The life and times of CRBC Youth

Our blog has moved!

2012-03-09T11:37:00.001-08:00

We have moved! You can now find us on the Colchester Road Baptist Church web site under youth, and the blog under news.

You can find our latest article here.

This version of the blog will shortly close, so book mark us on the web site!

Got a spare five minutes?

2012-02-21T06:50:00.000-08:00

You may already have thought about what you want to do during lent, or perhaps you are going to wait for Easter... but how about this for your journey to Easter day:

www.24-7prayer.com/spaces

Children's holiday club comes to a close

2012-02-17T06:54:00.000-08:00

Well our intrepid young people (and some amazing adults) have finished their week long work, running Children's holiday club - everyone has done brilliantly. So much so, even the local neighbourhood has been treated to a little snippet of holiday club...

Young people working at children's holiday Bible club

2012-02-15T06:39:00.000-08:00

We would just like to say how fabulous our young people are! Over half the volunteers working at this week's holiday bible club (90 children today) are the youth of Colchester Road Baptist Church.

Mind you, in amidst all the hard work, there is always time for a bit of horse-play:

Ystävänpäivä’, that is, ‘Friend’s Day’

2012-02-10T03:03:00.000-08:00

Valentine’s Day in Finland, although a popular day to get married or engaged on, is actually referred to as ‘Ystävänpäivä’, which means ‘Friend’s Day’. This is a day where people write cards and share gifts with their closest friends.

So why not take part in Finnish Valentine’s day and share some words about a friend, family member that you really appreciate!

Post things here or on facebook (we have an event page) and send real time cards, notes... and chocolate :D

Ideas for Lent

2012-02-03T05:29:00.000-08:00

Those of you that go to Sorted are getting a preview of some of the stuff we are doing Tuesday, but for everyone else... these ideas work for most ages.

Lent, the time where we stop to think about who Jesus is and what he did, as we make our way to Easter Day.

This is Jesus, both God and man, the one with a sense of humour, the one with a fierce purpose, the one who is clever and never out witted, the one who is completely honest and generous with himself and his time.

So how about taking up something for lent and not talk to Jesus about it? Tell him why you chose what you did and what it means to you.

You could read or listen to a book - for example for more on the personality of Jesus why not try "Beautiful Outlaw" by John Elderidge, or perhaps "God is closer than you think" by John Ortberg

Or perhaps take up some Bible reading like the daily notes on the Spring Harvest blog.

For the Ecological or community inclined, there is the Carbonfast or 40acts

And for those of you who are creative, why not doodle your prayers or take a photograph each day? See the picture for some ideas:

Finally, for anyone who would like to read the Easter Story through lent (short readings on Monday, Wednesday Friday and Saturdays) ask Karen!

We are going to Fort Rocky

2012-01-11T02:19:00.000-08:00

Dear Sorted parents,(that's our 11-14's)

We are planning to go to Fort Rocky at Whitemoor from the 13th to 15th July. The cost of this weekend is £99, the deposit for this is £25 (cheques payable to colchester Road Baptist church as we will send one cheque to youth for Christ). As the provisional booking is only held for two weeks, we need your deposits straight away. You will find more information about Fort Rocky below and please don't hesitate to contact me if you want more information!

Karen-the-youth-worker

Fort Rocky

Eat And Sleep
Fort Rocky is based in various residential activity centres around the country, each one unique and surrounded by beautiful countryside. Whichever location you choose, you will be sleeping in comfortable lodges, where rooms typically hold 2 -¬ 6 and with ensuite at most sites. The food is of a high quality and provided for you, with dietary requirements well catered for and a tuck shop available on every site.

Who Is Fort Rocky For?
Fort Rocky is designed for young people between the ages of 11 and 14, in their youth groups with their leaders. Those who are 15 and over are welcome but may prefer to take a junior leader role within the group. Youth leaders are responsible for behaviour and the rest of the weekend is taken care of!

How Much?
The price for Fort Rocky is £99 per person which is fully inclusive of food, accommodation, instructed activities and insurance. Extra pocket money for the tuck shop would be needed.
We are really passionate about making Fort Rocky accessible to anyone, therefore if cost is an issue for your group, please feel free to ring concerning possible solutions available to you.

What’s It All About?
Fort Rocky is a fun-filled, activity youth weekend, designed to give young people an amazing time away from home with their mates. However, Fort Rocky has a greater purpose than just this…
Young people get the chance to ask and be asked some really big questions about the most important subjects in life. We use interactive Roadshows and personal stories as our means of communicating the Christian message. Fort Rocky is not just any weekend residential but an opportunity for young people to explore the Christian Faith in a new, exciting and significant way.

3 Reasons
Fort Rocky exists for the 3 following reasons, which together, create the perfect platform for this a fantastic youth weekend away. We aim…
• To give young people the best weekend of their year – Through the highest quality outdoor activities, interactive Roadshows and team building games, Fort Rocky aims to exhilarate, entertain and engage every young person, promising an incredible time and some fantastic memories.
• To encourage significant relationships to begin and develop – Relationship is at the heart of youth ministry and residential weekends away/holidays are unrivalled when it comes to significant relationship building within youth groups. At Fort Rocky we aim to take the stress of organizing a residential out of your hands, ensuring you get all weekend to focus on your group.
• To give every young person the opportunity to develop a relationship with God – Fort Rocky is evangelistic at heart and it is our passion that each young person hears the Good News of Jesus in a way that is relevant to them and goes from a weekend having moved on in their spiritual journey, where ever they are at.

Activities
There is so much to do and experience at Fort Rocky, with an action packed programme that has something for everyone to enjoy. Here is a list of but a few things on offer!

Each site has its own set of instructed activities*:
• Abseiling
• Climbing
• Archery
• Water Walking
• Football
• Grass Sledging
• Quad Biking
• Raft Building
• Canoeing
• High Ropes
• Zip Wire
• Mighty Duck Challenge
• Multi¬media presentations
• Challenge course
• Tunnel Trail
• Swimming
• Basketball
• BMX Trail
• Loads More!

Something new for discipleship and that scary word "theology"

2012-01-04T07:54:00.000-08:00

Last term saw us run our youth CXP course as an opportunity for young Christians to ask questions and discover more about their faith.
This year we are starting two new things for our older young people and any adults who are interested.

1. Go-deeper evenings
- watch this blog for more information on these, they will be opportunities to eat yummy food and talk more about individual Christian topics... for example, "How much of God can we really know?" and "do you have to be a super-theologian to understand the Bible?" or how about "what on earth does Justification mean anyway?" or even "why did God make angels?"

2. A new blog - Barbecue Breakfast (because you can't beat breakfast with Jesus)
- this is already up and running and you will find a variety of things including bible studies, discussions, reviews and other useful stuff all aimed at getting closer to Jesus.

Both of these things are aimed at helping our older young people think further about their faith and provide space for any questions they have. If you are an adult member of CRBC you are very welcome to take a look too, as we are all church together, regardless of age!

Looking forward to the new year...what's on.

2011-12-19T08:43:00.000-08:00

Well I hope you are all enjoying the Christmas break and are looking forward to the New Year! Below you can take a look at the diary for January as well as a list of "things that will cost" in 2012...

Potential big costs of 2012:
• Year 7-9 Fort Rocky activity weekend: £99
• Year 10 up Soul Survivor : paid by Jan 31st £85 by April 30th £94 plus cost for food
Both of these activities may also have transport costs.
• Alton Towers – approx. £22 plus transport
• Three trips to the cinema/McDonalds, the first being March 30th

Date	Activity	Programme	Time
January
Sun 1	YW holiday
Mon 2
term starts 3	Coffee Bar		12.50 - 13.50
Tue	Sorted	Social	19.00-21.00
Wed 4	Church day of prayer
Thurs 5	YW day off
Fri 6
Sat 7	Garden Club	making pine cone bird feeders	10.00 - 11.30
	Craft Club		14.00 - 16.00
Sun 8	SAS (FRED)	Jesus the underdog
Mon 9	School group	managing stress course	9-10.05
	Deacons meeting
Tue 10	Coffee Bar		12.50 - 13.50
	Sorted	Courage and self confidence	19.00-21.00
Wed 11
Thurs 12	YW day off
Fri 13
Sat 14	Garden Club	make metal sweal pea holders	10.00 - 11.30
Sun 15	SAS (FRED)	Jesus the Hero
Mon 16	School group	managing stress course	10.20 - 11.25
	youth volunteer training		19.00 - 21.00
Tue 17	Coffee Bar		12.50 - 13.50
	Sorted	Social	19.00-21.00
Wed 18	church prayer meeting
Thurs 19	YW day off
Fri 20
Sat 21	Garden Club	Soil PH/put up greenhouse	10.00 - 11.30
Sun 22	SAS (FRED)	Jesus the dreamer
Mon 23	School group	managing stress course	11.55 - 13.00
	Deacons prayer
Tue 24	Coffee Bar		12.50 - 13.50
	Sorted	Self-Harm	19.00-21.00
Wed 25
Thurs 26	YW day off
Fri 27	Film Night	PG	19.00-21.00
Sat 28	Garden Club	Sow seeds greenhouse/cloches	10.00 - 11.30
	Fair trade shop		14.00 - 16.00
Sun 29	SAS (FRED)	Jesus the wrestler
Mon 30	Youth membership class		19.00
Tue 31	School group	managing stress course	9-10.05
	Coffee Bar		12.50 - 13.50
	Sorted	Social	19.00-21.00

The life and times of 2011

2011-12-18T01:41:00.000-08:00

2011 has been an exciting year for youth work at Colchester Road Baptist Church so we thought we would share some of the highlights with you…

On Sunday mornings, FRED has continued to enjoy using Scripture Union Material, while SAS have been watching a video series by Francis Chan called “Crazy Love” In the new year both the video and the book will be available in the new youth library… and you can even borrow from it if you are an adult!

Weekdays, the two eldest girl ypod groups have continued with a happy mix of discipleship, worship and fellowship as they meet together fortnightly. The younger ypod groups have joined together to form Sorted, and we now have a mixed group of 15 young people who meet for an hour of relaxing and an hour of “God stuff”

In the Autumn term we used Rock Solid material for our God time and we had art and craft, computer games, jewellery making, remote controlled cars, pool, table tennis and sitting on some amazing new beanbags…

Which brings me on to a BIG THANK YOU to Councillor Judy Terry, whose grant has let us buy previously the Xbox, table tennis and table football and now… huge bean bags, art and craft materials, radio controlled cars, games, and for the garden project: a green house, Dutch hoes, forks, willow for a fence and dome and seeds.

Over the summer both our older and younger young people had the opportunity to go away. First our year 7-9’s went to Hallowtree for games, learning more about Jesus and of course, having a camp fire.

Later in the summer our year 10 and over’s went to Soul Survivor, which proved to be a real time of blessing with many of our young people discovering a deep relationship with Jesus while enjoying the company of other Christians their age, some of whom were also from Ipswich.

This year we have started a garden club and have been slowly transforming a scruffy plot into what will not only be a garden project for our youth, but will also allow room for church members to have a micro plot in which to grow things (ask Karen for more information). The last job of the year has been to plant a live willow fence and dome on the allotment! We look forward to the spring and growing both flowers and vegetables.

Coffee bar has been going in leaps and bounds this year, with our hard working team of volunteers and ably assisted by our CYM year team person, Josh. We have had a steady stream of young people reaching 240 each week, and for our Christmas special we fed, and shared the gospel with over 350 young people.

This year has also seen an increased participation by our young people in church services. You will have noticed them in the music group, doing readings and helping the youth worker with children’s talks!

The autumn term youth CXP course saw young Christians not only from our church but also their friends from other Ipswich churches joining together to remember the story of our faith and to take time to ask and discuss some of the questions they have about their faith. We intend to meet again in the new year and plan what we do next, so watch this space!

We have also seen the advent of youth social evenings and film evenings, some of which have been “in house” and some of which have been trips out such as the last social of the year, a trip to the cinema to see Puss In Boots.
Our older young people have also had a mixture of their own socials such as starting a knitting club and meeting with the youth worker at Nero’s. We are still planning on having a Christmas lunchtime meal with our 6th formers and returning university students.

We have now had four fair trade shop and café events, which will continue to run once a month in 2012. Our young people are showing a real flair for fair-trading and really enjoying running the shop. The youth worker is enjoying buying and eating fair trade chocolate…

This autumn has also seen the beginning of mentoring work amongst our young people. Karen is at present mentoring one young woman and has another three in the pipeline. Next year we will begin a small mentoring scheme where volunteers, supported by Karen, will begin to mentor other young people.

Out of our relationship with Northgate school via coffee bar, this year we have grown the work we do, starting with a seven week “managing stress” course where young people have come out of there lessons to learn more on this subject with Karen. This proved successful and we have a second, ten week course booked with the school for the new year.

Finally I would like to say a personal thank you to all those who have supported the youth work this year and especially all of you who have volunteered. Your hard work, prayers and dedication have allowed us to see God’s work among our young people and young people in our local community.

Karen Turnbull, Lead Youth Worker

Grow - our garden project begins

2011-10-21T08:19:00.000-07:00

We have now had three weeks of our garden project, and it has been a lot of fun! We have seven young people attending the club and a variety of hard working volunteers.

The allotment had had a little time to grow over and so we had to start from scratch, digging ourselves some plots and planting some autumn onions and spring bulbs.

We have also been exploring the variety of sheds we have on our plot - until now resident only to a variety of spiders!

Since then we have also made ourselves some clothes for the spring.

New diary dates for Autumn 2011

2011-08-23T08:24:00.000-07:00

Image by ToniVC via Flickr

Hello.

If you would like to know whats happening up until Christmas you can find it on our Diary Page.

Take a look, there's lots of fabulous things on it...

Summer Fun

2011-07-15T10:06:00.000-07:00

Image via Wikipedia

There are lots of fun things happening over the summer. As well as our trip to soul survivor, there is a host of local things happening too!

You can keep up with it all by looking at the diary page of our blog, but in the meantime...

Dates	Event - Day	Event - evening

Friday 19th August		Computer games evening

Tuesday 23rd August		Chill out and games evening

Friday 26th August	Art & craft afternoon P1	Cinema/Mcdonnalds
Tuesday 30th August	Art & craft afternoon P2	treasure hunt
Thursday 1st September	Lowestoft by train
Monday 5th September		Killer Bunnies night -yr 10+
Tuesday 6th September		Cook it - eat it


Sunday 4th September		Meetup yr 10+
Sunday 11th September		Meetup yr 10+

Girly Ypod Sleepover

2011-07-11T09:51:00.000-07:00

Image via Wikipedia

After a stressful term of exams and coursework the girly ypoders (years 9-10) were due a chilled weekend of chat, pampering and general silliness!

We painted nails, played rounders (a very girly version!) read magazines, watched a girly film, ate yummy munchies and generally had a fun, relaxing and girly time!

Wii dance got a bit competitive and was the source of much giggling!

Getting to sleep in the youth room with the lit up cross outside the curtainless windows proved a challenge but we all managed a few hours kip before a cooked breakfast and church in the morning.

All in all a fabulous weekend!

Lydia H

Bible camp 2011

2011-06-08T03:56:00.000-07:00

Ten intrepid young people went off to Hallowtree this half term to enjoy camping fun and hearing more about Jesus - who he is, what he has done and what that means for us.

In spite of the rain and hail everyone managed to have fun and won themselves points in the camp competition. This included...

Bear traversing, which meant getting a teddy bear as far as you can without it, or your team touching the floor:

The Cardboard box game...

The cracker eating competition...

Marshmallow swinging...

Nature art...

The second cardboard box game carried on until this last little piece of cardboard was left!

We found interesting wildlife

And of course ate lots of food!