Listening to the stones

Spill the Beans

The new Spill the Beans material for the first half of Pentecost is now ready and can be purchased from the Spill the Beans website.

This is resource material, both worship and age-group learning for churches, written by a group of ministers and leaders in the Church, all from Scotland and New Kilpatrick is part of that team. It has ended up being used round the world in NZ, Australia, the UK asnd the US and Canada. Who'd have ever thought...

Anyway, there is a free sample on the Spill the Beans website. Go visit and see what's new.

Spill the Beans

Spill the Beans if a collective of worship and education leaders in local congregations (including New Kilpatrick) across west central Scotland and some further afield who get together to write material for thier own congregations: worship, stories and Sunday School. It is published four times a year and costs just £12 per congregation. You can copy it as often as you like, you only need to purchase it once.

It is the material we base our worship on, our Sunday School uses and our JF in New Kilpatrick.

Inside you will find worship ideas and resources, including Bible notes, stories, prayers, reflections, music suggestions, and more, and for age groups you will find suggestions for activities, crafts, games and teen discussion resources.

If you have already used Spill the Beans, you will know what a great resource this is, created by folks here in Scotland. If you haven't, but are intrigued, have a look at this sample

If you'd like to download a full copy of Issue 6 for use in your church or personally, then click the button below. It is a positive steal at only £12. You can make a secure payment via PayPal and then the file should wing its way to you.

If you are visiting from further afield and would like to find out more go to the Spill the Beans website here and download a free copy and see what is offered every week.

 

Liturgy

Normally on a Friday I offer something here that will appear in Sunday's worship to give a wee hint of things to come but we have a family communion service on Sunday and it is a very simple service. While the liturgy is freshly written there is nothing in it that needs publicising. And the biig idea that it hangs on is noyt one I want to tell everyone yet. Come along and see. And if you can't be there becasue you are somewhere else then log in later on Sunday/Monday and see some photos. It's not the most original idea but brings together all the names we've put into the boats over the last few weeks, recording our names as disciples and finding the boat jibing across the seas of the world...

On another note, however Spill the Beans Lent/Easter has been published and available here. It's the biggest yet. So if you would like to use material for worship and Sunday School with a Scottish flavour, written by real people who lead worship and sunday schools regularly then jump over to Spill the Beans and give it a shot. If you are a Sunday School teacher in NK then you're edition is already on it's way to you.

Spill the Beans

We have a guest preacher this week as we've had our quinquennial visitation from the presbytery where we can celebrate all that we are and hope to be by telling the congregation's story so far and where we imagine we might go in the future. So I haven't written much stuff this week.

However, the group of us who writes Spill the beans met today to start focusing on Pentecost material. We started in the Coffee Pot which was fabulous: all that good coffee and home baking the congregation provides every Friday for the whole community. If you haven't been before, get there next week. (There was such a buzz about the place again today with three or four different groups or activities in the halls. It was a great place to be).

The theory of Spill the Beans is simple: tell the story. Have you ever considered how difficult that can be? We're going to go with the David ark over the summer months, but what a gruesome tale it is. There's more blood letting, decapitation and  slaughtering than we'd allow in any typical children's storybook. And yes, I know the bible isn't a children's story. I agree but we have these stories we've been brought up on like Goliath etc yet we just don't remember them the way they are in the Bible.

And then the lovely people who put the lectionary together keep missing bits out which seem really important.

So we have a plan which I'm not going to spill the beans on yet but just watch this space. Lots to do for that which a different format because it is summer and things often go into a different shape, but the story will be set loose and spill will spill the beans on the stories we have been brought up with once more...