Witchalls.co.uk is the website of Alan, Kirsten and Joshua Witchalls. Alan is a Christian youth pastor in the UK, Kirsten is a full time mum and careers advisor, and a Joshua is a growing young boy.
Did you know...?
Alan has seen Dave Bilbrough stage dive and crowd surf. It was at a Delirious? concert back in the late nineties.
This carefully worded and wonderfully illustrated book is quite possibly the best children's story Bible I have come across.
The Big Picture Story Book Bible is not a children's translation (unlike Bible such as the International Children's Bible), it is more like a children's story book of biblical theology than a version of biblical text - and herein lies it's phenominal strength. Rather than getting bogged down in the detail of the individual narratives, The Big Picture Story Book Bible keeps the detail pointing us to Jesus.
For example, the life of David focuses on God's promise given to David of a forever King (from 2 Samuel 7). The story goes on to show how God's promise to David points us to Jesus, and how David is looking forward to the day when God keeps his promise to send this Forever King.
For me (and for my son, Joshua), the highlight of The Big Picture Story Book Bible is when Jesus has risen and opens up the Scriptures to his disciples so that they could see how the whole Bible points us to Jesus the promised forever King. There is a page which ties up the various key images of Jesus in Scripture: Jesus the serpent crusher, Jesus the perfect sacrifice, Jesus the promised King, Jesus born as a man, Jesus who died on a cross, and Jesus the risen forever King. It is a simple yet fantastic way of showing children how the whole of Scriputre fits together. It also provides parents with a really simple creed-like way of teaching them who Jesus is and what he has done.
This, for me, is what makes The Big Picture Story Book Bible so great. It has simple and easily understandable text, wonderful illustrations, and a transparently clear Bibical theology that could teach some authors of adult books a thing or two!
If you have children between the ages of 1-4 years old, the The Big Picture Story Book Bible is a must have story book Bible to use with your children each and every day.
I remember the first time I was old enought to vote. I walked into the polling station and crossed the boxes of the candidates I had decided deserved my vote, folded the paper and put it into the big black box.
Every time I look back on that day, I shudder and apologies to God for taking my responsibility as a citizen of England and the UK so lightly. The total time spent researching the policies of each party and candidate: nil. The number of debates, TV news reports or newspaper articles read on the various key voting areas: none. The number of foolish and unwise votes cast by me: 2.
Thankfully, the Christian Institute is an excellent organisation which is committed to helping Christians in the area of government and politics. One of the most valuable and beneficial resources they produce is a briefing paper for General Elections. There 2010 briefing paper is now available online.
If, like me, you want to avoid casting a poorly thought through vote in this coming General Election, then I would encourage you to spend about 5 minutes reading this briefing paper to get a better understanding of each party and be better equipped to vote wisely.
In January, the PCC (church eldership) made a decision which puts us in a really difficult and quite stressful situation (for people who are members of Christ Church, the details of the decision were in a PCC paper that was made available to the church family at the PrayerWorks meeting in February).
Recently, the Children's Worker at Christ Church made the decision to leave her position in order to spend time working as a teacher. The culture of youth and children’s ministry in the UK at the present time means that for many there is a bit of a ‘glass ceiling’ which means that it is often wise to have a secondary career to fall back on. In order for her to be able to fall back on teaching, it was right that she spent some time maintaining her experience in that particular field. Hence, her decision to leave. Please pray for her, both for her work and witness in teaching but also that she might be able to return to vocational children’s ministry soon (good people in children’s work are often hard to find!).
As part of a wider vision of Christ Church, the PCC made the decision at the January meeting to make my post of Youth Pastor and the post of Children’s Worker redundant with effect from the end of August this year, and to create a new position of Associate Minister for Children, Youth and Families. The new position will be advertised shortly in various Christian publications, etc. As the current Youth Pastor, I was free to apply for this new position and to have my application considered with other applicants. After much prayer and consideration, I have decided to not apply for the new position and am therefore currently looking for work as a youth pastor or associate pastor in another church.
As I'm sure you can imagine, a decision like this is a massive one. I'm also sure that the PCC of Christ Church would value your prayers, particularly that God would help them to continue to seek his will and wisdom as they work out this decision. For us, the impact of this decision on our future means that last few months have been a very difficult time for us, especially as we are expecting our second child to be born in mid August. Although we are both really happy that we will soon add another blessing to the family, the prospect of having a baby and then moving two weeks later is not that much of an attractive proposition at the moment!
Therefore, we would really appreciate people praying for the following:
Pray that we would seek God's will and be fully dependent on him in this situation.
Pray for wisdom in how to finish well at Christ Church.
Pray that God would provide a place to live, safety and security for my family, and a new position in which I can serve him from September.
Pray for wisdom as we think through the various possibilities that God brings before us.
Over the past few weeks our 11-14s youth group have been voting for a Tune Of The Term. This is where each week for three weeks we play a song by a Christian artist with the lyrics on screen and then the members get to vote for which is their favourite song. The perk for the members is that one person from the votes taken for each song gets to win that song on MP3 CD.
The song that the members picked as their Tune Of The Term was a song by Beckah Shae called Here in this moment. The chorus goes like this...
You are Love, you are life, you’re the air that I breathe, you’re my day and my night. You’re my joy, you’re my peace, you’re the wings for my flight and vision to my sight. You are truth, you are power, gave me faith to believe, brought me straight to my knees. Now I’m standing here in this moment with you, there’s nowhere I’d rather be.
I think it is such a great blessing to have great Christian music that is well written but also in a style that fits with our culture and produced to such a high standard.
Q: What connects the Brand New Heavies with Jesus? A: Apparently nothing.
Apparently Nothing was a single released in 1999 by the funk acid jazz group, The Brand New Heavies.
"What has this got to do with Jesus?" I hear you ask. Let's take a look at Romans 8:37-39...
In all these things [various hardships] we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:37-39
Well known and often quoted as favourite verses in the Bible, this bit of Romans take us plumeting through the very fabric of our universe in search of anything that can keep us from the love of God in Jesus. Starting with the sheer absolute certainty of life and death we descend rapidly into the heavenly realms of angels and forces of evil. From there we traverse the space-time continuum as we consider the areas of time, phyical laws and geographical expanses. Last of all, we're left only with a quick run through every species of animal, every type of plant, every object and created thing there has ever or will ever be.
What can keep us from the love of God in Jesus Christ?
on Amazon.co.uk.
You are Love, you are life,
