SAFE are a great bunch of people based in Southampton that work out their faith in Jesus by helping people with self esteem issues to transform their lives. Self esteem can be crippling for people. It can cause long term unemployment, depression and relationship breakdowns. SAFE have developed a course called Choices which works. Not only that, but their way of working is to train churches to use the course in their locality to bring transformation and relationships.

Damaris produce great resources to help you and your friends use media and culture to think about God. They have recently been commissioned by Disney to produce resources for schools and churches to use. These are available free of charge. Take a look here for more information.

I was really encouraged by my friend Tom today. He is a good friend who lives and works in the Shirley Warren estate. He used to be in the youth group I helped run but now I think he teaches me more than I teach him. I'm happy to be able to say that. That's what I call church.

Enjoy a 24/7 prayer room? There's one in Southampton next week. It's at Orchard Lane church building starting tomorrow.

All the details here.

There is a growing group of people involved in praying for Southampton in this way. You can find out more information by visiting this website or this Facebook group.

Schoolswork.co.uk have organised a set of training days around the country looking at the area of story telling. Looks really useful. As their blurb says:

I love the way Jesus taught about seeds. He taught about them but he also lived the same way. He seemed happy to drop a thought into someone's head and then leave them with it. Or to act kindly towards someone and let them think about what it meant. He trusted that his Father would use the seeds.

I was talking to my friend Dave Thorpe yesterday. He works with young people mainly using drama to help them explore issues such as drugs and bullying.

I'm pretty interested right now in the question "are we doing it right?". The it would be the church, the we would range from me to the West (I know I can't be church on my own, but I am part of it).

That has sparked off lots of other questions in me: what is it, who is it? That kind of thing.

I heard some talks by a bloke called Mike Frost on the recommendation of some friends and talked about it here. Well, he is coming to Southampton in October 2008 to do some sessions to help us think more about church and what it's all about really.

Find out more by going here. Do it soon, as you need to book and its cheaper to do it sooner rather than later.

If you want more samples, try these videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77ndCFSv47g

Tommy I and me (I know that's incorrect grammer, but you can say "Tommy I and I really can you) went into Millbrook School today to do a bible study with some of the students we met doing our lunch clubs on Mondays.

On Mondays, we do a little talk about Jesus and then play some games and chat with them. People have been asking loads of questions recently so we thought we would try something more. Plus, we figured that even if no one else turned up we would still read the bible together which can only be a good thing.

Lessons learnt:

On Saturday evening just gone, we spent a great evening with the 5 teenagers who are part of Freemantle Baptist Church. I reckon I'm still the best at ten pin bowling on the Wii, but I had to concede my performance on the dance mat could possibly do with a little work.

We are really hoping that this can be the start of working with teenagers in our area. It would be great to be able to link up with some of the other churches in the area and see what can happen.