A modern Pentecost
I wanted help my class of 10-13 year-olds to feel like they were a bit more inside the story of the beginning of the church, so I rewrote Acts 2, setting it in the present in the town where our church meets on Sundays.
When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together at Ysgol John Bright. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole room where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit enabled them.
Now there were staying in Llandudno holiday-makers from every nation under heaven. When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken. Utterly amazed, they asked: ‘Aren’t all these who are speaking from North Wales? You can tell by their accents. Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? Scousers, Mancunians and French…
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18 July 2010 Jeff Gill
tags: church,
faith,
i61
Look at me being a stereotypical children's pastor!
In my new ‘office’.
16 March 2010 Jeff Gill
tags: children,
church,
i61
A notable new blog
My beloved wife and former writer here is gracing the internets once again with her poetic and insightful writing on children’s ministry over at the the official i61 Kids blog.
21 August 2009 Jeff Gill
tags: blogging,
children,
church,
i61
We showed this at our church this morning
2 August 2009 Jeff Gill
tags: i61,
silly,
video
I like you, i61
Hey, all you i61-ers, I’m really proud of the superb bonfire event you did tonight!
Two years ago Christine had the idea of a bonfire night with traditional games and quiet fireworks that wouldn’t scare the little kids. So we did it. We didn’t at ALL do it on our own, but we did a whole lot. I made posters and leaflets. I stuffed the leaflets into every letterbox on the Morfa estate. I bought the fireworks and the sparklers and the glow sticks and the doughnuts. Christine bought the apples. I arranged the layout of all the games. I assembled the supplies for the games. I (along with a few others) frantically put the lanyards on the glowsticks. Christine made the hot chocolate (along with a couple others). I lit the fireworks (along with two other guys). I rushed around making sure everything was working. I talked to the crowd about i61.
This year. I made posters and leaflets. I spent about an hour on the phone and writing emails. I bought some gaffer tape. And I ran a game. That’s all. You did the rest. (And from where I was looking last night, everyone seemed busy, but no one seemed stressed.)
You bought the fireworks and the sparklers and the glowsticks and the doughnuts and the apples and the hotdogs and the craft supplies. You choreographed the dance and rehearsed it. You organised the games. You made the apple crumble. You built the bonfire and put it out. You brought a TON of friends. You lit the fireworks. You manned the bar. You were the band. You directed the traffic. You talked to the (rather large) crowd. You cleaned up afterwards. You shared the life of God with our community.
I’m sure I left something out.
You probably didn’t even know that i61 Bonfire Night was Christine’s idea. That’s because this year it was your night. And I am really proud of you right now.
2 November 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: community,
i61
Not everything must change
I like change, but if EVERYTHING changed I’d end up sucking my thumb and rocking in the corner. If everything changed, I would lose my frame of reference. I would be lost.
A person with extraordinary capacity for change might be able to handle a change of nearly everything, but they wouldn’t be able to bring anyone along with them into their new world. One significant change that people can handle is better. After you make one change, you can do another.
When we started i61, (our church) we didn’t change everything. We didn’t even change most things. What we believe is unremarkably evangelical. In our meetings we sing songs at the beginning of the meeting, have notices in the middle, then a message (sermon) from a pastor or guest speaker, and a song to close. Just like lots of other churches the children go to their own time during the message. Just like lots of other churches we having smaller meetings during the week that cater to people of various ages and interests. On one level i61 is just like any other church in Britain.
We did change some things though. We decided to build a church that would be inviting to people who aren’t steeped in church culture. We rejected a traditional church meeting place in favour of a pub. We replaced Christian lingo that only a few people could understand with everyday language that most everyone can understand. We focus on talking about what the bible has to say about subjects that have to do with everyday life rather than what we have to say about our theological interests. We are relentless in our drive to make i61 a place where anyone can be supported in their own faith journey, even if they don’t yet have any faith in God.
We (and here I must give most of the credit for our foundational values to Steve and Gill and Lee and Sarah Houghton) didn’t change everything. We only changed some of the things that were keeping people away from church. The result is a church-in-a-pub that is stuffed to capacity with people who are excited about God or are open to the idea of being excited about God.
You don’t have to change everything RIGHT NOW.
You don’t even have to change the most important thing right now. The other day I was listening to a head teacher who turned around a badly failing school talk about what he did first. He sorted out school’s problem with bus, car and pedestrian traffic flow. That wasn’t the most important thing to change, but it needed to be changed. And that was what the head teacher chose.
Choose one thing. Change it effectively. Bring the people you lead along with you. Repeat.
25 October 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: change,
humans,
i61
Vision
Mary and Professor Zelf, who I like to think of as an American cross between Count Arthur Strong and Andy Parsons, returned to i61 this weekend in a sketch that stole most of the acting inspiration from this little piece of genius from the Two Ronnies:
Mary walks onstage holding a long pole. Professor Phuluvem Zelf then comes on blindly using…
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15 September 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: drama,
i61,
silly
How to fight fair
Some only slightly tongue in cheek lessons on how to fight fair taken from the sword fight in The Princess Bride. This was for our weekend meetings on the theme of conflict resolution.
30 June 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: humans,
i61,
silly,
video
Hi, School!
This is a little event we do for students moving out of junior school and into secondary school. (For those of you outside the UK, this happens at age 11.) We’ve just finished our promo video. A short version may come later.
You can see the video in high definition and download the original 102 MB Quicktime movie on Vimeo, which is kind of cool.
27 June 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: children,
i61,
silly,
video,
youth
Can we go back to theory, please?
Our church has done a very good job of making a place that is easy for non-church people to come to – for starters, we meet in a pub – and people do come. About half of the people of i61 didn’t go to church before they came to i61 or else they had not gone for a very long time.
Easy to come to is good, but for a while Christine and I have been feeling that it is very important for us to go, to share the life of God with people where they already are. Since we are the children’s pastors, we decided to do something with kids. Since there is no time like the present, we decided to do something this half-term week. The obvious place to start is Someone Else’s Neighbourhood. Unfortunately, the Someone Elses had to work all week, so we are doing it in our neighbourhood at our house.
It’s surprisingly scary.
I printed up a little invitation, and yesterday I went out in the rain and passed a bunch of them around. People I don’t know got them through their letterboxes. People I do know or have spoken to a bit got me knocking on their door inviting them. The response was tepid at best. People seemed to think of it as a thinly disguised wheeze to get their kids into church.
The response at last house I went to completely took the wind out of my sails. Our village shopkeeper lives there. He always seemed like a nice guy. We chatted once about the woes having BT as an internet provider. His teenage daughter babysat our kids a few times. But yesterday he said, ‘No, not interested,’ before I could finish one sentence. When I stuttered something about it being just some games and crafts for the kids, he cut me off again.
Like I was selling double glazing!
Or I was a bleeding Jehovah’s Witness!
At that moment I acquired actual empathy with a friend from church who went out for a Christmas meal with a bunch of mums from her children’s school. She didn’t drink because when she’s indulging in extra calories she prefers to get them from food. The real reason doesn’t matter though. She’s a Christian. She didn’t drink, so obviously she’s judging their lifestyle. Now they don’t want to be her friends anymore.
Jerks.
Actually, they are just being people who are living in the culture we live in. That’s not an excuse for other people’s bad behaviour; it is a reminder that we kingdom of God people still have a lot of barriers to move out of the way when we go where the people are.
I’m pretty sure some of Callum’s neighbourhood friends are coming. I’ll let you know how it goes. I think it will be good.
26 May 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: children,
church,
community,
humans,
i61,
kingdom of god
More good Samaritan
Our news sheet was very personalised this week, thanks to Google Earth:
The pub where we meet is touching the y in the copyright notice. The town just of the right of the i61 is Conwy.
20 April 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: design,
i61
That's well neighbourly! - updated
This weekend our church is looking at the story of the good Samaritan. I want to rewrite it for my class of 10-13 year-olds and set it in high school. (For those of you outside the UK secondary education starts at age 11 here.) I found some interesting retellings laying around the internet: here (scroll down), here and here, but none of them are really what I need. How do you think I should update the cast?
Who are the attackers?
Who is the victim?
The priest?
The levite?
The Samaritan?
The innkeeper?
If all goes well, I shall put a working draft story online in a day or two for your further comments and sugestions.
Thanks!
UPDATE
I ended up not rewriting the story beforehand. Instead, I did it live as a mad lib with my class. They loved it. And they heard the story three times, once proper and twice silly. AND they all asked for a copy of their own. Here is their story with a little help from the TNIV:
Once a footballer slide tackled Jesus to test him. ‘Teacher,’ he asked, ‘what must I do to inherit fantastic life?’
‘What is written in the Law?’ he replied. ‘How do you read it?’
He answered, ‘‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’‘
‘You have answered Jeffly,’ Jesus replied. ‘Do this and you will live.’
But he wanted to sit himself, so he asked Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?’
In reply Jesus said: ‘Conor was going down from Tesco to i61, when he fell into the hands of terrorists. They stripped him of his table, karate chopped him and went away, leaving him half hairy. A referee happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side of the Aston Martin. So too, a fit, sporty girl when she came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side of the elephant. But a nerd, as he read, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on 7up and lemon juice Then he put the man on his own ferret, brought him to Jamaica and took care of him. The next day he took out two dollars and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will paint you for any extra expense you may have.’
‘Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the terrorists?’
The footballer replied, ‘The one who had mercy on him.’
Jesus told him, ‘Go and do likewise.’
20 April 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: children,
i61,
silly,
stories,
writing
In praise of small churches
There’s a lot of talk about the size of churches.
Some people go for massive – the more people in a mega-church, the more people that know Jesus, right?
Others think tiny house churches are best – how can you have community and reality in a giant battery farm of a church?
It seems like the cool way to be these days is multi-site with the pastor live in every location via satellite or speedy car trip across town.
There is probably nothing/a lot wrong with these ways of doing church. There’s always room for something different though
At our church we may have stumbled upon a Something Different. It’s new to me, at least.
The pub where we meet has room for about 125 people. On Sunday morning it’s full. We’ve done all the expanding we can without tearing the place down and starting over, so the only way to fit in more people was to add another meeting.
Hanging out together is a big part of what we do, so we weren’t interested in cramming another meeting into Sunday morning. Making time for family life is also a big part of what we do, so we didn’t want to add a Sunday night meeting. We decided to go with Saturday evening.
Two weeks in, it’s going very well.
One of the things we realised very quickly was that before too long i61 Saturday will develop its own personality. The meeting has different childrens’ workers and a different band. We’ve even talked about different speakers in the future.
In a year or so, there may be two i61 congregations of about 125 people meeting at the pub. Then what?
I think a strong case could be made for starting another main meeting on another day. 125 or thereabouts is a good number.
- It’s big enough to have life and energy.
- It’s big enough to feel like you are part of something.
- It’s small enough to know everyone. I read somewhere that people are able to know about 200 people. If 125 of them are at church, that leaves relationship space for a good number of people outside of your faith.
- It’s small enough to have a good ratio of leaders to people
- It’s small enough to allow a high proportion of people to be involved in ministering during the main meeting.
- It’s small enough to fit the scale of town and village life in North Wales
- It’s small enough to be easily replicable
- It’s small enough to be able to meet in almost any public venue.
Put enough Small Enoughs together and you can end up with something very big – a lot of people knowing Jesus.
I don’t think 125 is a magic number, but I think 100-200 is a good size for a human-sized (rather than institutional-sized) congregation.
I am really excited about where we are headed.
UPDATE Christine just said, ‘What about when we build our bigger building?’ (We have plans drawn up for one that will hold about 250-300 people, 500 with rows, but we don’t do rows – too formal.) I remember Doug Pagitt or one of those emerging guys saying that 300 was about the right size for their community. Get back to me in five years; I’ll probably write that 1,000 is the ideal size for a church like i61. [insert smiley]
1 April 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: church,
community,
i61
Dressing for church
(entering shop) You’ve got to help me!
Madame, that is what I am here to do. I am Walter J Wolf, king of Christian Couture. In what way may I be of assistance?
My friend invited me to church and I said yes and I’ve never been to church before and I don’t know what to wear or what to say and I’m going to make a total fool of myself.
A common fear, but one that need not overwhelm you, not once you have set foot in this shop. First of all, let’s think about your clothing –
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24 March 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: church,
drama,
i61,
silly
That Floor
2 years ago, Jeff was downstairs in his office graphically designing to his heart’s content. The little daughter was at playgroup and the son was at school and I was upstairs in the little daughter’s room scrubbing away at her floor which used to be shiny and white but had lately been a bit dingy and needing a new coat of paint…
So there I was, scrubbing-brush in hand, scrubbing at the floor with everything I had when… (dun-dun-dun) the phone rang (which is more of a brrrrrrrrrng than a dun-dun-dun really, though a dun-dun-dun phone would really be kinda cool dontcha think?)
Jeff is the phone answering person in our house and so Jeff answered the phone.
He paced the living room (because Jeff has a hard time praying or talking on the phone without pacing) and I kept hearing him saying “o-o-okay!” not with a nervous stammer but with his happy stammer, he doesn’t really have a stammer but it was a bit like “o-o-okay” and I have a hard time describing it any differently than that.
He was happy. We hadn’t been very happy in the past couple of weeks, our dreams of doing church in a different way, in a way that people who didn’t like church could connect with… we felt those dreams had been taken away from us… but we really felt that those dreams we had for a new way of doing it – were from God.
But Jeff sounded happy on the phone and I was dying to hear the other side of the conversation.
I went downstairs “Jeff, who is it?”, I mouthed at him, as sharply as mouthing would allow me to.
He mouthed back “Steve” and turned to pace the other way.
Steve and Gill were a couple at our church who we had always thought would be our pastors. They had connected with us as no one had before, they had shared with the church a vision that we were just so sure was from God for a way of doing church that was just not terrifying to people who were coming through those church doors for the first time. We had thought they were going to be our pastors… but some people didn’t agree that they were right for the church that we were in… The dream was… over?
Well, I wasn’t getting any hints from Jeff as to what this phone call was about (other than it was something exciting), so I went back upstairs and resumed my work of getting that floor ready for a coat of paint.
He FINALLY got off the dang phone and I swear was up those stairs in 3 strides.
“We are starting a church… in a pub”
We jumped. Up and Down. On that floor.
i61 was born a few weeks later. Our first meeting was on Easter Sunday 2006 and… It’s now Easter 2008, and that floor still hasn’t been painted. It’s been a busy 2 years. But so SO worth it.
More fun than anything. Happy Happy Easter!
23 March 2008 Christine Gill
tags: i61,
stories
Jeff at his best
I made a video for our church meeting morning. The theme of today’s meeting was you at your best. Here I am at my best, or something.
17 February 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: i61,
silly,
video
It's the most covetous time of the year
The thing about Christmas is that it is so easy and fun to poke holes in our own greed. That is the point of this video which we showed at our church yesterday. The production values are not fantastic, but it’s not so bad for a little video camera and iMovie.
In case you are wondering…
- that is the whole Gill family
- the music ( Amy Grant and Stereophonics ) is supposed to go messed up like that
- the logo at the end is a spoof of British electrical retailer Comet
26 November 2007 Jeff Gill
tags: covet,
holidays,
i61,
video