Build Your Kingdom Here Prayer

One of my favourite worship songs at the moment is Build Your Kingdom Here by Rend Collective experiment.

I think the lyrics are powerful, true and a real challenge to us as the Church both collectively and locally. When I heard it first at YWS11 it really encapsulated my vision for the local youth project I am trying to get going and my prayer at the time for that area, particularly this verse

Build Your kingdom here
Let the darkness fear
Show Your mighty hand
Heal our streets and land
Set Your church on fire
Win this nation back
Change the atmosphere
Build Your kingdom here

The following is a prayer I put together by rearranging the lyrics of this song in a way that allowed a group of people say them together in prayer. I have not used all of the lyrics, as I was trying to focus the prayer specifically to the context I was going to use it, whilst hopefully keeping what originally caught me about the lyrics.

Set Your rule and reign In our hearts
Increase in us we pray.

Like wildfire in our very souls,
Holy Spirit come invade us now
We are Your Church
We need Your power in us.

We seek Your kingdom first
We hunger and we thirst
For You are our joy.

To see the captive hearts released,
The hurt; the sick and the poor at peace
Come set our hearts ablaze with hope

Build Your kingdom here
Let the darkness fear
Show Your mighty hand
Heal our streets and land
Win this nation back
Change the atmosphere

Unleash Your kingdom’s power, reaching near and far
No force of hell can stop Your beauty changing hearts

Fill us with the strength and love of Christ

We are Your church

We pray revive

Adapted from the lyrics of ‘Build Your Kingdom Here’ by Rend Collective Experiment

YWS a further reflection

Recently I’ve been doing my best to encourage anyone I know to come to Youthwork Summit 2012. Email, conversations, printing ‘45 reasons‘ and posting them up around the office & leaving programmes conspicuously on peoples desks.

Whilst doing that I have been reflecting on why I loved last years summit so much.

Last year I was in a place where I knew I needed to get back into ‘christian’ youth work of some kind – having worked in a secular setting for previous 2 years. Whilst looking for jobs I felt I needed something to help prepare me. I read a lot about #YWS11 amongst the various youth workers I follow on Twitter and decided to travel up to Manchester.

One of the things I have always found about youth work is how isolated I’ve felt. I think its partly the nature of our work and partly the nature of where I live – there just aren’t many other youth workers around. But at Youthwork Summit I found a huge sense of solidarity and oneness. A sense that I was with a group of people that understood what I did, that understood the struggles and the joys. There was teaching that engaged with the things I get excited about. Worship that enabled me to actually worship wholeheartedly in a way I had not for ages. In a sense it felt like church, or rather how church should be.

Since the summit and back on Twitter I’ve now found even more youth workers to follow, and in doing so the same sense of solidarity. I’ve no idea whether all the other youth workers on Twitter know each other offline, but in some of these conversations online that I’ve had, and I’ve overread of others, there is a sense of community amongst like minded individuals and support for each other.

One of the many things I took away from the summit was a challenge about online identity reflecting your real self (I can’t do the talk justice here so watch the video if you were not there [Youtube]). But what I have realised is that in many ways Youthwork Summit was a reflection of the community on Twitter. Or the people I met and sense of solidarity I felt at YWS11 is closely reflected by the conversations that continue online.

Maybe last years summit just came at the right time for me having been made redundant and in a church that felt like it was in meltdown I needed people but I also needed to get away. A few months on, I’m in a much better place than I was, and perhaps YWS12 won’t mean quite as much. But I don’t think so. At the beginning of the term we had a team quiet day, and it was great to be given permission to stop, to pray, to reflect and to read. And I can’t wait for 18/19th for another chance to stop, to hear teaching relevant to me, to worship and pray, to reflect and talk. And to do that with my brothers and sisters.

YWS11 Postscript

An awesome postscript to youth work Summit 2011; http://dayinthelife-juliadj.blogspot.com/2011/10/it-all-comes-from-here.html

YWS11

This weekend I went up to Manchester for Youth Work Summit 2011, in summary it was amazing. To read a bit more about the summit, and what it was about read this post http://www.easyrew.com/yws11/ , which just about sums it all up nicely [although I didn't attend the retreat day]. The liturgy / poem that is reproduced there, and spoken collectively encapsulates so much of what it means to be a Christian youth worker.

I have been reflecting on what I think made the summit work, and I think there are three things that made it such a successful day.

1. The passion, commitment and enthusiasm of the summit leadership team, and the speakers was evident throughout the day [and at the YWSFunHouse].
2. It was also evident that the organisers have an excellent cultural awareness of those attending the summit. Presumably because they too are youth workers. This led to them including numerous elements that were so appropriate, they made attendees feel so at home and a part of all that was going on, making the day so enjoyable. this was shown most evidently through the mix of humour and seriousness that flowed throughout the day.
3. Attention to detail. Informed by the cultural awareness, there was such attention to detail at so many levels its impossible to describe.

But most of all God was clearly at work and speaking through what was said and going on.

There was so much to take in through out the day that it is hard to process it all, so I eagerly await videos of the various talks being uploaded so that I can go through each one once again and full absorb all of the excellent teaching. [And will no doubt blog about those, more for my benefit than for anyone else.]

If you are a youth worker and did not go, then make sure you keep 19th May 2012 clear for the 2012 Youth Work Summit. As a sample this is how YWS11 started…

And this is how the day ended…