Holiday Club (4)

Day 4 and the thing is in full swing.

The children all know the routine. They're enjoying the new friends they've made.

Marie, who's fronting it all this year, and who's absolutely brilliant .. she makes a point of underlining just how important these friendships are. Friendship with Jesus, too.

"Make sure you follow your leader" - these are always her parting words to the children as they leave the first of the everyone-in-it-together worship times and go off to their crafts and games and group times for the next hour or so.

She means more than they maybe realise. It's the call of Jesus to follow him that the Club is putting across. We don't hide the fact at all.

One of the younger children remarked at the end of Monday, when asked about the Holiday Club - "It's all God, God, God."

She didn't like it. "I believe in evolution not God...," she added. Which, for a six year old child, is an interesting perspective to have adopted already in life.

But she was back the next day. And, surprise, surprise, she loves it all. I don't know about her view on evolution, but her views on God are changing fairly rapidly!

The games and the crafts and the puppets and songs and the fun and the friends - if this is what the kingdom of God is about, I guess she's finding she can cope with the 'God, God, God' side of things.

The whole thing is hugely relational. Friendships being formed and fostered. Between the children themselves. Between the children and team. Between all the team as well.

And friendship with Jesus pervading it all.

Although it's the story of Elijah and Elisha which forms the backdrop to all that's being done, it's friendship with Jesus which is always so much to the fore. The talks are all about that. The songs are all about that. The team are all about that.

And the DVD evening tonight was all about that as well. A tapestry of all the different facets of the Holiday Club, with the threads of the gospel woven through its fabric.

There were good numbers out - and a huge round of cheering applause when John, our wanna-be-Australian with his brilliant, didgeridoo rendering of Tie me kangaroo down, sport!, featured in the film. He's only around at the start of the Holiday Club each day, but the children took to the guy from the start.

That sort of thing is lovely to see - the young children warming to a man like that, in whom they can sense the friendship of Jesus.

In the friendship of all of the team, in the friendship of everyone else, all this talk of the friendship of Jesus begins to make perfect sense.

There's no getting away from it: a week like this can change a person's life.