Church

Win a free copy of “Group Games”

If you are in youth or children’s ministry this might excite you.

When I was a youth group leader I had to prepare talks, prayers, supper to eat and games to play at the beginning of the meeting. Usually the latter of these things were done with much less preparation than the first things. Your experience might be the same.

It’s probably a good thing. Preparing your talk and the prayers should demand much of your attention. You don’t want to say incorrect things while you teach the kids. The games were usually under prepared, and not really thought out.

To fix this problem, my friend, Calum has created an iPhone app. It’s called “Group Games”.

The app is brilliant. Simply put, it helps you prepare for the game time of youth group by providing you a list of games that you can play easily, with or without resources. I especially like that way that you can select a game using a search involving the size of the group and the time a game is needed to run.

If you are involved in youth or children’s ministry, you should definitely check it out.

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I’m giving 2 copies away for free. The first 2 comments win. Simple.

MooreMission 2012 is here

It’s that time of year again. The time of year I am talking about is when all of Moore College put down all of the books about systematic theology, and goes out to do MooreMission.

This year MooreMission is bigger and better than ever. A friend and I have built a website to be the online hub for blogging and tweeting, and Anglican media are getting involved too.

I’m especially looking forward to Mission this year because:
a) Kirsty is coming along
b) We are heading to country NSW (Glen Innes, Guyra & Emmaville)

Tomorrow we are driving north to spend a night with Kirsty’s cousins in Coffs, before continuing on to Guyra on Saturday afternoon.

If you want to keep up to date with what is happening you can:

a) Follow all the action on twitter by looking at #mooremission
b) Head over to the website

Resources to use this Easter.

Easter is one of those times in the year where churches try to connect with those in their community who do not usually go to church.

In my experience, churches try to do things differently during Easter and Christmas. Sometime this involves singing different songs, having a special focus on welcoming and follow up of new people. Lots of churches try to show a video or two during the service.

If you want to do things differently, visually, he are some handy resources you can use. They are all free.

The Easter Story, by The Bible Society

You can download all of these for FREE by logging into vimeo.

Interactive Stories, by Church Media Videos

This is a little program you can download to use in your kids’ spot. It basically works as a animation creator. It is FREE, and is great for teaching bible stories to kids.

Easter at CreationSwap

This site has heaps of FREE resources. They are all still images, vectors and powerpoints.

Here is the link for their easter reasources.

Mirror Mirror by New Spring Church

This isn’t free. But it is brilliant. Might give you an idea for a video you could do yourself.

http://vimeo.com/38995671

Easter, by Bjorn Amundsen

This video is a visual manifestation of some poetry by Sharon Irving.

You can download if from vimeo here.

Let me know if you have seen anything else out there. Ill be happy to add it to this post.

*** Update. Some extra resources. ***

The Last Supper, by SandBible.com

These videos aren’t free, but If you are in Australia you will be supporting a great Christian content producer.

You can see all their Easter videos here.

Time for something with meaning.

It has been a while since I posted anything of any real meaning on here. That is largely due to an almost non-stop summer of activity. Here are the quick highlights.

  • We finished up at family church in mid December.
  • Christmas happened.
  • Tyro has been mental. See some of the stuff we have been doing here.
  • We went on beach mission. We were the cooks. It was mental. Good mental, but still mental.
  • A bit of time was spent getting ready for college starting again.
  • Kirsty started a new job.
  • I started a new job as a student minister at an Anglican Church in Cammeray.
  • Australia dominated in the test series.

Pretty much sums it up. Normal service will now resume.

Saying goodbye

One of the most difficult things about being at bible college is also being a student minister. Ok, not the actual job of being a student minister, that is great. I’m talking about the reality of moving around a couple of different churches over your time at college.

I am planing on being at college for four years, which means, being at roughly three different churches over that time. The breakdown then ends up being, two churches for one year and one church for two years.

Recently Kirsty and I made the difficult decision to finish up were we have been serving for this year, St Ives Family Church. It was a hard decision. But it is one that brings with it lots of excitement as we think about being able to meet with a new church.

We have just done a whole heap of our ‘last things’. A few weeks ago we had our last bible study leaders lunch, we have both had our last bible studies (me with the mens group, and Kirsty with her mixed bible study) and this coming week we are having our last Sunday morning.

One of the highlights of these last things was the opportunity for me to preach my last sermon, which happened last Sunday. I preached on Love from 1 Corinthians 13. I encouraged them to continue to be a church that continues to, a) Love each other and b) Love their community.

Family church has been a church that has shown so much love to Kirsty and I. We love this church. Leaving is hard.

p.s my sermon is below if you want to listen to it. note: my mic dies around the 6 minute mark, but it gets replaced with a much better one after then. I promise.

p.p.s as of the end of January I will be working as a student minister at the Cammeray site of Naremburn Cammeray Anglican Church. We are really looking forward to it!

2 videos for Christmas

This past week our church ran the carols in the school we meet in. Its a great opportunity for our church to be showing our love for the school by running an event for them.

Because we are running it, I had the pleasure of doing all the graphics and videos for the night. Unfortunately, I completely ran out of time and couldn’t put together all three videos we needed (i was also preaching this past week). I only had time for one.

So we ended up buying these two videos. I think they are both great. The first one is from the-ve, and the second is from Dan Stevers.

 

Have Faith. An update.

One of the reasons I started this site was to keep our friends updated of how life was going while Kirsty and I go through Bible college. (Kirsty isn’t actually studying at college, but she is still heavily involved. If you catch my drift. Hence, we are both going through college)

I wanted to write an update to tell you how things have been going recently for us. So here goes. Sorry, this post is long and doesn’t have a fancy video.

College has been busy, much busier than I had thought it would be. Managing college work, seeing family, seeing friends, church work, secular holiday work, starting tyro designs and spending time together as a married couple has been a steep learning curve. I don’t pretend to have mastered this yet, but our friends are gracious when we can’t see them, and our families are even more forgiving when we seem absent or exhausted. We are extremely thankful for this.

At the same time as being busy, this year has been excellent. The stuff I have learnt this year will prove to be valuable into the future, and the friendships we have made at college have been a real encouragement to us both. Our Church this year has been a real highlight of our ministry together. Ministering to the people of St Ives Family Church has been a delight and a privilege, and we have been greatly encouraged by our brothers and sisters there.

One of the most difficult parts of this year has been the status of Kirsty’s job. Kirsty works in the public health system, where she is a Speech Pathologist, helping young kids speak. Kirsty got the job at the end of 2010, and it has been a blessing. Both financially and relationally (She is working as a locum for another speechie on maternity leave). A difficultly presented itself a few months ago when we heard the news that the woman Kirsty was replacing was returning to work. Because of this Kirsty’s job looked like it might be terminated. The prospects of this were scary. We were tentatively making arrangements to move back in with one of our parents.

In the midst of this, there was a slight prospect that her job might be extended for a period of time, but we sat in limbo for weeks. Not knowing what the outcome might be, we did what we have always done in times of uncertainty. We prayed. We prayed, and trusted that God would work the situation out in the way that he wanted. Trusting in and having faith in God is not something that is foreign to us. In faith, Kirsty and I have made all of our plans in the last few years focused on God and based on what we think God would have us do. There have been numerous times that these decisions have caused stress, mostly financial stress, but still stress. This was another period of that. God has always worked things out for us. Wether it has been where we are going to live or work, God has always provided for us.

To cut a really long story, long. Once again God has answered our prayers by once again providing Kirsty with work in the form of an extension. Her contract has been cut from 5 days to 3, but it is still some work. The health sector is a really difficult area to find work in at the moment, so we are thankful for the 3 days she has been given.

I have written this, not to make you think that we are excellent Christian people. Instead I write this so that, if you are a Christian, you might be encouraged by God’s goodness to us in a time where we had faith in him. If you are not a Christian, I would love to encourage you to check out 2 ways to live, in it you will discover that God has done so much more than just provide materially for Kirsty and I. He has done so much more than that for people who have faith in him.

 

Sorry for the long post. Thanks for reading it.

Love, Tim and Kirsty