Everything Is Spiritual

Binging. That word looks wierd when you spell it out doesn't it? Binge. Come to think of it that's not much of an improvement. Anyway, whatever the word used to describe it, today I may have had a bit too much Rob Bell. Now I know what you're thinking - 'Matt Wilson suggesting you can have too much Rob Bell?' Well no, you'll be pleased to hear that my Rob Bell groupie status is still intact. It's just that I'd taken a break from the spectacled wonder for a little while and now I'm realising again why I liked him so much in the first place.
Everything Is Spiritual is the name of the new DVD Rob has released, an hour and a bit of one man theatre theology produced off the back of his 2007 tour of the same name. I actually bought it because I thought it would be a great way to stretch the minds of some of our gap year trainees. Now having watched it (3 times!) I'm pretty sure it would just go right over their heads. The material in it is just superb - from theology to cosmology, blending observational humour with philosophy, bringing quantum physics to life with doodles and wisecracks... "because we all know how exotic leptons can be right?"
For everyone who worries or wonders about the shallowness or the narrowness of the arguments on both sides of the faith / science divide this really is a feast. For everyone else, well, there's a reason they don't stock this at your local Blockbuster.

Mañana

Tomorrow the Wilson's will be heading off to Spain for a fortnight - I can't wait, the last few weeks have been seriously hectic! Apart from lots of family time and sampling a few fine Rioja's I'm looking forward to spending a couple of days at the ContraCorriente youth festival which will be taking place just south of Madrid. I so wish I'd persevered at my last attempt to learn Spanish but after weeks of listening to podcasts before my last trip out there I fell to pieces within about 1 minute of trying to chat to a taxi driver taking me from the airport to my hotel. One day I'll crack it though - I hate being a stereotypical monoligual Brit abroad. Speaking through an interpreter should be fun though, I'm planning on keeping my talks very visual using props and stuff to get the points across. How my story of nearly getting struck by lighting on an Indian beach will translate I'm really not sure!
The day before the Euro 2008 cup final (which I really hope Spain get to and win) I'll be taking a group out onto the streets of the town to do a bit of face to face mission with the local youth. I'll be seeing how a little idea I've used here in Manchester travels across the cultural divide. One of the challenges in short term mission in getting over the superficial 'How ya doin' and into a more meaningful conversation. It struck me a few weeks ago that maybe a cool way to get chatting to people, especially young people into the alternative scene would be to offer to do them a tattoo, with body paint. So I came up with some tribal designs and a bunch of words in gothic text and took them out to an event. It went down a storm and it was such a buzz to see young people walking round proudly displaying on their bodies words like: LOVED... CHOSEN... ETERNAL... HOPE.... It's a bit like being a hairdresser or something, they just sit there and happily chat until the job's done. The whole thing has a totally prophetic dimension too, it's a declaration of God's truth right there as close as you can possibly get. Part of me wishes I had a proper needle kit so they wouldn't be able to wash it off later! Anyway, I've had a translation done into Spanish and we're going to give it a whirl. Who knows, maybe it'll work ;-)

Wayside Pulpit

Driving around the city on a daily basis there are all sorts of things that catch my eye. Some of these things are clever, or beautiful, or original. Some aren't. In the second category are those gaudy, florescent signs found outside churches aka the 'Wayside Pulpit'. Just down the road from my house a new sign has gone up, bright yellow background with black writing in foot high block caps: "ALL WELCOME HERE" It's perhaps the most unwelcoming sign imaginable. And herein lies the problem. It's not just that local PCCs or whoever commissions these signs seem utterly unaware that technology has moved on to the extent that a full colour digitally printed poster would actually be a cheaper solution. No, there is a common tone of voice that seems present wherever the Wayside Pulpit is found.
I was driving down the A6 through Stockport the other day and saw a sign that must get at least 100,000 cars driving past it everyday: "JESUS CAME INTO THE WORLD TO SAVE SINNERS". It was classic of the paradigm within which all these posters seems to exist, US vs THEM. A line is drawn and rather than stepping over it in an outwards motion the slogans expect the reader to cross over and move inwards. The Stockport sign is a classic example. How different would the tone of voice be if the whole of 1 Tim 1:15 was quoted, "Jesus came into the world to save sinners - of whom I am the worst." Rather than emphasising to passing commuters just how different they are, SINNERS not SAVED, a message like this might just be able to build a tentative association... "YOU + US, we're not that different, we have stuff in common, it might be worth us taking this conversation further..."

Information Overload

I've spent the past couple of days in London. While I was there I got chance to take a look at the Cans Festival 'Exhibition' which is just a short walk from Waterloo Station. It's the kind of place you could easily spend a whole day, but I only had about half an hour to spare so it was the briefest of glances. As you walk through the tunnel the colour, wit and propaganda leaps out from every painted brick. Most of the pieces in the 'fat end' of the tunnel were pretty large works, painstakingly executed. But at the far end, just beyond the bend and back in the daylight, was a whole patchwork quilt of smaller stencils, hardly a single square inch of the concrete was visible. I reckon there must've been a few hundred artists who'd gone to town on it. 

As I stood there taking in a 360 view I sensed my mind beginning to 'zoom out'. There was just too much information, it was too much to process. I started wondering if I was actually surveying not just a randomly assorted mish-mash of artists but actually a single, powerful, metaphor of the world we now inhabit. Our senses are struggling to cope with information overload. There are so many messages, so many voices demanding our attention. Yes there's a heck of a lot of crap - but it's such well packaged crap - how do we begin to discern the good from the bad, the worthy from the pointless? And perhaps most relevant to a blogger like me, if we feel we actually have something to say, how do we cut through the crap and get noticed? 

Say One Thing

I've heard it said that whenever you're faced with a live TV or Radio opportunity the golden rule is to first think hard about what you want to say and then whatever question you're asked turn it around to say what you want to say. You can see politicians doing it every day on the 6 o'clock news. In practice its a heck of a lot harder to do than you might think. This morning I was interviewed on the BBC Radio Manchester breakfast show, it was a really good slot just before the news at 8. It seemed to open well enough, although I was worried that I perhaps came over a bit defensive at first. Then, fairly quickly we seemed to get taken away on a conversational detour away from the One Thing I really wanted to say. And the thing is, when you're the guest, the interviewer really is in the driving seat, it's really hard to steer it back on track.
So what was the One Thing I really wanted to get across? Well, I was really hoping I'd get a chance to talk about the way that whilst faith is always personal, it's never private. Nice little media-friendly soundbite there too. But it wasn't to be. Hang about, what am I saying, "It wasn't to be" - what a dumb fatalistic expression. Truth is, I missed the moment and am left feeling a tad gutted about that. If you were listening feel free to score my performance out of 10. If the general consensus was that yes, it was the worst moment in contemporary broadcasting history then in the immortal words of Tony Wilson (the other Tony Wilson, not my dad), "I'll commit suicide by throwing myself off my own ego."

A Christmas Dream

One of the favourite books I own is 'A Testament of Hope', an anthology of the speeches and writings of Martin Luther King Jr. When I need a moment of inspiration I'll often dwell for a few minutes on those great words. Probably the most famous speech King made was I Have A Dream, delivered at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC in August 1963. It slowly builds by describing 100 years of frustration since the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation and then turns to face the outstanding injustice of the day with visionary fervour:
"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."
And it's these words that are echoing in my heart as another year draws to a close. I'm wondering what kind of society we would live in if the same energy that has been directed at ensuring racial equality amongst our children were also to be directed at forming character in them.
As a parent I must confess that I do have some apprehension about the way my little boy will cope with the voices and the forces vying for influence over him. Will he come to see the sleaze and dysfunction as normality? Will he assimilate the inverted values of the world around him that heckles heroes and celebrates cynics? Or will we, his family, be successful in helping him grow the individual content of character that Martin Luther King foresaw as the essential building block of a just world. My Christmas prayer is that it will be the latter.

The 'Bait and Switch'

Working in an evangelistic ministry like I do one issue that's frequently considered is that of 'follow up', or my preferred way of describing it 'follow through' (subtle but important difference). However neither of these concepts are likely to have much chance of success if the original evangelistic 'pitch' in any way involves a bait and switch.
What's a bait and switch? Well, imagine you get a mailing through your door telling you that you've won a free holiday in Ibiza. All expenses paid, first class flight and 5 star accommodation included - all you have to do is sign and return the enclosed letter of acceptance and then turn up at a hotel somewhere near where you live to meet a representative of the company who'll explain the rest to you. Yep, its a scam. We see it being played out on Watchdog every week. A naive young couple are gutted when they realise they've actually signed up for life to a timeshare apartment on a building site down a dirt track 10 miles from the sea. But the parallels between this kind of corporate con trick and contemporary evangelistic preaching are scary. One of the main reasons that 95% of the people who respond to an evangelistic message don't go on with God is because they quickly realise they've been stung. Someone promised them peace with God and freedom from guilt and they woke up the next day to find they're lumbered with a lifetime of hanging out with wierdoes on a Sunday morning singing strange songs and listening to long winded lectures.
So what can be done about it? Well whilst it's important for church leaders to ensure that their congregations are welcoming, caring environments the onus is really on us the evangelists. The day of selling individually packaged grace deals without any reference to the conditions of the contract is over. The message must change. Christianity equals community. Belief necessitates behaviour. We evangelists need to grapple with this and find fresh inspiration so that we might reveal the true nature of life in the risen Christ, joining an epic journey with a rag-tag bunch of pilgrims who are determined to see God's great dream for the world fulfilled.

Geez

Geez magazine describes itself as:
"A bustling spot for the over-churched, out-churched, un-churched and maybe even the un-churchable. A location just beyond boring bitterness. A place for wannabe contemplatives, front-line world-changers and restless cranks."
I'd liken it to the Whoopee Cushion of Christian periodicals!

Claiming to be an 'Experiment in Truth' and spearheading campaigns such as 'Make Affluence History' it's the perfect tonic for sacred souls who find themselves at the 'optimistically jaded' end of the faith spectrum.

Check it out - Third Way it aint!

Unexpected...

One of the initiatives I'm enjoying being involved in at the moment is a Bible Society led venture called 'Unexpected'. Everything's going on behind the scenes at the moment but there will come a day (in May of this year) when all will be revealed. The objective is to kick-start a conversation right across the Manchester region about the bible, its role, its value and its message. At the heart of it all there will be a high profile media campaign encompassing outdoor and ambient media as well as a PR drive through the local papers and radio stations.

After having a nominal involvement throughout 2006, when this was first brewing, I've now been co-opted onto the team who are overseeing the creative process that will ultimately result in the origination, selection and execution of the campaign's themes. Over the last couple of weeks we've looked at street-level research that shows the pitifully poor grasp of the bible's content in the public mind. The most frequently recalled bible story from people questioned was Noah's Ark - a staggering 5% recalled that, about double the amount that recalled the story of the resurrection of Jesus!

So, in this context we've been skimming through bible stories to try and find those that we feel will have the greatest resonance with the proverbial 'man in the street'. At the end of the day the bible is about people's stories interwoven with God's story. Can we help people to see that (to paraphrase Rob Bell) 'It's not that the bible happened but that the bible happens'. My question to you is, if you could choose a story in the bible that conveys an aspect of real life in a way you think would relate to the average Mancunian what would it be?

P.S. Sorry but you'll have to wait until May to find out the ones we selected!

Predictable Programming

I got an email today from a London based production company who've been commissioned by Channel 4 to produce a programme which will form part of their 'faith' output. In and of itself this isn't a particularly unusual thing, I run some fairly well known youth projects so I get TV companies knocking on the door about once a month. The tedious thing is that their pitches are so predictable, and this one was no different. The idea was yet another reworking of the the number one concept I get approached with (which they all seem to think is soooo original) namely, to create a show in which young Christians talk about why they choose a lifestyle of sexual abstinence. It's as if sexual abstinence the defining feature of the lives of young Christians.

So as you may have already guessed I'll be getting back to them to say I won't be able to offer them any inroads to connecting with young Christians for this programme. However, what I do intend to do while I'm at it is to suggest that they wake up to the kind of things young Christians are doing that most other young adults up and down the country are still virgo intacta about; stuff like: getting involved in relieving urban street crime, campaigning for an end to human trafficking and saving their pocket money to sponsor children in the third world.

Stereotyping sucks but it's never going to change until some enlightened soul in a production company somewhere dares to break away from this predictable programming to create something truly insightful.

Our 3 journeys

About 2 years ago I came across a concept called 'LifeShapes' in a book called The Passionate Church, by Mike Breen. The book was written in a way that would naturally appeal to anyone with a picture-oriented mind like me. One of the images that's stayed with me was a reflection drawn from the lifestyle of Jesus in Luke 6:12 -19. Imagine an equilateral triangle drawn on a page, the top points Up, the left points In and the right points Out. Up refers to our relationship with God, In refers to our relationship with each other and Out refers to our relationship with the wider world around us.

Well, a few days ago I just found a very similar concept being used by an emerging church group in Australia (right), which appears to have been developed entirely on its own with no reference to Mike's book. I find this really encouraging because it shows me that God is working around the world revealing his ways to people who put their trust in him. The way a certain revelation is understood and communicated may differ, after all any illustration, whether visual or verbal, is just an imperfect attempt to grasp a truth. In this case we have two perspectives on a single simple reality - we need God, we need friends, and we need to reach the world.

Dying for a conversation

This new ad from Kleenex makes me really jealous. I'd love to have that gift of being able to sit down and just connect with people. Anybody. Maybe the ad is staged using clever actors (some of my friends think so). Maybe it's for real (the gullible fool in me wants to beleieve this). Either way it doesn't really matter - the point is that the art of conversation seems to be dying. I wonder if that's why blogs are becoming more popular these days? Here I am, wanting to talk so I just type some thoughts into the screen and come back tomorrow to see if anyone might have responded, just a little one liner to make my day and remind me that somebody out there affirms my existence!

If I was brave enough (and if it was July not January) I might drag a sofa into Piccadilly Gardens and erect a sign saying, TEACH ME TO CHAT! I'd ask passers by to share with me the Tai Chi of conversation - how to get it started - how to keep it going - how to wrap it up. But who am I kidding? I've become far too safe for all that nonsense... the house is warm, the keyboard is convenient and somebody out there in cyberspace might just want to talk back...