Anglican Youth, Children and Families

Exciting news came my way back in October last year (2018): Queensland was bringing back a beverage container refund scheme!   When I was a lad, way back when, you could take bottles back to your local corner shop and get a whole five cents each for them. Then you could go to the Ekka or a big sporting event, and literally climb into the rubbish bins with a big Glad bag to fill up with aluminium cans, making millions… or maybe a couple of dollars anyway. The message back then was pretty simple: if you could make the time and effort to go around and find bottles and cans to collect, you could make decent money out of the exercise, keep the environment free of rubbish, and good luck to you. So now the hands on the clock have gone full circle and people like you and I have the opportunity to generate a small income stream from beverage containers in Queensland once again. But is it worth doing? What follows are my thoughts on what I have discovered so far. 1. Opportunities t

The Most Reverend Dr Phillip Aspinall has released his New Year message, introducing this year's theme of 'Generous Hospitality'. His message, which you can watch here , is a good one to ponder on and a great next step after a year of exploring what 'Generations Together' could mean for us as a Church. In light of this message, I decided to set myself the challenge of doing some reading and research to pull together a range of different ideas and inspirations on this very theme. Hopefully they can inspire you to think about how your Parish, School, or Ministry can reflect generous hospitality in the things that you do. So below, I've come up with one idea each for Intergenerational, Children, Youth, Young Adults, and Families ministries. It is my hope that these ideas can inspire you and if you do end up doing one of the ideas below - please share them with us, as we love to hear about all the exciting things that you are doing! And for those of you who

Good Morning! I am back in the office after a bit of break from Primary Ichthus and I wanted to share some of the excitement and great times we had. Primary is always a fun camp with an energy that is unmatched and is such a good way to start the year. This year was no different and our theme of 'The Quest' inspired us to do some things a little differently but with great results. We had 47 campers join us this year and I get so excited every time I get to write a new name up on my registrations wall where I am able to pray for them before they come on camp. It's a particularly great moment when I write up names that have become so familiar to me and I can't wait to see how they've grown when they come to check in on that Wednesday afternoon. There isn't nothing quite like the atmosphere of registration time - the noise, the mild chaos, the sounds of delight when old friends reunite for another year of camp, and seeing the faces of each and every name I'

It's 2019, I'm back in the office for my first week back at work and I'll be honest, I'm already feeling a little overwhelmed by everything that we have planned for this year. It's a good sense of being overwhelmed though because we have planned and started laying the groundwork to hopefully achieve good things this year. And for me, planning makes the big mountain of dreams and visions feel a little more like hills that we just possibly might be able to pull off with some hard work and a lot of prayer. I know for many of you involved in Youth, Children, and/or Family ministry, you've already mapped out your year, and if you haven't already there is no time like the present to start considering where God wants to take you and your people in 2019. Below I've outlined four steps that I tend to take when I'm involved in a planning process. I decided to share my thoughts in case it helps you, or for those of you have planned out 2019 already, to take

Primary Ichthus always seems to come around too quickly each year and mentally as a camp coordinator, I consider it to be the end of my ‘camping season’ allowing me some time to regroup before kicking off again the July with Senior Ichthus, yet it is my busiest, most energetic camp and starts my year with a bang! Primary Ichthus was no exception this year with a gathering of 46 campers, a 22 strong leadership team, and me. And boy did we have some fun! Our theme for this year was the ‘Ichthus Cup’, with our campers being placed into four different houses to earn points to win the cup. Watching the realisation on the faces of our winning team was such a great sight, and talking to one of the mothers of that team after the family service, she told me that her daughter rarely wins anything as she isn’t all that athletic. This small interaction made me realise that this cup wasn’t won based on campers being physically capable, or being especially smart; but rather it was bas

As each new year begins, I usually receive a series of phone calls in my office, each of which goes something like this: Caller: Hi Jonathan, it’s Father Fred from St Swithin’s here. We’ve just had a parish visioning day and we’ve identified youth and children’s ministry as one of our top three strategic priorities. We’ve looked around and realised we need to start a youth group and a kids club ASAP, so how do we do that? Me: This is all good to hear but let me ask you this: how often in your church do you have different generations doing something together at the same time? Caller: Basically never, because people wouldn’t enjoy it. Each generation wants to do what it likes doing. Kids want to run around, oldies want to sit and chat. You know how it is – they all have their own needs! Me: Do you remember doing good things at church a long time ago where all the generations were together? Caller: Sure, we used to do all kinds of things – all-age Mothering Sunday services, p