A TIME TO SHINE - A call to pray for our communities and the Nations
The flame will be lit in Greece on 10 May and travel on board a special gold-liveried aircraft to Cornwall ahead of the Torch Relay, which starts on 19 May. The flame will first have been taken on an 8 day relay around Greece before arriving at the Panathenaic Stadium in Athens on 17 May for the official Olympic Flame Handover Ceremony. Read More
More Than Gold's latest edition of e-news 'On Track' (No 10) is now available:
featuring:
Who in your church could be a Games Pastor?
Welcome an amazing New Year with prayer
Launch More Than Gold through sporty shoeboxes
Free guide helps churches stage big events
News in brief
Prayer points
Click on this link
Get Set Tour: Saturday 17 March 2012, Emmanuel College, Gateshead NE11 0AN
This is training that will be useful beyond the Olympics in engaging with community in all sorts of ways.
Please book as soon as possible and if you can let me know who is coming, so we can work better if we know numbers. Trainers are coming from all over the country and from all Christian organsiations.
One Get Set Tour has happened already in the south and it has had excellent reviews.
Click to download the Poster and Workshop details as a PDF
Games Pastors:
We are nearly in Olympic year and planning goes ahead for the churches’ involvement in the Games. One critical and major element of that is the provision of over 1000 Games Pastors to cover major airports, rail stations and critical pedestrian corridors. Conceptually, Games Pastors are based on the Street Pastor/Street Angel model and will operate in pairs with proper support and supervision. There will be a one day training for ALL Games Pastors and the dates for games pastors training in the North East are as follows:
17 March Newcastle 24 March Barnsley 31st March Bolton
We are hoping that some Chaplains will want to offer their expertise and be involved in this role but also and perhaps especially, I would be grateful if you could encourage as many people as you can to get involved from your own local networks. It is not just about being involved in the Olympics, it is also about capacity building – so potentially having several hundred people who have done the training and had the experience – will be a huge resource for the church locally. Please do whatever you can.
Click to download the Games Pastors Poster as a PDF
Holy Biscuit wins cultural approval from Olympic organisers
The London 2012 Organising Committee has given the go-ahead for a community arts project linked to the Methodist Church to feature as part of the Cultural Olympiad.
LOCOG awarded an Inspire Mark – its official seal of approval – to the Outside/In project, which will see young people and adults from different parts of Newcastle telling stories about themselves, their history, culture and communities through art.
The artists’ work will feature as four exhibitions at The Holy Biscuit from March through to July 2012. The Holy Biscuit (formerly Shieldfield Methodist Church) is a community arts space partnered with The Methodist Church and The Biscuit Factory – an independent art gallery in Newcastle upon Tyne.
Ish Lennox, Olympic and Paralympic Games Coordinator for the Methodist Church, said: “It’s fantastic that a Methodist project has won an Inspire Mark. We are completely committed to engaging with the Cultural Olympiad. Methodist Christian Discipleship is life-long and whole life. Arts and culture is a vibrant and essential part of that wholeness. Being awarded an Inspire Mark from LOCOG is a great achievement.”
The Outside/In project will showcase as four exhibitions:
The “St James Drama Project” is a one-day exhibition of a film produced and acted by children from St John's School, Benwell, Newcastle, based on the lives of people buried in the graveyard of St James Church.
“Images of our Newcastle” will be a week-long community exhibition, organised by The Holy Biscuit, of photographs taken by school children and Newcastle-based street photographers documenting day-to-day life in Shieldfield, Newcastle.
“Togetherness” will also be a week-long exhibition involving film footage and photographs of a large (temporary) sculpture made up of wooden blocks created by service-users and students from the Percy Hedley Foundation and the local community.
“Playtoon” is an exhibition of photography, video, maps and the written word representing street cultures, specifically skateboarding, BMXing and free-running. The week-long exhibition will be organised by the School of Built and Natural Environment, Northumbria University.
Latest Games News via the Methodist Church: Click Here
Torch Relay Route through our region: Click here;