for Office
2:57pm – Arrive at Office
3:00pm – Staff Meeting
4:33pm – Leave Office
5:12pm – Arrive Home prepare Bible Study on Acts 19
6:13pm – Have Nap
6:40pm – Wake Up – Tidy house
6:50pm – People start arriving for Church Planting meeting
7:30pm – Church Planting Meeting/Dinner (including Bible Study)
10:50pm – Meeting and Pack-Up Finish
10:55pm – Check Facebook and Stuff
11:07pm – Start blogging
11:24pm – Publish blog

Bed imminent.

Sex-free Sex Talk

Tomorrow I’m going to a school to do a chapel talk. I was asked to talk about sex. But then I was told I needed to be careful what I said because there were going to be year 5 kids in the room. That’s difficult. There are going to be kids from year 5 all the way up to year 12. You don’t need to be an expert in adolescent development to know that what a year 5 kid is thinking about sex is very different to what a year 12 kid is thinking.

So I’m trying to work out how I’m going to do this. One option is to use more double entendres so that the kids that don’t get them are obviously too young for them. The other option is to just water it down, but then I probably won’t say anything at all. The last option is just to go for it and assume that kids know more than we want them to anyway. That tends to work for the majority of the time, but then will have one or two glaring exceptions, like the year seven kid in my youth group who went home and asked his Dad what masturbation was. Oops. Not that I’d be talking about masturbation tomorrow, but being the visiting speaker you don’t want to be the guy who says way too much.

I still haven’t decided how I’m going to do it. I guess we’ll see tomorrow.

Antiquated Notions of Information Accessibility

Tags

library, Martin Luther King Jr, talks, Wikipedia

Today I was in the office and announced to my boss that I was going to the local library. He looked at me funny and asked why. I told him that I’m doing a talk on Martin Luther King Jr on Thursday and I needed more information. “There isn’t any on the internet?” he asked. I told him I needed more information, Wikipedia just isn’t enough. He looked a bit incredulous, then said “Good luck”.

So I went to the library feeling smug that I’m so world savvy I can work the internet and a library.

As it happened I could find very little info about King in the library. Partly because there were no computers in the library to look up the catalogue, only computers to look up the internet. I read a little bit out of a book in modern western history then went back to the office. My boss asked me how I went. When I told him he just said “Thought so.” He knows what he’s talking about. That’s why he’s the boss.

To be fair, had I been at Hornsby Library say, or the NSW Library, I’m sure it would have been a different story. The local suburban frontier outpost library I was visiting seems to be more designed as a rest stop for taxi drivers and a place to display signs about bag stealing.

Flexible Hours

Yesterday I had my yearly review at work. I did pretty well. The boss a little upset that I use my speaking platform in schools to promote my line of dietary supplements to kids, but I think he understands, a man has to make a buck where he can. Other than that I think he was pretty happy with my performance.

One of the things that came up was a suggestion I made to be allowed to work from 10am-6:30pm. The official working hours for my workplace are 8:30am-5pm but over the last year we’ve been allowed to come in at 7:30/8am and work till 4/4:30pm. I have been doing this because, as a result of traffic, I only have to leave home 15 minutes earlier but I get to leave work half an hour earlier. However it’s meant that I’ve had to be up at 6am every morning. While I try and get to bed by 10pm, I never succeed. If you have a look at the time I do my blog posts, it’s usually around midnight (like tonight). So I’ve been getting less than 6 hours most nights of the week. I generally fall asleep at work in my chair and I’m pretty sure my productivity suffers when I’m asleep.

So I suggested the late start. Because I have a good boss, he was happy to let me test out the new working hours (I also gave him some free supplements, which may have made him more persuadable). I tried them today, and while I felt a little sad having to work till 6:30pm, I think I was more productive, I was less sleepy, and I really enjoyed the sleep in this morning. And I’m really happy that I could go to bed right now and still get a solid eight hours. Plus I got to have a night out and not worry about the time. So day one of the trial has been a success. We’ll see how it goes. I won’t keep reporting to you though because, well, I don’t want to share all my personal information. Some things, like how a man’s work hours trial progresses, should remain private.

Quotable Quotes

Today at work my job was to find nine quotes to go in the resources that I write. However I couldn’t find nine. I found one. That means tomorrow is going to be spending another seven and a half hours on the stupid quote sites. I get so bored of them. Still, I’m doing it for monies (and Jesus) so I can’t complain.

I have, at times, thought about just making quotes up and attributing them to people. I figure it shouldn’t really matter who says them just that what they say sounds pithy and/or true. I asked my boss if he’d have a problem with me making quotes up and he said “Yes”. Shame.

Still I’m hoping he changes his mind. Just in case he does, I’m going to make up some quotes and store them here. So for your reading pleasure, here are some things the people below did not say. (Feel free to add your own in the comments.)

“The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away”, right now I just wish he was doing more givin’ than takin’. – Martha Wilkes, in 1957 after losing her house to a tornado.

If I was a polygamist and could marry mythical creatures, I’d marry a mermaid and a reverse mermaid. One to take out on the town and the other for her childbearing qualities. Of course I could achieve the same result by just marrying a woman and a fish, but I think I’d find taking a fish on a dinner date too confusing for my appetites. – Michael Cera

I probably didn’t say this. – Mark Twain

Great stories are like rare diamonds. They are a beauty to behold and have the strength to cut through even the hardest of men’s hearts. Only the author who is willing to toil alone, digging deep in the blackest darkness will be able to produce this treasure of a pressured soul. – Leo Tolstoy

Doubt and faith are not enemies but allies. It is ignorant certainty that fights against them both. – G.K. Chesterton

I always say that the secret to success is to believe in yourself. That and make sure you’re drunk by midday. – Ulysses S. Grant

One Day Camp

I was meant to be on camp for work this week, but not enough people went on camp, so I was made redundant from camp.

But I did go to camp for one day. It was pretty fun. As soon as I arrived I was asked to tell a joke. 7:30 in the morning and I have to tell a joke. It’s traditional that I tell a joke at this camp. So I told this one:

Am man walks in to the doctors with a penguin on his head. The doctor says “What seems to be the problem?”

The penguin replies “Well it all started with this growth on my foot…”

It went down ok, but people didn’t think it was as good as I think it is.

I did other things today other than telling jokes. I listened to a talk, and almost hit a girl in the head with a frisbee. I threw the frisbee and it was meant to go over her head (silly idea) but it did not, it skimmed the top of her head, glancing off her plastic head band. She was talking to her dad at the time. Oops, that was embarrassing. (Can frisbees kill people? That would have been more embarrassing.) She forgave me, I think.

Oh and I dressed as a bearded lady for a carnival event. I haven’t done that since 2008 so I thought it was time. Wearing a dress and fake boobs; That’s what my job is all about.

And that was my day on camp. I would have liked to have been on camp, because it’s pretty fun. But at least I can probably sleep more here.

Discomfort

I was at a primary school yesterday talking to a group of about 40 kids. When I do this I usually do a promotion for the camps that my organisation runs every holidays. Yesterday the teacher running the group did the promo and pointed out to the kids that there’s a photo of me in the brochure. He also suggested that if I’m kind I might sign the brochures for them. I laughed.

Then after I had done my Bible talk and it was time for everyone to leave for class the teacher handed out the brochures and told the kids to go to me if they wanted the brochure signed. So about 15 kids lined up asking for signatures. “You don’t want my signature.” I said. But they insisted. “I don’t have a pen, oh well” I said. The teacher handed me a pen. Darn. I really didn’t want to sign a bunch of holiday camp brochures. But I did because I couldn’t think of an easy way out. So I signed a whole bunch of brochures yesterday because there’s a tiny photo of me in a group inside. Next time I sign a bunch of stuff with a permanent marker I want it to be my hip-hop CD. That will be an achievement worth signing stuff for.

Leading and Bossing

I was at a school recently and as often happens I sat through an assembly. Schools enjoy piggy backing chapels with assemblies sometimes which means in the last two years I have seen a lot of merit awards handed out. In fact on a few occasions I’ve even handed out merit awards. I’ve shaken kids’ hands and said “Well done” because I was the most auspicious person in the room. That was weird.

Anyway, that’s not the point. On this day, after the assembly. a year nine class got held back. They were all asked to write a report on what had happened in an English lesson the day before. Apparently there had been some chair throwing or something. The teacher told the class they were expected to write a report on what happened and they were expected to name names.

That got me thinking about what I would do were I asked to write a report on the behaviour of my peers. Say we had a staff meeting and while my boss was out of the room a few of my staff mates threw some chairs around and set fire to a table. Then the head of our organisation called us in and asked us to write a report and name names. I don’t know what I’d do. My first response would probably be to refuse, though I’m not sure why. I guess I’ve grown up with the notion that you don’t dob in your mates. I also think I have a problem with adversarial authority. Like when a teacher sets themselves up against a class, or management set themselves up against employees, It gets to me and makes me want to rebel.

However were my boss to sit down with all the staff and have a conversation about who threw what chair and who lit what fire, and why it happened, and what message we might be trying to send management or each other, or society, by having small riots (ri-ettes, if you will), I would be much happier to talk about who did what. I respond well to relational leadership. I think that’s why I haven’t had any dreams about rebelling against my bosses at work. I have good bosses who do things within the context of relationship rather than enforcement. I do however have dreams about rebelling against teachers, and my managers at the cinema and the entertainment centre. In those places my compliance was expected because they were in-charge and I was their subordinate. It seems I’m not keen on being bossed but I am keen on being led. Good leaders lead through relationships built and respect earned. Bad bosses boss through relationships ignored and respect assumed.

So all this I guess is to say, I still don’t know if I’d dob on my friends, but if I had a good boss (which I do) I probably wouldn’t need to.

This leads me back to thinking about how you relate to teenagers. In general, leading teens is the same as leading adults, it’s best in the context of built relationships and earned respect. In schools, it doesn’t really work like that. The teachers are the bosses and the students are the workers, teachers often expect teenagers to obey because authority us inherent within the role. So when an adult comes along and asks for obedience and responsibility which is not expected but earned, young people are going to be much more likely to repsond positively.

None of this stuff is really new, but I think it’s what I got thinking about while watching the chair throwing inquisition. It reminded me to not be lazy in my relationships with young people. My job is to lead not to boss.

Shoulda Shabbat

It’s Saturday. And for the first time in 21 days I haven’t had any ministry activities to do. Very happy to rest.

Authenticity

Today I told a chapel of about 200 year 5-8 students about the Bieber experience. It was difficult.

I originally had an illustration about unrequited love (surprise, surprise) but realised that probably the year 5 kids wouldn’t really connect with it (it’s difficult to like a girl for 4 years when you would have had to start your crush when you were 6). So I decided to tell them all about watching Bieber and crying. It was a risky move. I thought I might win friends with my self-depreciating humour. I think however, I may have just made myself look dumb. Except for the girls who loved Bieber. Maybe today they really heard the gospel for the first time because cried in his movie. Maybe now there’s one less lonely girl, cause she found her saviour.

Or maybe I just looked strange.

I was shooting for authentic.

Oh well.