the great escape

The whole of this week we run a Holiday Club.

It's always brilliant! Masses of children, an amazing team of folk spanning absolutely all ages: and enormous fun.

We've run one over the Easter Holidays here for donkeys' years now and I wouldn't miss it for anything.

140 primary school age children, many of whom have little real exposure in any other way to the message of the Bible. And every morning here, for a week, they get a feel for what it's all about.

This year the them of the Club is 'The Great Escape'. Exploring the story of Moses.

Most of my days during Holiday Club weeks are spent in connection with this. We figured out a year or two back that perhaps the best way to get parents along and to share with them, too, what we're telling the children about, is to have a DVD evening.

That is, we make a DVD of the Holiday Club as it happens through the week: and then give away a copy of the DVD to every home on the Thursday night.

Which sounds simple, but is really quite a deadline to be working to. Given that there's not a lot that we can do before! By definition.

So the mornings are more than occupied with filming the different aspects of the Club.

Trying to make sure that all the different age groups are included on the footage that I get. Which involves a fair bit of planning and organisational skill. It also means I get to be among the different children quite a bit. A chance to chat and laugh. And meet their parents, too.

The rest of the day's involved in 'capturing' the relevant clips on the Mac (about an hour's worth of footage a day): then starting to edit it all and piece the thing together.

It's an early start (most mornings I need to be up and out and at it by 5am) and a late finish. A four day blitz of burning through the candles at both ends!

But it's worth it in the end. Effectively we get to preach the gospel in a hundred different homes. In a form which ensures that these people are able to hear.

Of course, life goes on as normal, too! There are still the coming Sunday services to be prepared. Still the different people I must see. In hospitals and homes.

But most of the day I'm here. Working away at the Club and preparing this DVD. It's a kind of sermon of a sort, I guess. It's just you wouldn't ever recognise it quite like that!

I know it takes time. But if that time thus spent enables someone, even one, to find the sort of freedom that God wants us all to know ... well, as I say, it's got to be more than worth it.

The great escape!