Weekend

St Silas won 8-4 against CEC2 with five goals from Frankie , two from Ali Morrow with Davy Lawler getting one too!! Although Silas ran away comfortable winners in the end we had to come back from behind twice.

This trend of only starting to play when we are loosing seems to be happening an awful lot since the turn of the year which is a little worrying. At the end of the match the team seemed so discontent about the loss of four goals, its was as if we had lost!!

Two F.A. Cup matches where televised over the weekend: Chelsea vs Nottingham Forest and Man Utd vs Portsmouth; both good games. It was quite a lot of football over load.

On the Saturday afternoon Scottish Crusaders changed their name to Urban Saints with 75% in favor, thank God for a clear majority! Some less urban groups will now be called “Rural Sinners”! (Sadly can’t take credit for that)

Saturday evening I finally went to my best friend Eilidh's flat, staying the night. It's rather strange that despite us being best friends we struggled so much to stay in contact before she came to Uni. Now she lives in Glasgow we see each other a lot more but it was the first time I'd been round to her flat!! Spending time with her is fantastic so it was of course very lovely. We watched Pay It Forward on DVD. It is a book which I started to read a few years ago though gave up as it was rather rubbish; thankfully the film was much better!


Sunday morning was All-Age at Church (all the children stay in the service rather than going to their own activities). We started the new series, faith, with the story of Noah a fantastic example of faith (Genesis 6:9 onwards). What an amazing guy he was. In Genesis when it talks about Noah and his Granddad Enoch it says "they walked with God". I can think of little else which could be such a powerful statement of there lives and I am filled with a desire to be like them. There is also a new theme song for the series called "faith" which Jenny and the band did a particularly good version of. It is lyrically brilliant too; straight out the bible.

All in all a very tiring weekend but it was good.

Crusaders/Urban Saints

After 100 years The Crusaders Union felt it was time to change the name to a less offensive one. Here is an article from the Times about it. Due to constitutional rules the name of the organisation will still be "The Crusaders Union" but will just run under the new name. Scottish Crusaders, though, is different! This is because it is a part of the overall Crusaders Union and this means a vote has to be taken to change from "Scottish Crusaders". I apologise if that is all a bit confusing!

Anyway, there is a meeting on Saturday afternoon to discuss and vote on what to do; all "leaders" are able to vote. Some people are really keen about the new name but it seems that there was little or no discussion about the change. This has left some annoyed and others are against the whole name as they think its silly!

There seems to be a huge chance of division and trench lines being dug over this. There is a great need for prayer!!!

Deflated:

I blogged last month (here) about an event which the Crusader group was planning to hold. Earlier this week we (leader) found out that we wouldn't be able to put inflatables ie. sumo wrestling, bounce castle etc inside Pollokshields Church. This came as quite a shock because we have been planning an event for a few months now in which we hoped to encourage young people to come along to our group. The main attraction was the inflatable games and we where all set for February 3rd (a little later than my blog mentioned). We had just got everything in place last monday when the caretaker of the Church mentioned that he wasn't sure if we would be allowed to put the things in the hall like that which we all found quite surprising. When we then phoned up the Church leader and where told that we defiantly wouldn't be allowed.

There seems to be no reasons given to why they have made the rule and the person who we are renting from is sending his risk assessment to the Church to see if they will reconsider so there is hope. It has come as quite a shock and at a very bad time as we need to publicise and look for more volunteers. It seems that the 3rd atleast is out of question.

This is all very disheartening after so much effort has been put in. I find myself becoming angry at my stereotype of the Church we are using despite personally never dealing with them. Also one is left wondering if it is a good idea to continue down this road, doing the old "is this Gods plan??" thing. Maybe God his bringing this season to an end and we are just too stubborn to listen. Yet I wonder if this is just a stumbling block which we will have to overcome, with God's help. Your prayers would be very much appreciated

Crusader Event!

Tomorrow the leaders of Crusaders are meeting to discuss a couple of things. Firstly to sort out if we are going to follow the national organisation and change our name from "Crusaders" to "Urban Saints". This is obviously quite an important decision to make and it would be brill if you praying types could pray for us.

Our main reason for meeting is to plan for an outreach event in the new year. Over the past years our numbers have fallen to around 4 or 5 older secondary kids each week. This is due to mostly a lack of leaders and therefore a lack of resource. This makes planning an exciting program harder and last year meant that we often had to cancel an evening. With this lack of consistency a lot more of the younger people have stopped coming. Also advertising to younger, primary, kids has been rather non-existent again because of a lack of people.


The idea is to (on a Saturday afternoon) have inflatables and sumo suits etc. in the church hall where we meet. We also want games and other interesting things going on and hope to have lots of 8-12 year old's having fun and getting them interested in coming along on Monday nights. Then on the regular Mondays have a fast moving, engaging program and an atmosphere which they feel comfortable in.


There are a number of problems though:

• We will need to publicise the event well

Sadly in the past the primary schools have been very resistant to us coming in and talking probably because Pollockshields has large majority of Muslim and Seekers in the area which are resistant to Christianity.

• More support and leaders

The local Churches seem to have little or no youngsters in and there seems little ambition from the churches to improve the situation, they all seem doom and gloom about it! Also one of our female leaders has left. So now the group is run by my dad (John), Louise (19), Craig (19 & non-christian) and myself (18). While of course younger leaders is great, there is much responsibility still placed on John, also Louise (being the only female) needs to turn up every week so that girls can come.

• What to do with the existing older primary Kids

We have a small number of older kids whom probably don't want to join in with the younger guys.

These things seem to be limiting us and when planning for the afternoon and the program for the new year there seem so many problems, difficulties and at times it seems impossible. There there is no point moaning though because I completely trust that God has a plan! The victory IS the Lords and he WILL prevail. So could you pray that when we, the leaders, meet tomorrow that we would open ourselves to Gods wonders and not limit him because then we will see miracles.

As I said, we will need one off volunteers for the "Event" but we desperately need more leaders for us to see the group grow again; especially females. Crusaders is a non-denominational Christian youth group for 8-16 year olds. We run on a Moday night from 7-8:30pm at Pollockshields Church and run a games based program. The aim is to teach young people about God in an engaging way! If your interested in being a volunteer then please email me and I'll get back to you!! I have no doubt God WILL provide the children and the volunteers for he is God. He WILL make all these things possible.