Baptist Assembly. Jammin and Amy Orr-Ewing. Sweet.
BA is held every year in various places around the UK. This year it was held in sunny Plymouth. As far as i know (not being a baptist myself) BA seems to be a place where mainly baptist leaders gather for training, teaching, drinking (baptists like thier drink) and general gathering. It was awesome. And similarly to Spring Harvest there was a children’s programme and a young people’s programme, Check It Out headed up the young people’s programme called “Innovation” with the help of three guys from BMS, the baptist missionary society… or something along those lines!
From friday night to monday morning we had 6 meetings overall,1 the first day, 2 the next 2 days and then 1 last session on the monday. I led a small group of 7 teenagers all around 15 years old, and i found that i got really close to them over the weekend as i got to know them. I was helped by one of the BMS guys, a girl called Ellaine (and i remembered her name thanks to Northen Exposure…) She was very on the ball and dealt well with leading by heself as i was mostly on stage or back stage or some other obscure place doing something for the programmes!
The theme for Innovation was “fit for life”, and every day there was a drama sketch where a personal trainer played by Laura named Tina, would help Steve, my character, train to run a marathon. The Sketches were improvised and usually to great comedic effect. haha in normal english they were hilarious. t turned out Steve was running a marathon to raise money for a pigeon life saving machine that Panasonic had recently released. He wanted to get one in his local vet… So we compared life to a marathon and had subsequent talks that reflected this theme. I did a talk on the saturday morning based on the title i was given “playing as a team”. I decided that i couldnt relate to running, but i could talk about working out in a gym, which had alot of parallels to running so i got away with it!
Proverbs 27 verse 17. That was my point. “as Iron sharpens Iron, so one man sharpens another”. I talked about how i would never have been able to do as much working out without my gym buddy, Simon there. I made three points.
He was my spotter – he made sure i wasnt hurting myself due to bad technique, then said how as a christian Simon would “spot” me, tell me where i was going wrong and hurting myself and others around me.
He was my encourager – if i failed a set he would take the weight so i could start again and not be crushed by the weights. As a christian Simon got me through tough situations by taking the weight of my failure and helping me to stat again.
He was my motivator. He made sure i got all 8 reps out everytime. When i felt as though i couldnt keep going he would push me to get another rep out, and then another and then another. As a christian he helped me on those days i didnt want to be a christian, he pushed me through the times when it hurt and i thought i couldnt go on.
I said to them that by yourself, you will find this race very hard to run. As iron sharpens iron, so one person will sharpen another. if you run with a friend, you will find it much easier, you can run faster and further.
Jammin: a game that involves 3-4 hoops on a line strung across a room, a team either side (one called pants, the other called socks) with everyone sitting with “both cheeks on the floor” and ALOT of inflatables. the objective is to get as many inflatables through the hoops in the given time. The game has an awesome soundtrack too. amazing!
So… amy who? you might ask. A few months ago now i brought up a question about the bible, and was asking around if anybody had any thoughts on the matter. It was when I asked Rich Powney ( a guy who works for More to Life, the adult ministry – very cool guy ) that he suggested I read “why trust the bible?” by Amy Orr-Ewing. So i did, and i absolutely loved her approach. The way she titled the book says it all really, why trust the bible… question mark. This is not a statement, why trust the bible. She acknowledges that this is a question that must be adressed in a credible way. And that is exactly what she does. The reason I love this approach is not because it proves anything, because it doesnt really, i was left with more questions than i had before i started the book! But it is brilliant because it states that this is something that can be discussed, grappled with and that before anybody says anything casually to undermine the bible… they should think very serioulsy about the reason behind the statement they are making.
Oh yea, and she was at this festival. I was VERY excited. and even better, she stayed in the same hotel as us! there she was having breakfast not 2 meters away from me 
haha. didnt get a chance to speak to her. But i did go to her lecture on New Atheism, which was cool. Anyway. yea. thats who Amy is, an awesome appologist.
Thats it folks
Ben
