The Morgan-Gurrs

We’ve temporarily taken twitter off the blog, but hope to have it back on very soon. In the meantime, if you want to see our twitters, just open a twitter account and request to follow us: kaymorgangurr  or stevemorgangurr

There is a little more news we haven’t got around to telling our blog followers……

Kay has taken on two other voluntary roles, using her other skills in working with those who have special needs.

Children Worldwide is now an associate with Churches for All, and Kay will be attending their partner’s meetings as a specialist in working with children who have special needs. Take a look at their website by clicking on their name, and also at the enabling church conference, advertised on the page or down load the flier here. Kay is one of the speakers.

Spring Harvest approached Kay a while ago to be their advisor on disability and special needs. She said yes and this is now official! The biggest problem with this role is tying up diaries for meetings as we’re all very busy.

Keep checking the twitters……

In the busy time of preparing and doing camps, we seem to have forgotten to update the blog……again!

The camps were great! Week one of Hungarton went very smoothly. We were taking the morning sessions, and Steve was helping with the music in the evening sessions too. Kay was also doing her usual health and safety role as well as being nurse and dishing out the daily medications and bandaging up our very few injured campers.

For the morning meetings, we were looking at the Hebrew names of God. The meetings were lively and fun with a hands on application at the end to help the children to put into action something of what they had learnt.

On week two, we had very different roles – and were there to serve the rest of the team. Kay was once again the nurse and was kept busy with a few rope swing accidents, but was also the technical person running the sound and audio visual desks, and one of the photographers for the week.

Steve was kept busy in lots of ways, and eventually led the worship in the evening meetings.

The picture is of our home for the two weeks of Hungarton camp……. (Later I’ll put a slide show of some of the photos we’re allowed to put on line from camp…..)

From Hungarton we went down to the Children’s camp at Dalesdown, not to lead, but just to be an encouragement to the team. It was a brilliant camp – and Steve got to dress up as a gorilla to collect a ransom for a kidnapped leader of camp! It was great to catch up with campers that we have built a good relationship with over the years and to see how much they have grown in many areas of their lives. Steve also led a guitar teaching session for the campers during one of their rotational activity afternoons. Many thanks to the lovely Sarah Covington for leading the camp, and to the other amazing leaders who worked so hard over all three weeks.

This was the third week of the camps there – all of which appear to have been a success (Especially judging by the facebook entries of the campers – who were all very enthusiastic!!) Many thanks to Carl Smith and Nigel Thomas for leading Teens plus – their last year for leading this camp. Ellie and Luke will be taking over for next year. Also Thanks to Paul Davis and Jo Sharp for leading the teens week – hard work but worth it!

We had a good time on Sunday morning at Sheddingdean Baptist church leading their all age service and celebrating their 11th anniversary with them. The service was followed by a church lunch – a notable affair due to a lack of quiche! Strangely, the meal was over quite quickly as folk, for some reason, wanted to get back home to watch some sporting thing on the telly….. not sure what that was, or if it was worth it…….!

Monday was a day of meetings, but we did manage an hour sitting on the beach between meetings!

Thankfully we are now based back in Leicester for a while – with a few visitors and visits to other places dotted around.

In the next few weeks we’ll be finalising our teaching for camp, finishing a couple of writing projects and updating some documentation for various people we work with, as well as attending/helping with training for camps and planning for various other activities  over the summer.

Since our last update we have been up and down the motorway to the south like a yo-yo!

It started with an all age service at our favourite local C of E church – St. Luke’s. This was a last minute booking, but we had a small gap and were more than happy to oblige. After a gobbled lunch we headed down south for a Dalesdown camps planning meeting on the Monday, squeezing in another meeting whilst we were down there. The following Friday we were back again, this time at Pilgrim Hall for a church weekend with Holy Trinity from Tulse Hill. This was both challenging and enjoyable, and we thoroughly enjoyed working with a team of our Children Worldwide friends.

Then on the following Thursday we were back again – this time for meetings, and the fund raising weekend at Dalesdown. On Friday night we had the wonderful Jonathan Veira doing his one man show, and a great time was had by all whilst raising money for our new sports hall. On Saturday, Dalesdown was opened up for a free family fun day. Well over a thousand people came through the doors over the course of the day. There were tons of activities to do and lots of fattening foods to eat, again – all in the name of raising money for the new sports hall.

On Saturday we’ll be back again – doing an all age service at Sheddingdean Baptist Church on the Sunday Morning, helping them to celebrate their 11th anniversary, and then staying on for more meetings on Monday. But before that, we have a Children Worldwide management meeting in Birmingham on Thursday.

Sorry if you have been ‘badgered’ for a username and password when you came to visit the blog! This was due to Kay protecting her tweets. Some rather unsavoury people were trying to follow her on twitter and she was getting a little fed up of them. She hadn’t thought that it would stop the people she wants to see her twitters being able to.
All back to normal now!

Or should that be thankyou God for home groups?!

We’ve had three Sundays away from our home church, and will be away for a further three before we make it back. Thankfully we have been able to make our home group meetings. (Looking at Missional Church – click here to see a youtube clip on what that is!)

Please pray for us during these weeks, that we remain ‘fed’ and refreshed spiritually as we give out to those we minister to.

At the end of May we attended the Children Matter Forum: Leaders from organisations who work nationally with children getting together to discuss many things to do with children.

Ian White Spoke, using the theme of being “Exiles on Main Street”, starting by getting us to discuss “In your own experience, what has been changing in and around The Church to place it in exile” and “Is God putting us into exile, and if so, is He putting us there for a reason?”

Not everyone agreed that the church was in exile –  more that Church, having been firmly embedded in the local community is no longer embedded. So…. it was a lively discussion.

These thoughts formed the basis of the rest of the sessions.

Some of the Things I wrote down:

For the Jews, Exile became a place of renewal. It evoked (8th Century BC):
Brilliant Wisdom Literature
Renewed Faith
Closer Community
Commitment to Scripture

Q: What if The Church (Ie:Us) is in exile during all of our life times? How will that feel and what would it mean to our ministries?

Q: What hope of renewal (especially in our shared concerns) can we see, that is not just wishful thinking (or loud shouting!), but is truly re-thinking, re-imaging and re-describing a larger reality? (That one made me think!)

The Church of England Going for Growth document. One Quote from it:

1.9 If, instead of trying to teach good news to children (and young people), the Church tries to become good news, it will need such fresh eyes to see itself. Such a church would need the confidence to deal with questions rather than always having to find the answers. It would be prepared to surrender its life and lets its institutions be transformed. The sadness is that churches rarely have the confidence which enables them to face the questions theology may ask of them, especially in the devastating directness such questions may take on in the mouth of a child (or young person).

Churches lack the humility to face the truth about the quality of their life and worship and to set about addressing the needs which are then identified. A church which welcomes children (and young people), accepts their gifts and ministries, meets their needs, advocates justice, seeks new life, challenges evil with love and truth, and continues to learn the values of the Kingdom by living them, is a Church which is good news not only for its members but for the world.

There’s much more to post, but it’ll make this blog update far too long! So I’ll post some more of the nuggets and challenges from time to time in the future.

We really do need to update the blog more! But if you’re following our twitter updates, you should get the feel of what we have been up to in the last few weeks.

The assemblies this term were a continuation of the story of Elisha – this time the part where Gehazi follows Naaman and asks for the money Elisha refused. Once again the children listened in amazed silence, and loved Stilton the rat’s thoughts on being honest. We’re looking at continuing with the story of the floating axe head……. but what would God want to say to the kids through it? Never lend your tools to a theology student?! Thankfully we have the whole summer to think it though.

If you live in the Leicester area, and have contacts with a school – why not suggest they give us a call and book us for an assembly? We’re always happy to add more schools to those we already visit.

Last weekend we joined Hill Cliffe Baptist Church from Warrington, on their church weekend at Cloverly Hall. We had 9 of their delightful children for three sessions, and did a short family praise party for them too. We were warmly welcomed and felt at home with them instantly!

We did three Hebrew names for God with the Children: Jehovah Jireh, Jehovah Nissi and Jehovah Shalom. We used the Bible stories associated with these names to teach about God’s Provision, Protection and Peace (Having all three begin with P was pure accident!) We also did prayer activities around each theme to help anchor what we had been learning. It was very obvious that the children understood the teaching and were starting to put into action what they had learnt.

We had some time just playing too – especially with lego!