Lost in the Heart of Somewhere

Harry Potter and the Fire Breathing Fundamentalists

2010-12-07T07:12:00.006Z

I am delighted to have a guest article by American writer and broadcaster Jerry Bowyer. This article was first published a few years ago upon publication of the final instalment of Harry Potter. With the release of the first part of the final movie, it seemed the right the time to give it a fresh airing ...

Warning this article contains spoilers.

KKLA is the largest Christian talk radio station in America. I hold a dubious record there – I am responsible for causing the largest number of complaint calls the station had ever gotten in a single day. The topic? Harry Potter.

The Bowyers love Harry Potter: the novels, the movies, the video games, the midnight bookseller parties, we’re game for any of it. It didn’t start that way; ten years ago my mother wanted to give Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone to one of my girls as a Christmas gift. “No way,” I said. “We don’t do witches and wizards here.”

A couple of years later my mother-in-law asked the same question. By then I’d become a little less rock-ribbed and quite a bit more disillusioned with the religious right wing of the conservative movement. Gracie loved the books and started sharing the story with me. As I noticed more and more references to classical and medieval literature my guard started to fall.

Eventually I went to see the movie version with my whole family. When I left the theatre, I knew two things: first, that I had been an ignorant blow-hard. This wasn’t Wiccan propaganda: it was standard-issue fairy tale magic like Cinderella and The Wizard of Oz. Second, that Joanne Rowling had spent a great deal of time immersed in The Greats – the long line of literary masterpieces that range from The Lord of the Rings and Narnia back through Dickens, Austen, Shakespeare, the Arthurian Legends, the Church Fathers, the Scriptures themselves, and into the best of the pre-Christian Greek classics. In other words, Rowling was one of us.

Not long after that, I got to know John Granger and his book, The Key to Harry Potter, and I knew that I was not alone.

So I shared what I had learned with the radio audience. Harry is a lot of things. He’s a little bit Prince Harry forced to grow into the great warrior Henry V. He’s a lot more of the young Arthur, taken from his family at a young age, forced to live under the neglectful care of an inferior family, kept in the shadows of a bullying older adopted brother and unaware of his great origins. Eventually he is mentored by a great wizard (for young Wart, that’s Merlin; for Harry, it’s Dumbledore – a member of the Order of Merlin). Both lead quests to find a cup. Both (spoiler alert here- and from now on) end up procuring a great sword out of a lake in order to proceed with the quest.

I’m afraid the Arthur stuff doesn’t do much for many American evangelicals, though. It’s a little too British for Americans, plus it smells suspiciously Roman Catholic to a lot of Evangelicals. While I got lots of appreciative remarks, I didn’t make much headway with the fire breathers.

Next I tried the more recognizable Christian material. In Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets, Harry confronts Voldemort (whose name means “will to death”) by traveling down into a great cavern where he slays a serpent to win an (eventual) bride. He fatally wounds the serpent in the head. He’s rescued by a bird who descends upon him and the bride, a kind of bird whose “tears have healing powers, and who are able to bear immense loads.” The bird bears them up out of the cavern. “There, how’s that?” I thought. The problem is that very few Christians seem to be aware of descendit ad infernum, the descent into hell. Don’t the schools teach Dante? Don’t the Churches teach the Apostle’s Creed? Well, as a matter of fact, no, they generally do not. The Proto Evangelium, the first gospel in which God told Adam and Eve that He would send Someone who would rescue their descendents by crushing the head of the serpent doesn’t seem to get a lot of play either.

I could go on for page after page: snippets from ancient hymns and creeds for instance. The most powerful spell in Harry’s world is the Patronus, in which the wizard forcefully says “Expecto Patronum”. That’s Christian Latin for “I look for the Savior”. Expecto is used in the Nicene Creed, and Patronum is used in the medieval Dies Irae as the Savior that we look for in the day of judgment. Harry uses the spell when ghastly evil spiritual beings called DEMENtors (caps mine) attack him and another innocent man near a lake. A stag (which just happens to function as a common Christ figure in medieval art) walks across the water dispelling the vile soul-destroying creatures. What’s it take, a 2 by 4 across the forehead? This is Christian stuff!

Well, the 2 by 4 has arrived and it’s called Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. In it, Harry learns that the evil Voldemort has broken his soul into shards and used those shards to possess certain objects. These are called Horcruxes. One of them is a ring (Lord of the Rings fans should find this a little familiar) and as long as the object is not destroyed the ‘Dark Lord’ cannot be destroyed either. Well it turns out that one of those soul shards in imbedded in a scar in Harry’s forehead and Harry comes to understand that the only way the evil can be destroyed is for Harry to willingly give up his life. In order to save his friends at Hogwarts School (which we learn in book 7 reminds Harry of a church) and particularly his friend Hagrid (whose name is suspiciously similar to Hagioi, which is Greek for Saints) he must allow himself to be killed by the dark lord. He makes a long walk through a wood in which he stumbles (Via Dolorosa, anyone?) all the while being encouraged by a vision of his deceased mother Lily.

This might be a good time to tell you that the Lily is often used as a symbol for Mary, the mother of Jesus, in medieval literature. I have an album in my musical collection of exceptionally beautiful hymns about Jesus and Mary, called The Lily and the Lamb. Harry goes ‘as a sheep to the shearer’ to Voldemort, where he is killed. There he meets his old mentor Dumbledore (old English for bumblebee, a medieval symbol for wisdom based on Psalm 119). While Dumbledore explains it all, the great white cloud in which Harry finds himself begins to take the shape of a familiar train station. The station’s name is King’s Cross, which is also the title of that particular chapter of the book. Harry is given the choice of going ‘on’ or going back to save his people. Harry goes back and finds that since he willingly gave his life for the people of Hogwarts, Voldemort’s curses no longer bind them. Voldemort, then, is destroyed (by his own hand in an attempt to kill Harry again) and the various races and houses of Hogwarts celebrate in a great feast, in which they ignore the walls and divisions which had theretofore separated them.

Since this book has been published I have not seen a single apology to JK Rowling from any of the various fundamentalist bashers. She’d been accused of atheism (she’s an Anglican) and of being a witch (she knows nothing at all about the occult or Wicca).

Why no apologies to the lady? First, it’s always tough to say you’re sorry. But deeper than that, I think the problem is that so much of the religious right failed to see the Christianity in the Potter novels because it knows so little Christianity itself. Yes, there are a few ‘memory verses’ from Saint Paul, and various evangelical habits like the ‘sinner’s prayer’ and the alter call. However the gospel stories themselves, the various metaphors and figures of the Law and the Prophets, and their echoes down through the past two millennia of Christian literature and art are largely unknown to vast swaths of American Christendom, including its leaders.

Seven years ago, Joanne Rowling was asked whether she is a Christian. Her answer:

“Yes I am. Which seems to offend the religious right far worse than if I said I thought there was no God. Every time I’ve been asked if I believe in God, I’ve said yes, because I do, but no one ever really has gone any more deeply into it than that, and I have to say that does suit me, because if I talk too freely about that I think the intelligent reader, whether 10 or 60, will be able to guess what’s coming in the books.”

For once, I disagree with her: I don’t think they would have guessed the ending. Most of them can’t recognize the ending of the story even after it’s been told.

Oh, I almost forgot the radio station. Terry Fahy, the General Manager of KKLA, told me that he’d like to have me on the station again. So, you see, there are signs of hope after all.

New business website

2010-08-22T18:02:00.003+01:00

Bit of a boring post, but I thought you might be interested in my new business website for Matthews & Owen (the trading name for my consultancy). It was pretty simply done with iWeb and hosted on MobileMe: www.matthewsandowen.com.

I am going to be running a blog on there looking at issues around publishing, media, films and communications (especially new and digital media). Please feel free to add it to your RSS reader (such as Google Reader). Matthews & Owen Blog. Here is the latest post:

Reading in a whole new way

Friday, 20 August 2010

Will screens rather than page be the way we read in the future. Kevin Kelly from the Smithsonian magazine thinks so.

Raising dazed out, stupefied kids

2010-06-25T16:48:00.002+01:00

I have been thinking a lot about why we made the decision to home educate recently. My wife and I have been reviewing our family mission statement and vision, I had a good and very provoking conversation with an old friend about this subject, and one of my current roles is the national media spokesperson for Education Otherwise.

We are both convinced that, in the end, the educational decision a family make for their kids is their own decision, and that it isn't right for anyone - an individual, a church, pressure groups or the state - to compel educational conformity upon people (the problem of neglect, abuse or similar problems notwithstanding). Actually, I think the ideal would be small, community-based educational cooperatives run through a blend of parental involvement and employed teachers, where parents are intimately involved in the philosophy and overall direction, as well as the pastoral things.

However, one of the books that came up when my wife and I were discussing these things was the excellent Colossians Remixed by Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat. In that they discuss their decision to home education in a question and answer format. Here are some of their thoughts:

Q: So what's the alternative? Are you saying that we all have to send out children to Christian schools?

A: Actually, we believe we need to rethink the whole notion of schooling - Christian or otherwise. Our question is this: if it is true that schooling is an institution of the modernist progress myth and is preoccupied with quantification, testing, standardization, passivity, docility and consumption resulting in a dazed, numbed-out, stupefied, disinterested, disempowered and unmotivated population of unthinking consumers, then why are Christians playing this educational game of schooling at all?

...

And insofar as Christian schools are applauded in our society for producing fine, middle class, hardworking and hard-consuming citizens, we are not sure they are providing much of an alternative.

Q: Won't they end up being social misfits?

A: We hope so. Yes, social misfits, that's what we long for. May it be that we raise up a generation of social misfits, because to "fit into" this culture, to find your place of comfort in it, is to be accommodated to the empire. we have argued that this is precisely what this subversive little tract called Colossians is arguing against.

But no, it is not a matter of isolationism. The issue here is not to isolate our children from the world, but to expose them to the world through the liberating vision of a biblical worldview. Precisely where the powers that be don't want children to make connections, don't want them to really see, we want our children's eyes to be opened. We want our kids to see through the targeted advertising of McDonalds toys, games and playlands and recognize the manipulative come-ons that they are. We want them to see through the packaging and grease in order to see that the stuff being served is not food. We want our little girls to be offended, not enamoured, by Barbie's figure. We want them to know that while the news of war that they are constantly hearing on the radio and on the street makes them worry, there are other little girls in places like Palestine, Israel, Iraq, Colombia, Guatemala, Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe who have to live with the daily fear of war in their neighbourhoods. We want them to think about the little girls who work in the fields producing cash crops or who slave in sweatshops producing cute clothes for little girls.

Provoking stuff.

iPad review

2010-05-15T21:03:00.006+01:00

I have the good fortune of being in possession of one the first iPads in the UK, courtesy of EGM Films, with whom I am working (check out the new film due out in September - Little Town of Bethlehem). A great opportunity - I'm not sure I could have justified paying the £499 myself if it wasn't for this.

So - my device is the 32gb Wifi version and I will be mainly using it for email, productivity, some surfing but mainly as a presentation device in meetings. Setting it up in iTunes is a simple process, and I liked the fact that it DOESN'T automatically sync all the music, videos and pictures, but allows you to choose. Even with 32gb, this would fill it up before I even get chance to use it.

Setting up email accounts was incredibly simple, and I was able to set up an exchange account, two IMAP email accounts and my Mobile Me account, which immediately synchronized my calendar and contacts onto the iPad.

I have had the chance to use the device on the road and in the office over the last two weeks, and wanted to divide up how I have used it:

On the Road

I spent most of last week travelling around the UK and Ireland - at an exhibition, in meetings and in hotel rooms. I have all the trailers and various other photos and videos related to my work with EGM, and was delighted how easy it was to pop the iPad on a stand and play the video, slideshow or presentation and talk through it. One of the days I left my laptop in the hotel to see if I could cope with just the iPad and had no problems. Answering emails was simple - the on-screen keyboard was clean and responsive, and taking notes during the meeting on there was great - this was later sync'd through iTunes and I could access them on my MacBook.

Battery life was impressive - I can get two full days of working through one charge and yet it only took a few hours to charge up through the USB cable to the MacBook.

In the office and home

This week is a week at home, and I spent some time looking at productivity tools on the iPad. I have decided to implement some of the principles in Getting things Done, and decided to use the Taska app to help with this. I can link tasks not only by project, but by using tags they can be linked across projects. For example, all of my different proposals or events can be viewed at the same time even though they are listed under different projects.

I found myself working on the MacBook but using the iPad as an extension, with notes and tasks available to refer to quickly which I found helpful. When I went out, I took the iPad - I had a church meeting and a coffee with someone - made notes on it and kept up with email - which is much easier to carry.

I also downloaded the Kindle app which gives access to the whole Amazon Kindle list. I downloaded a few samples to look at and it seems a good way to read reference and non-fiction stuff, but I wouldn't use it for novels or extended reading of several hours - except perhaps when travelling.

I was expecting to be annoyed by the lack of multi-tasking - you can only have one programme open at a time. However, things such as the web browser and mail keep running in the background and you can quickly switch between them.

Pros:

Great size and weight
Wonderful battery time
Efficient productivity tool
Clean interface
Good addition to a laptop
Useful Apps (recommend the iWork suite, Taska, Kindle as starters)

Cons:

Expensive - the edition I have is £499 on release
Not many apps provided 'out of the box'
Not all apps available in the UK app store (I assume this will change upon UK release)
Is it just more stuff?

Sunday Morning!

2010-05-08T07:24:00.002+01:00

Just perfect :-)

"Sunday's Coming" Movie Trailer from North Point Media on Vimeo.

HT Dan Kimball

A plague on all their houses?

2010-04-13T17:11:00.005+01:00

With moat cleaning, ex-ministers for sale, playing politics with the constitution and various other dirty activities this last parliament has to be one of the most disreputable in living memory. It is no wonder that there is an increasing tendency to write off politics and politicians as corrupt, useless and that 'they're all as bad as each other'. However, I see voting as a hard won right, and a privilege, and I take seriously the decision at every local and general election.

So - who to vote for this time. Rather than look at the personalities of both the local and national politicians, and rather than follow a party line, I wanted to make a decision based on the policies offered. Here are my thoughts so far:

The foundational issue for me is one of liberty - do the parties accept that that personal liberty - the freedom to choose how one should live within reasonable limits - is an essential value. This is the principle that was fought over from the Bill of Rights onwards, and forms an essential part of the British culture. Our constitutional arrangement is such that we are free to do whatever we like unless it is restricted for the greater good.

The consequence of this is that religious, political, social and moral beliefs should be beyond the scope of the state to interfere in, unless something brings harm to someone else.

That doesn't mean that I am an economic libertarian in the way that conservatives are - the economic dominance of global corporations is not something that should go unchecked. Rather, liberty is something that starts with the individual, progresses to families and communities, then to towns, cities and regions and then nationally. Power is granted upwards for the greater good, not dispensed downwards by an all-powerful state.

Education

This is a dominant issue for my wife and I as we home educate. The travesty that was the Badman report, and the heavy-handed state interference of the Children, Schools and Families Bill, was a perfect picture of a statist government - and I am thankful that the Tories and Lib Dems opposed that part of the bill during the 'wash up' last week.

I am impressed by the commitment of the Conservatives commitment to increasing innovation and localisation in education - the idea of educational cooperatives, locally run schools etc all very much appeal to me, although I am concerned that large organisations will dominate the academy bid process, especially for secondary education. However - this movement to local empowerment is definitely a step in the right direction.

Social Justice & families

I don't think any party is offering much that is revolutionary in the way of social justice this time - all parties seem to see putting kids into child-care (sure start) and getting everyone working full-time as the best way to increase social inclusion. I'm not so sure - structuring things so that more job-shares are possible, and using tax credits to enable those whose kids are most likely to fall victim to their social environment to have a parent at home post of the time would surely be better. For single parents this is a bigger issue than economics (although the need to work there is a given), and it isn't a simple issue. But surely government compelling parents to abandon their kids to day-care at 12 months old or lose their benefits is short-sighted and lacking the kind of imaginative thinking I thought Labour were going to give us when they appointed Frank Field in 1997, but sacked him pretty soon afterwards.

Global issues are barely featuring in this election - although I think all parties are committed to preserving the international development funding.

Defense

Both Labour and the Conservatives are committed to maintaining our nuclear weapons, so here I would support the Lib Dem position - that money can be much better spent.

Economy

After Labour's false promises of 'no more return to boom and bust', the promise that we would weather the economic storm well, their poor handling of city regulation, their slight of hand in using PFI to keep public debt off the balance sheet and their refusal to deal with spiralling public sector borrowing have all proved Gordon Brown's inability to deal with the economy in a responsible manner.

However, I have to admit that as all parties are fundamentally committed to global free-market capitalism as an absolute value I'm not sure there is much to choose here. The Tories will probably make some painful decision that may be the right ones (and as they are not financially beholden to unions can probably tackle public sector militancy better).

The Lib Dem position on personal taxation is one I support in helping people on low-paid jobs. Raising the the tax allowance to £10K is a great idea, and the most radical of the three parties. But, the influence of Philip Blond, and his Red Tory ideas of local economy, on David Cameron are the most attractive to me as they have the potential to change the very economic fabric of the country along the lines laid out by Belloc and Chesterton back last century.

On a local level, I think that, after a stuttering start, Daniel Kawczynski has done an excellent job regardless of his political allegiances. John Tandy, the Labour candidate is a bit too 'union' for me. The Lib Dem candidate, Charles West, looks like a good bloke, but is he good enough to unseat a good incumbent (and is it telling that he is the only one I had to google to remember his name)?

These are all the hot issues for me. I don't have any particular party affiliation, and I was determined to try and make a decision based firmly on policies this year. It still isn't easy, and I will be listening hard over the next few weeks to what the candidates say and do.

There's no-one as Irish as David Cameron

2010-02-17T08:42:00.005Z

At least according to the Corrigan Brothers (of There's no one as Irish as Barack Obama fame!):

(Originally posted on my new blog, Everything Politics)

Martin Smith interview

2009-11-22T19:28:00.002Z

Just posted the second part of my interview with Martin Smith on Everything Christian. I realy enjoyed it - he has some interesting things to say about worshipping in front of thousands of people, consumerism and the value of worship:

When we worship God we find out who we are. You find yourself looking in a mirror on a regular basis, “Is this the person I am? I need to change this. I need a redesign. I need salvation. I need forgiveness.” Worshipping God is amazing because you connect with someone extraordinary, someone eternal and you see yourself in that light.

Click here.

Part 1 is also available here.

Atheist Billboard kids: “children of Christians”

2009-11-21T07:38:00.001Z

Ruth Gledhill, religious correspondent at the Times offered a humourous take on the latest advertising campaign by the British Humanist Society, and fronted by scientist-turned-atheist-campaigner Richard Dawkins. It turns out that the children featured in the advert were children of a former drummer for worship leader Noel Richards and attend a Newfrontiers church. The BHA were rattled enough to issue a response here.

Arrogance, Ignorance, Greed

2009-11-14T07:36:00.005Z

Tonight my wife and I are looking forward to seeing Show of Hands playing here in Shrewsbury. Beforehand I am interviewing them for Everything Folk.

The title track of their lates album is getting a lot of press attention and airplay, Arrogance, Ignorance, Greed (AIG) - a broadside at bankers and politicians with lines such as:

At every trough you stop to feed
With your arrogance, your ignorance and greed

Here is the video

Everything Christian

2009-11-12T20:33:00.004Z

I know I only announced a new blog yesterday, but this one is much more personal. Below is the actual press release:

Press Release

Launch of new Christian news and opinion portal, Everything Christian.

Today marked the formal launch of a new national web portal for Christian news and opinion, www.everythingchristian.co.uk. The new site will include the latest news from the UK and around the world, plus inspiring devotions and opinion from many of those at the cutting edge of ministry in the UK and beyond. The site aims to embrace the hallmarks of the culture change in the last few years, and collaboration and community will be central to the future of the project, including the opportunity for user-generated content.

The site is edited by Ian Matthews, who has worked for more than a decade in Christian publishing. He said, "The way we interact, communicate, debate and inform each other has changed beyond measure over the course of this decade. Our aim at Everything Christian is to be a place where both the content and the way of communicating reflects the church and the culture in which we find ourselves." He continued, "I am excited to be launching the site with a two-part interview with the former Delirious? front-man Martin Smith in which he looks at his time with Delirious, his passion for worship and social justice, and just what the future might hold. In addition, we have a wide range of devotionals, opinion pieces and other inspiring articles planned for the coming days and weeks, as well as regular news and product reviews. We will be launching specific sections devoted to subjects such as politics, mission, church in the community and worship - and starting this section with a series of articles on worship from around the globe written by Carrie Tedder from Worship Planet, a regular worship band at Spring Harvest. We also have an excellent article from Gerard Kelly on Twitter as a spiritual discipline coming in the next week."

As Everything Christian is encouraging an open approach to content, it is not only welcoming news releases, products and other information for inclusion, but is also encouraging readers to submit articles and news items for inclusion. All items concerning news or reviews should be emailed to news@everythingchristian.co.uk; for any features or to submit an article please email features@everythingchristian.co.uk. The editor can be contact on ian@everythingchristian.co.uk.

It would be really appreciated if you could pass this on to let others know, and if you have any ideas for content, do please let me know!

Steve Chalke's Apprentice Tour

2009-11-11T15:57:00.003Z

A bit of an advert here really, but I am managing a tour by Steve Chalke that starts tomorrow in London based on the 2009 Spring Harvest theme and the book that Zondervan released called Apprentice: Walking the way of Christ, with Diane Louise Jordan and Cathy Burton.

Anyway - a blog has been set up for it at www.apprenticetour.blogspot.com, so please do take a look. Should have stuff from Steve, Cathy and other people appearing over the next few weeks.

How technology makes our lives so much better

2009-10-17T07:29:00.001+01:00

A nice bit of weekend fun. Just what the office what made for:

Eden and the high street

2009-10-02T09:15:00.003+01:00

On-line retailer Eden recently launched an ambitious and audacious offer, giving Christians around the UK the chance to give £3 vouchers to all their friends. I cannot find a link to it, as it was an email offer to their customers. When I read it my initial thought was 'wow ... good move - great marketing'. Perhaps because I do not own or manage a Christian bookshop I didn't have the same reaction as Phil Groome, manager of LST bookshop and Christian bookshop uber-blogger who said,

Eden.co.uk threw down a gauntlet to the rest of the Christian book trade by claiming that their customers were more interested in range, availability and convenience than price. Their latest marketing ploy seems to mark something of a U-turn in attitude: a £15,000 gift voucher giveaway to church leaders to “encourage [their congregations] to read and/or share more Christian literature, music or resources.”

I think Phil is mistaken in seeing this as a U-turn. Customers may be more interested in things other than price, but price is still a good revenue driver - especially a voucher (which has a psychological impact that regular discounting doesn't). Gareth Mullholland, owner of Eden, isn't saying that price doesn't matter, but that Eden has a USP that is more than just that. Clearly, price is part of the mix.

Phil's main response, though, is good:

It’s a great idea that could certainly generate significant sales for Eden, but will do little to help generate footfall in local Christian bookshops — unless we rise to the challenge as I have done at LST: We will accept Eden’s £3 Gift Vouchers.

Well done - that is the response. I think the attitude I have come across with some Christian retailers, where they see a particular town as if it is their 'right' to be the high street witness there is outdated, wrong-headed and fails to take account of a changing culture in which we live. A Christian bookshop, which is a just a shop, is NOT a witness on the high street, it is a shop that most non-churched people will never go in. You do get the odd great testimony, but the occasional encounter does not justify the cost, expense and effort involved in keeping a shop on the high street.

It can work, and work well if the sub-conscious expectations on people today are taken into account. Rather than assuming that people, and churches, will come to you out of some sense of geographical duty, the shop that will thrive is one that understands that relationships, networks, peer-reviews and community drive successful ventures today. For example:

The obvious - a coffee chop. A good one with proper coffee (with the various types, sizes, syrups etc), sweet snacks - perhaps sandwiches from the local deli?
Customer reviews and ratings on the shelves, and in the email shots to customers
Reader reviews and sample copies on the coffee tables
A web site that is as much a blog as it is a retail site - let people say what they want
Suggestions on products to order, books missed etc
Find out why books failed - ask the customers
Vouchers in the local church newsletters (perhaps tied to the preaching series?)
Weekly top-10 voted books
Customer feedback forms (5 questions rated 1 - 10 that can be filled in in 2 minutes and put in a box) to find out if customer service, product range, in-store layout all work

If my calculations are correct I reckon that Eden are making an average of about £1 on every book they sell through this promotion. There is nothing stopping a Christian bookshop taking vouchers for their shop along to every church in their area and putting the vouchers in the hands of the members - the personal touch will have even more impact!

I think Eden have every right to take every opportunity they can to bring customers to their website, and good luck to them - there are about 3.5 million regular church-goers in the UK with only a fraction going into their local bookshop. They are not responsible for the decline in Christian bookshops, the problems run far deeper than that.

In the future I think that Christian bookshops will be either community destinations where people WANT to come to (they won't come for long if it is seen as a duty), or more closely supported by or located in larger churches (and you could have three or four of these in a large city each serving a different constituency). Anything that falls in-between won't last, and perhaps, doesn't deserve to.

Blogging - why I do it (or don't a lot of the time)

2009-09-05T08:42:00.002+01:00

I started this blog almost 5 years ago now (October 2004), and have had periods of activity and many months of inactivity. Part of my problem is that I have never seen this as a priority, and when life gets busy out goes the blogging. However, I have made some good friends and met (virtually) some really interesting people.

I generally only get 30 -40 unique visitors a week on this site (with the post below removed from the stats) - mainly because I haven't worked hard at getting external links and building traffic. However, one post of mine bucks this trend completely, even though it is now 2 years old, Porn Stars, Womanhood and the wallpaper of our lives. I probably get 15 - 20 hits a day on this one post, mainly referred from Google searches for pornography (including some deeply disturbing and very illegal searches). Hopefully it will make an occasionally visitor stop and think.

Earlier this year I started a political blog, The Digger, but have stopped for now after finding the whole political blogging environment utterly negative and disheartening. Maybe I'll have more stomach for it soon.

My latest venture is Everything Folk, a news and reviews site for another passion of mine, roots and folk music. I decided to do this one differently, and wanted to learn more about the technical side of blogging, so I am hosting this one with Wordpress and am now going about the process of learning to use this incredibly flexible piece of software. I started it as I saw a gap - there wasn't really a blog about the current growth of interest in this area (outside of BBC and Guardian sites which are updated every week or so). We'll see how it goes, but please do go and pay it a visit - you may see something you actually quite like!

New Wine - personal reflections

2009-08-09T19:02:00.002+01:00

Having survived a six-hour car journey (with an hour in a traffic jam in a service station!), waterlogged camping ground on arrival, rain, digging, mud, mouldy clothes, and 10,000 Christians packed onto the Bath and West Showground, Team Matthews is finally safe and sound in Shrewsbury after a week at New Wine.

For those who don't know, New Wine is (or was - see below) a network for church leaders keen to balance 'word and spirit', and who want to transform their churches and their local communities "by the power of the Spirit". Since the 1980's they have also ran a conference during the summer with worship and teaching. The movement's roots go back to the early collaboration between John Wimber and Anglican minister David Pytches (now Bishop).

Overall Impression

This was the first time I had gone to New Wine, and apart from a couple of Spring Harvests for work, the first 'bible week' since Stoneleigh in 2001 - where it rained all week and we camped with a 3 year old and a 10 week old!! So off we set with Caravan, Awning, food for 4 days and a GPS unit.

We were heading down a day early on the Saturday, and following six hours on the road with a grumpy 3 year old, including the service station above and an hour stuck in Bristol, we finally arrived after a day full of rain to be greeted with a waterlogged and muddy campsite. I think Mrs M was ready to go home right then, especially when we were told to camp "wherever we could find a dry bit". Located our church group in the chaos created by lack of supervision, found what looked like a level bit of ground that wasn't just mud and proceeded to set things up. New Vicar turned up at the same time, with a trailer tent they had been 'blessed' with and myself, Vicar, his wife and fellow church-member Martin spent the next two hours trying to make sense of a 20-year old collection of bent poles, chipboard and leaking canvas. They felt so blessed by that gift!!!!

Woke up Sunday morning and then watched about a million cars create the perfect water drain direct to our campsite (at the bottom of the hill) as they drove through our bit to get to their areas AT THE TOP OF HILL. You can guess what happened later in the week.

What happened?

For the main morning and evening sessions there were two option. 'Venue 1' - the larger marquee (about 5,000 at my guess) - which had what could be called 'mainstream' worship mainly by the Trinity Cheltenham team led by Neil Bennets (although David Ruis also did some sessions) and 'Venue 2' which was supposed to be the more contemporary venue. This was pretty much given over to Trent Vineyard and was hosted by them and 'Trent' led all the worship. It wasn't so much more contemporary and a bit louder and with a tighter band doing more of their own material. Still - it was very good!

Opening session in Venue 2 (my choice that night) was an absolutely storming sermon by Simon Ponsonby, Pastor of Theology at St Aldates, Oxford (an old church of mine in David McInnes days). Based on 1 Chronicles 12, he argues that that the church is in a war and should be living like that - engaging in acts that push forward the kingdom of God - His justice, peace and love. Obviously he emphasised the spiritual aspect of this, but it was a masterclass in preaching, taking scripture, contemporary issues facing the church and popular culture (nice bit of post-modern intertextual criticism with Lord of the Rings). If you want a great book on Revelation and the end-times that debunks a lot of the silly 'left behind' stuff, and takes seriously resurrection on a new earth then I would recommend his And The Lamb Wins.

The morning sessions were more bible study focused, with just a short time of worship. Mrs M and I put our youngest into his group and attended the 'Venue 1' series working through Proverbs, called 'Everything Your Parents Should Have Told You (but probably didn't)' by Ohio Vineyard pastor and Jewish convert Rich Nathan. It was excellent - simple biblical insight on wisdom, children, sex, money etc. I only went to one other evening session as we were sharing kiddie duty, and this was also by Rich Nathan.

There was a whole range of seminars to choose form, with leadership, mission, spirituality, relationships and worship 'tracks'. I chose a series by David Mitchell (not of Mitchell and Webb fame I was sad to discover!) from Woodlands church in Bristol. He, along with his family and 23 other people live in a big house in a residential community, and I was really hoping to get to grips with what they were doing, how it worked (and didn't), and to be inspired to get serious about these issues myself. Sad it was all a bit rambling and disorganised - my seminar companion from church and myself left feeling more frustrated than enlightened.

The Camping

Aahh - the camping! As mentioned, the ground was flooded when we arrived, and rain on the Tuesday meant that there was six inches of standing water all over our area of the campsite. I woke up Wednesday morning to a flooded Awning, and another family found their 2-year-old asleep and freezing cold in a pool of water. Suitcases had been waterlogged, tents flooded, and the ground was a quagmire. The site site were exceedingly unhelpful at this point, and we just had to make a plan to move the tents that needed moving, dry stuff out and help each other out.

A team from New Wine arrived in the afternoon and we dug trenches and pumped around 1,000 gallons of water off our site. The problem was that all the water from the showground was passing our way and the track created by the cars on the Sunday helped direct it just to our door! However, this was a great time of bonding and fellowship, and working with other brothers and sisters to get it done was, in the end, the highlight of the event for me.

Overall Impressions

The Good

Good new songs from David Ruis, Trent, Trinity Cheltenham, David Gates and Jonny Parks.
Fine teaching in the morning.
Wonderful community on our site - I got to do a years worth of relationship building in a week.
The kids work - just fantastic. So well thought through - a focus on the Kingdom from the pre-school to the 10-11 year olds. They loved it, so I am happy.
Generosity - just under £90K was taken in the offering this week (plus similar amounts in the other two weeks).
Good to see a spectrum of the church in one place

The Bad

Poor organisation on-site. Few resources to deal with the weather - not enough sand bags, bark chip, pallets/duck board, or even attention!
Too many Americans & non-Anglicans. There was only one Church-of-England main stage speaker, and only two British ones during the whole week. This isn't a criticism of US speakers (I spent 5 years persuading us 'Brits' to read them more!) or movements outside of the C-of-E (goodness know that we need to hear what God is saying through everyone), but as a UK-based, predominantly Anglican network it would be better to hear more of what is happening in the UK, and biblical exegesis rooted in what we are doing.
Too many 'stories', not enough Bible in the evening meetings.
Worship too predictable. Unless you were willing to stay up to listen to a DJ spin worship at 'after hours', then all you got was the usual guitar/keyboard bands playing a variant on rock/pop music for 20 - 45 minutes before a sermon, as if that is the biblical way! As the uniting aspect of New Wine is a Charismatic/Evangelical axis, what about: Celtic liturgy, contemplative spirituality, Franciscan worship, Taize, Messy Church and all the other ways people are exploring charismatic worship.

Final thought

I had one final thought that has left me a bit disquieted. In a video presentation before one of the offerings, John Coles the director of New Wine made this statement: "New Wine is no longer a network - it is a movement" and emphasised the shift with things such as the new theological training (at undergraduate and post-graduate) as evidence of this. In talking with friends the consensus is that New Wine is positioning itself for a split in the C-of-E. I think that in doing it this it will be encouraging the split to happen. I also think that it may be over-estimating the number of churches that would be wiling to jump ship into the 'lifeboat' of New Wine, especially when the commitment to the Anglican way of doing worship, mission and ministry seems to be in the process of being pushed back at the New Wine public event.

However, the event as it stands was a great opportunity to fellowship, worship and learn from those who are both teachers and practitioners from all over the world. And the biggest thing I take away from this is that my heart has been softened a little and I have fallen more in love with Jesus again - that cannot be denied and makes it all worthwhile, even the mud!

A New Blog

2009-04-25T10:36:00.001+01:00

I just wanted to let you know about a new blog - The Digger. This is (currently) an anonymous blog where I am trying to explore some of the political issues from a libertarian-left position.

Just wanted to let you know in case you are interested.

Allotment heaven!

2009-01-26T19:33:00.007Z

I am now the proud tenant of a half-plot in the local allotment site just near my house. Dreams of endless potatoes, carrots, parsnips, shallots, beans, peas etc now fill my imagination ...

Of course the reality will probably be far from this, especially in the beginning. For now, we are sharing the site with our neighbours (who are now also on the waiting list), making it more manageable - essential when you look at how the plot was when we started out.

So we have spent the last week turning this into something usable, and trying to do it without resorting to chemicals. Of course, child labour helped!

The chance to run an allotment is one I have wanted for quite a while. As well as a tiny step towards self-sufficiency, it offers good vegetables and fruit at a good price, fresh air, exercise, space for the kids to discover things of nature and opportunity to connect with other people in my community.

I am sure I will post here on how things are going!

Following Jesus Doesn't Work

2008-12-15T18:48:00.003Z

Greg Boyd is fast becoming one of my favourite writers. His book last year, Myth of a Christian Nation was one of the surprise successes over here in the UK (for a book so focused on the US). In this article he starts by recounting the story of a woman he encountered:

I met a middle aged woman one day who told me she had given up on Christianity. “It just didn’t work for me,” she said. My response was: “What on earth made you think Jesus was supposed to work for you? The truth is that you were supposed to work for him.”

The language we use so often betrays us, as it did here. He continues:

It seems that many assume Jesus is supposed to be our personal magical genie who grants our wishes, at least some of the time. Such a magical view of faith is catastrophic, for people abandon what they thought was the Christian faith when it doesn’t work. And worse, people think they’re embracing the Christian faith when it does.

OUCH!

How often have I silently thought this. If I pray enough, give enough, do enough good works etc then life will be okay. If I care about the poor enough I will always have a home for my children. In the end, Jesus does not promise these things - at least when you look at the experience of those who follow God in Scripture. Greg points out the experiences of Mary, the mother of Jesus (who despite being 'favoured' had to watch her son crucified and die a painful death) and John the Baptist, left to languish in prison and suffer some serious doubts.

We, here in the western church, seem to expect an easy life as a 'right', conveniently forgetting scriptures such as,

But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that (1 Tim 6:8)

Greg expresses it this way:

To follow Jesus authentically is to die to everything the flesh-self holds dear, whether we actually lose them or not. We must die to the quest to avoid of pain and inconvenience; die to the quest for pleasure, power and fame; die to the security of our homes, family, friends and nation; and even die to the certainty of our opinions. Every attempt to gain a personal sense of worth, significance and security by what we do, what we accomplish, what we acquire and who we impress must die.

In the end, to follow Jesus is to lose my life. I would like to do that - I just sometimes wonder if I can.

Jesus commands this much, not because he is mean, but because he is more profoundly in love with us than we could possibly ever imagine. And he knows that it is this false, self-centered way of living that is keeping us from true life. When we have truly died, we discover this. To be free from the self that is addicted to the question: What’s in it for me? is to be truly ALIVE and free.
It is to enter into the kingdom of God.
But, as Jesus always taught, you can only find this life if you complete loose your life.
If you’re focusing on this life, here and now, following Jesus doesn’t “work” and we should stop telling people that it does. But if we’ll die to the attempt to make things “work” for us, we’ll discover a deeper LIFE that no longer cares about what does and doesn’t work for us. We’ll discover the LIFE of the Kingdom.

I couldn't say it any better myself - I only hope I can live it!

Modern Life is Rubbish

2008-12-03T16:43:00.004Z

I have spent most of my adult life feeling removed form the world around me. I looked at the messages and expectations of the dominant society within United Kingdom and I just said to myself, “no thanks”. Apart from a very sad period of about 2 years when I was seduced by the idea of wealth and success (and failed fairly spectacularly!), I found the whole way of living in the modern world so removed from what I see in the gospels.

The thing is, I don’t want to make peace with the world because, as Damon Albarn so eloquently put it, Modern Life is Rubbish. If my life is based around the concept of get a job, get a house, get married/live together, get a bigger house, get a conservatory, get a new kitchen, remortgage to pay off the credit cards, get a pension, retire, die, then kill me now – I DO NOT WANT TO LIVE LIKE THAT. I have tried to reason through some of this and find a balance, but in the last four years it has got even more clear that balance can be enemy of change, that balance can just be a synonym for accommodation – I do not want to accommodate the corrupt, selfish, blinkered, shallow and debauched value system that I see around me. So – here are the things I am working through:

What’s the big deal with property and consumerism?

Because of a whole series of circumstances, we do not own a house. This used to freak me out – I bought into the idea that I needed to own property (or actually rent it from a bank until I hoped my endowment could pay it off in my 50’s), and that I was in trouble because I didn’t. About 2 years ago (just as house prices were going through the roof), my bank begged me to take out a £220,000 mortgage – they even sat me down and offered it to me without me asking them. Looking back, the payments and house value would have left us in a terrible situation, adn I am thankful I didn't take up their offer. I would have been working to pay the mortgage and bound to it – not free to make the right decision for my family. Everything would have been coloured by the need to pay the mortgage.

The problem is that our economy is based upon the need for continual consumer spending, and the main driver of wealth creation for the last 16 years has been property. People would find equity in their house and either see it as a pension and put less into a plan, or release it to enable spending directly. Either way, our economy is now seizing up because of the lack of house sales.

I do not accept the premise of the consumer economy. If our society needs retail spending to grow then the system is wrong. I’ll repeat that – THE SYSTEM IS WRONG. I do not want to accommodate the consumer society – I want to change it. I want to live differently, and to raise my children to live differently as well. I will not conform to this. I will find a better way to live – one more in harmony with the teaching of Jesus – principles of justice, mercy, righteousness, truthfulness, generosity, sacrifice and mutuality.

But won’t you look a bit weird if you try and not live like the rest of society?

Yes.

End of paragraph.

But seriously – SO WHAT. Since when has ‘fitting in’ ever convinced anybody that there is a better way to live. If I can learn from others who are exploring this, and if I can start to live in a way that embraces the value above, I have to. I feel an imperative not to let these feelings drift until I get to my old age and regret living in-between worlds, feeling the tension of rejecting one set of values but not fully embracing another.

I know that the logical end of what I am suggesting looks very different from the individualistic way that we live now, and that it challenges the roots of our society. That both repels and attracts me in equal measure.

So what does it look like?

I don’t know. I look at some of the excellent examples that have found a different way to live, such as The Simple Way in Philadelphia, USA and the Northumbria Community in the UK and rejoice in what they do. But I want something that works here and now in Shrewsbury, Shopshire, with the people I know. I want something that I can do now.

This is just the start of my conversation, but I will continue to blog and work this out.

Hitler and the emerging church

2008-11-26T11:39:00.003Z

OK - I haven't blogged for over a month, but this film was so tasteless and funny I had to post it (but I think it helps to know who the 'players' are in Emergent Village).

(HT TSK - or the Srawny Kiwi as we now know him!)

Church Planting or 'my church' planting?

2008-10-11T08:35:00.002+01:00

Adrian Warnock has an interesting post about a new church plant project from Newfrontiers in Belfast. Now - the passion in Newfrontiers for mission and reaching people is something that really does need to be applauded - and the willingness of people to leave their current lives and uproot to work in a new area is wonderful.

However, here is the list of the aims of the plant:

The emerging vision for the church plant is:
To see a Christ-centered church planted in Belfast city, on a mission seeking a transformed city.

To be a church that reflects the growing diversity of Belfast.

To see multiple thriving congregations established across Belfast.

To plant churches in all five cities in Northern Ireland.

To plant churches in every major town in Northern Ireland.

To raise up indigenous leaders and church planters.

Here is my problem - there are already Christ-centred churches in Belfast. There are churches doing great work reflecting the "growing diversity". There are many congregations. There are churches in all five cities and every major town, and there are certainly indigenous leaders.

If the vision was to go into a specific community in Belfast and reach people (there are many really needy areas there!) that would be great. But, it feels like the actual aim is to put Newfrontiers churches where there are not any.

My suggestion - why not find people who are already doing great work in Belfast - and there are some great people - and offer the the people, time, money and resources to go and do what they are already doing better? Surely that would be a better testimony to Jesus?

I worry, although I would love to be proved wrong, that the reason not to do this
is actually in the rather sectarian title to Adrian's post -

A Reformed Charismatic Church in Belfast, Northern Ireland - the 11th Largest City in the UK

God Wants Me Rich!!!!!

2008-09-11T07:37:00.001+01:00

This had me laughing uncontrollably this morning. He he he

Todd Bentley, divorce and the state of our hearts

2008-08-16T10:16:00.002+01:00

With the news of Todd Bentley's separation from his wife the blog fallout has begun.

Michael Spencer (also known as the Internet Monk) offers rather a lot of advice for someone on the outside.

Peter Kirk avoids the issues to focus on prayer.

The Simple Pastor recalls a conversation we were having about the whole thing fading away - prescient, but not in the way we imagined.

A moving and honest letter from Charisma editor Lee Grady.

A bit of a 'told you so' from the heresy hunters - fairly predictable.

I remained fairly skeptical throughout the whole thing, but I sincerely hope I can avoid a 'told you so' or gloating or anything else removed from the gracious fruit of the Spirit. In the middle of this are young children experiencing one of the most painful experiences of childhood (I know - it happened to me) and countless needy people who threw their lot in with this in the hope of finding God. This all needs prayer - not covering up or gloating.

What on earth are we here for?

2008-07-24T09:45:00.004+01:00

This cartoon is appearing in the latest issue of Private Eye (Note for Ian Hislop - please don't sue me - I want people to go and buy your mag!!!!) and it just sums up exactly what I think the problem is with the church right now.

It is, in my humble opinion, both incredibly accurate and a damning judgement form a secular mag on the sort of pathetic navel-gazing that goes on. As long as the church (and not just the C of E) insists on obsessing over issues such as gender, sexuality, the atonement etc at the expense of actually looking outwards and seeing what needs God has placed right on our doorstep how on earth can we claim to acting in the will of God. The simple answer is that we cannot. Whether conservative, fundamentalist, reformed, liberal or whatever, if we place this sort of truth above the mission in our society we have got it very badly wrong.

Rant over ...

The New Conspirators - a book review

2008-07-19T08:46:00.004+01:00

A new Tom Sine book is one of those publishing events that, even with working in the industry, I find myself getting excited by. Tom is perhaps best known for his books The Mustard Seed Conspiracy and Mustard Seed versus McWorld.

With The New Conspirators Tom wanted to chart the rise of a number of new Christian movements, as well as try and plot some of the future direction (his speciality). He identifies four main new streams:

Emerging church
Mosaic, multicultural church
Missional church
Contemporary monastic movement

The book is divided into five ‘conversations’

Taking the New Conspirators Seriously
Taking the Culture Seriously
Taking the Future of God Seriously
Taking the Turbulent Times Seriously
Taking our Imaginations Seriously

The first section is a superb overview of what is happening – mainly in the United States and the United Kingdom, but also including some interesting stuff in other commonwealth countries, from inner city churches, social action projects to new forms of community. The stories are inspiring and really practical – a refreshing change from what you often see (heavy on theory, lacking on how to actually do it!).

The next three sections are all analysis of where we actually are as western culture – from religion through to commerce and society. The sections on the global village, the global mall (a phrase I first heard in the wonderful Colossians Remixed) and the imbalanced lifestyle of the west are helpful and provoking. After this, when discussing global poverty it starts to get a bit bogged down in detail and loses some of the inspirational impact.

The final section, Taking our Imaginations seriously, is far better, and much more engaging. It allowed me to feel the breadth of opportunity and possibility that exists when the messages of our culture are no longer limiting the way we might live and the impact we can have.

Overall a great book that is a useful addition to the whole discussion of where the church is going and what it can do.

Crumbs from your table

2008-05-24T06:36:00.004+01:00

So 'revival' is hitting Florida and Dudley (!!). The blogosphere has created the usual difference between those who love it and those who just hate it. There have been some gently sceptical posts that have been much more balanced, such as Phil Whittal and Terry Virgo.

I remain pretty suspicious of the whole thing for a number of reasons.

1. Todd Bently talks about this angel called 'Emma' who apparently ministers in his revival meetings. See here.

2. The Gnostic overtones of special knowledge and revelation.

3. The seeking after 'blessings' - it seems to distract from the 'business' of being the body of Christ to a needy world. I am reminded of the words of U2:

‘You speak of signs and wonders/well I need something other/I would believe if I was able/but I’m waiting for the crumbs from your table’

I'm not sure - I don't want to judge, but I am concerned that we will all get pulled off track from doing what is really important - helping the poor and needy, loving the lost, caring for each other etc.

What does it mean to be Christian in the UK?

2008-05-22T15:38:00.003+01:00

This post was partly inspired by Phil's comments on the recent debates on embryology and abortion in parliament this week - see here for more info.

It got me thinking - I always feel really uncomfortable by much of the Christian response at times like this - especially the alienating, strident and above all, apocalyptic tone adopted by Churches and Christian pressure groups - something is always the 'thin end of the wedge'.

I have to be honest, I cannot help but think that these issues are more nuanced and subtle than we give them credit for. I am naturally a non-scientific person. I distrust the grand claims of science to solve the ills of the world, and also for it to be free from moral control as if it were beyond morality (think Hitler). However, I do find myself out of step with the loudest Christian voices on many issues:

Abortion

Abortion is always a terrible thing. In most cases it is an absolute wrong with no grey areas (there may be some exceptions to this). However, we do not live in a world where everyone will think like this. The experience of women who were forced by familial pressure (or their own desperation) to seek an illegal abortion is enough to persuade me we want to avoid that. So - I guess I do support limited early termination - not because it is right at all - it is very wrong - but as a very unsatisfactory sticking plaster to prevent two evils being commit ed instead of one. This really pains me - legislation the ending of a life is something I find repulsive, but it may be the lesser of all the evils.

Homosexuality

Hmm - I am pretty sure the bible condemns homosexual practice - the greek word is pretty specific but I blush to describe it here!. It does not condemn homosexual orientation (whatever that is), homosexual feelings, or being in a loving (non-sexual) life-long same-sex relationship. As far as I can see. However, the Church should have the right to hold this position. It does not have the right to dictate how the rest of society behave, and nor should it. It this country decides to allow gay marriage then that is up to that society. Why is Gay marriage making a country that has done so much harm to so many people during the last two centuries LESS Christian? Also, is a life-long gay relationship really as sinful as a serially monogamous heterosexual one? Is it not hypocritical to allow married divorcees full membership in the church and not those in a gay partnership? I'm not sure but I do wonder.

Embryology

This is an emotive issue - and I do worry that we have a situational ethical approach here - "anything is ok if it can one day help someone" sort of thing. That frees science from moral accountability which leads to what C S Lewis called 'scientism' where the scientist becomes the dictator of behaviours within society. However, research on embryos that are only a few days old is a moral, but not a practical, wrong. The ten day old embryo has no nervous system, cannot feel pain, is not suffering. In that sense it is very different from mid to late term abortion. But if we accept life already exists then it is a moral wrong. BUT - it is not in the same league as mid-to-late-term abortion, where there is real suffering, and we weaken the argument on that by equating them

Anyway - my rant over - I am just trying to sort through these issues.

Resisting the Empire

2007-11-07T22:55:00.000Z

There is an interesting tradition within Jewish biblical interpretation call the Targum. This phrase, originally taken from the Aramaic translations of the Jewish scriptures and still used in this way, came to mean the blending of interpretation, translation and application of scripture.

In their book Colossians Remixed Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat apply this principle to various passages of the book of Colossians. Their main thesis in the book is that Paul wrote this letter to encourage believers to not be seduced by the values of the Roman empire and all it stood for, and that we should also do the same now with whatever worldly 'empire' dominates the ideas and practices today.

Their argument is that the empire we live under is that of global consumerism, and that the imperial nature can be seen through the oppression, commodotization and brutalization of people and the world. From this starting point they create a targum from Colossians 2:8 – 3:4. Here is a selection from that, bearing in mind that this is a blend of translation, interpretation and application:

Make sure that no one takes your imaginations captive through a vacuous vision of life rooted in an oppresive regime of truth that parades itself as something other than mere human tradition, as if it somehow had access to final and universal truth about the world apart from Christ.

...

In him you find your legitimacy, your entrance into the covenantal community, because in relation to himyour real problem – a deeply rooted sinfulness manifest in violence and self-protective exclusion – is addressed and healed.

...

Don't forget that you were once dead too – dead in the dead-end way of life that characterizes our cannibalistic and predatory culture. But now you are dead to that way of life, and God has made you alive with Christ by dealing with the real problem through radical forgiveness. You see, when the idolatrous power structures that bolster this oppressive regime nailed Jesus to the cross and poured out their fury on him, all of your debts were nailed there too. All of the ways the empire of death held you captive and robbed you of life – the exhausting and insatiable imperative to consume, the bewildering cacophony of voices calling out to us in the post-modern carnival ... the masturbatory self-indulgence of linguistic and societal games .. all of this is nailed to the cross.

Let's not beat around the bush here. What is at stake in this conflict at the cross is indeed a power struggle. And Jesus takes precisely the principalities and powers that placed him on the cross – the idols of militarism, nationalism, racism, technicism, economism – and on that very cross disarms, dethrones, conquers, and makes public example of them.

...

If all of this is true then, don't allow the front-men of these vanquished powers to tell you what to eat and drink. Don't buy into the simulated grocery stores made to remind shoppers of an era when shopping was more integral to community life. Don't be duped by advertising that tells you that various products are indispensable to constructing certain images and personas. This is all crap. They are still trying to captivate your imagination, to suck you into a globalistic regime of homogeneous consumption. Resist this McWorld nightmare with all the strength you have! Avoid the Disneyization of your consciousness. This stuff has no substance to it, no being ... but in Christ we find substance

...

If with Christ you died in your baptism to the principles of autonomous consumerism that still hold the world captive, then why do you live in a way that suggests that you are still in iron grip of its ideological vision? Why do you submit yourselves to its regulations to consume as if there were no tomorrow, to live as if community were an impediment to personal fulfillment, to live as if everything were disposable, including relationships, the unborn and the environment? ... Don't you know that copulating with the idols of this culture is like climbing into bed with a corpse that is already decomposing?

Rejecting the Empire

2007-11-06T07:04:00.000Z

Having ignored my blog for a couple of months whilst seriously working through some of the issues that the community conversation has provoked (more on that later!), I am back.

I went to the Faithworks Conference last week, and got to spend some time with Shane Claiborne and Brooke Sexton from the Simple Way community - always a great time (I hadn't seen them since we shared a grotty chalet at the Skegness Spring Harvest 18 months ago). Shane led a great seminar as well, which he concluded with this great prayer that he encourage people there to join in with:

With governments that Kill…we will not comply.
With the theology of Empire…we will not comply.
With the business of Militarism…we will not comply.
With the hoarding of Riches…we will not comply.
With the dissemination of Fear…we will not comply.

But today, we pledge our ultimate allegiance to the Kingdom of God…we pledge allegiance.

To the peace that is not like Rome’s…we pledge allegiance.
To the gospel of enemy love…we pledge allegiance.
To the kingdom of the poor and the broken…we pledge allegiance.
To the king who loved his enemies so much He died for them…we pledge allegiance.
To the least of these, with whom Christ dwells…we pledge allegiance.
To the transnational Church that transcends that artificial borders of nations…we pledge allegiance.
To the Refugee of Nazareth…we pledge allegiance.
To the homeless Rabbi who had no place to lay His head…we pledge allegiance.
To the Cross rather than the Sword…we pledge allegiance.
To the Banner of Love above any flag…we pledge allegiance.
To the One who rules with a towel rather than an iron fist…we pledge allegiance.
To the One who rides a donkey rather than a war horse…we pledge allegiance.
To the Revolution that sets both oppressed and oppressors free…we pledge allegiance.
To the Way that leads to Life…we pledge allegiance.
To the Slaughtered Lamb…we pledge allegiance.
…
In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit…Amen.

What is Community?

2007-09-07T11:33:00.000+01:00

There have been some great discussions in recent days over at Matt Hosier's blog about just what Christian community looks like. A general feeling of dissatisfaction was felt by most commentators, and a deep feeling that the way we live in the west is not all there is, or even a particularly good way to live.

I have seen this discussion widening more and more in both the UK and the US with blogs such as Matt, Tim Simmonds, Phil Whittall's ; groups on Facebook such as New Monasticism and the Irresistible Revolution and Another World is Possible; and provoking books such as School(s) for Conversion: 12 Marks of a New Monasticism. What I find interesting is the breadth of people talking about this - Anglicans, Methodists, Charismatics, Reformed - the whole breadth, uniting around the idea that it is possible to express Christ through community more than we are at the moment.

These things have been bubbling away inside me for a few years now, and are beginning to take a more solid shape. Here are some random thoughts:

Why do we all need to live in our own little boxes? Why can we not share housing - releasing resources, saving energy, creating a more open and welcoming envirnoment?
How can we make the shift form seeing possession as 'my stuff' and start seeing them as 'God's Stuff' and thus seeing them as 'Our Stuff' - holding things lightly and generously?
If the world cannot sustain the life of the average Briton when given to the whole population of the earth, should we not change our lifestyle to live more simply?
The Church could be a prophetic voice, living genuinely counter-culturally to show that a better world is possible, that we do not have to live selfish, consumer-driven lives.

This all feels like a lot of jumbled thoughts at the moment. Anyone want to join me in working out what it all means?

Why Folk Music

2007-08-22T19:19:00.000+01:00

We are off to the Shrewsbury Folk Festival this weekend - hurrah!!!! 4 days of great music, food, weird stalls (and smells!), workshops and Professor Panic's circus for the kids. I have been wondering - although I love a lot of music from many genres, folk music holds a particular appeal. Perhaps I should use the more acceptable word of 'roots' music as my interest is really in many form of traditional music from around the world - Cuban, African, blues, bluegrass etc.

However, as a resident of this Island I am particularly interested in the roots music of Britain and, as I live here, England (Bellowhead and Eliza Carthy have both played Womad and Bellowhead even describe themselves as 'English World Music'). Folk music has had a rough deal in the last few decades - I guess the memory of Ewan MacColl singing with his finger in his ear is too deep in culture - but there is a revival going on right now with a number of great young artists such as Eliza Carthy (daughter of Norma Waterson and Martin Carthy - probably one of the best guitarists in the world and inspiration to Bob Dylan and Paul Simon), Kate Rusby, Seth Lakeman, Tim van Eyken, Spiers and Boden and their incredible aforementioned Ensemble Bellowhead. In fact, here they are on Jools Holland:

It may seem anachronistic and backwards looking to be doing this, but I really don't see it that way. Why do I like it:

I like the fact that event when writing new songs there is a sense of respect for the tradition of songs passed down through the ages.
Being rooted in culture is important - I can rejoice when I see any new musician connecting with those who have gone before him by exploring his cultural and musical roots.
The songs are narrative - Post-modern before it existed - they tell stories that deserved to be remembered, and we should be telling more stories of life. I think of Billy Bragg's songs, such as 'Tender Comrade' as a good example of this.
It is about community - whether it is singing along, playing or dancing - rather than just a spectator event.

Show of Hands wrote a song recently, Roots, with these lyrics:

'ROOTS' by Steve Knightley.

"Now it's been twenty-five years or more
I've roamed this land from shore to shore
From Tyne to Tamar, Severn to Thames
From moor to vale, from peak to fen
Played in cafes and pubs and bars
I've stood in the street with my old guitar
But I'd be richer than all the rest
If I had a pound for each request
For 'Duelling Banjos' 'American Pie'
Its enough to make you cry
'Rule Britannia' or 'Swing Low'
Are they the only songs the English know?

Seed, bud, flower, fruit
They're never gonna grow without their roots
Branch, stem, shoots - they need roots

After the speeches when the cake's been cut
The disco is over and the bar is shut
At christening, birthday, wedding or wake
What can we sing until the morning breaks?
When the Indian, Asians, Afro, Celts
It's in their blood, below the belt
They're playing and dancing all night long
So what have they got right that we've got wrong?

Seed, bud, flower, fruit
Never gonna grow without their roots
Branch, stem, shoots - we need roots

Haul away boys let them go
Out in the wind and the rain and snow
We've lost more than well ever know
Round the rocky shores of England

And a minister said his vision of hell
Is three folk singers in a pub near Wells
Well I've got a vision of urban sprawl
It's pubs where no one ever sings at all
And everyone stares at a great big screen
Over-paid soccer stars, prancing teens
Australian soap, American rap
Estuary English, baseball caps
And we learn to be ashamed before we walk
Of the way we look and the way we talk
Without our stories or our songs
How will we know where we've come from?
I've lost St George in the Union Jack
It's my flag too and I want it back

Seed, bud, flower, fruit
Never gonna grow without their roots
Branch, stem, shoots - we need roots

Haul away boys let them go
Out in the wind and the rain and snow
We've lost more than we'll ever know
Round the rocky shores of England"

Here is the song - it says it all really.

Barth is my Inspiration

2007-08-15T13:33:00.000+01:00

Or at least this little survey tells me so :-)

You scored as Neo orthodox, You are neo-orthodox. You reject the human-centredness and scepticism of liberal theology, but neither do you go to the other extreme and make the Bible the central issue for faith. You believe that Christ is God's most important revelation to humanity, and the Trinity is hugely important in your theology. The Bible is also important because it points us to the revelation of Christ. You are influenced by Karl Barth and P T Forsyth.

Neo orthodox

71%

Roman Catholic

68%

Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan

68%

Emergent/Postmodern

64%

Reformed Evangelical

32%

Modern Liberal

25%

Fundamentalist

21%

Charismatic/Pentecostal

18%

Classical Liberal

11%

What's your theological worldview?
created with QuizFarm.com

I took this test twice, at different times to see if I would get different results, but it came out pretty much the same each time. Strangely - the responses here don't suprise me that much - although they may shock my church leaders!

Porn stars, womanhood and the wallpaper of our lives

2007-08-11T16:10:00.000+01:00

One of the great traditions in Britain is the long line of inspirational, strong female role models. Think of Boudicca, Elizabeth I, Florence Nightingale, Emmeline Pankhurst, Charlotte Mason and Beatrix Potter (her environmentalism was so far ahead of its time).

So, what has happened today. When the biggest role models are Jordan, Posh Spice, Britney Spears or the latest 5-minute starlet to get her kit off for Nuts something has really gone wrong. In a survey a shocking survey 63% of the girls surveyed would rather be 'glamour' models than have a real career (don't try and tell me that being glamour model is a career - you may earn money, but you contribute to the continued subjugation of women through sexual exploitation - choosing this makes you a disgrace to your gender - as reading would make me a disgrace to mine).

I remember catching a few minutes of a Christine Aguilera concert in which she writhed in her underwear with two male dancers, and the editing switched to an 8 or 9 year old girl in the audience watching with rapt attention to the floor show. All I could think was "what kind of message is this girl getting about what it means to be a person and a woman?" Is wanting to be shagged all there is to being a woman in the 21st century - is this really all there is? Naomi Wolf recently wrote an excellent piece entitled The Porn Myth in which she highlights the way porn has become "the wallpaper of our lives", that boys expect porn star looks and porn star sex, and that real women, unable to match up to this, have just become "bad porn". Here is a great quote from the article:

The porn loop is de rigueur, no longer outside the pale; starlets in tabloids boast of learning to strip from professionals; the “cool girls” go with guys to the strip clubs, and even ask for lap dances; college girls are expected to tease guys at keg parties with lesbian kisses à la Britney and Madonna.

So boys grow up with a twisted idea of masculinity and femininity, and girls grow up with the ambition to be either a porn star or (if they are really ambitious) a WAG. And we have the blind complacency to call it 'harmless fun'. God save us.

Harry Potter - a Christian book after all!

2007-08-07T16:44:00.000+01:00

Okay - Harry Potter has been out for over two weeks so I feel okay I posting this now. WARNING - there are spoilers in this post if you haven't read it yet.

Harry Potter books are Christian fiction! I don't mean the soppy, sentimental, preachy, formulaic drivel that is often published. I mean writing in the tradition of Graham Greene, Flannery O'Connor, Dorothy L Sayers, J R R Tolkien and C S Lewis. Writing with learning, depth, spiritual insights and the thread of biblical truth running throughout.

I remember when the first HP movie came out there was this strange furore. At my church I remember this tape by some preacher being hawked around warning Christian parents of the evils of the Hogwarts bunch. As I later discovered when reading it for myself it was a wonderful example of how to take book quotes out of context to prove a groundless point. After reading the first two books to find out what all the fuss was about, I then ready the last five for the sheer pleasure of a great story reasonably well written. And with the release of the last HP book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the Christian undercurrent that I suspected all along has burst out into the story.

There was one of the finest article on this posted last week by a guy called Jerry Bowyer, Harry Potter and the Fire Breathing Fundamentalists. I ought to emphasise that he is looking at the references in both Scripture and Christian art throughout the centuries, so this probably won't all convince the fire-breathers of his title. He puts the case well for a Christian basis to the books including:

Harry as a type of Prince Harry/Henry V - the archetypal Christian king.
Harry as a type of King Arthur - his upbringing, the wizard guide, the sword from the lake etc.
The battle with the Basilisk in Chamber of Secrets as a type of the descent into Hell by Christ, and of the crushing of the serpents head foretold in Genesis.
The 'expecto patronum' spell literally means 'I look for the Saviour', and Harry Patronus is a Stag, a common symbol of Christ in medieval art.

This really became so obvious in Deathly Hallows when Harry goes as a willing sacrifice to die, and then returns from the place of the dead he goes to (called King's Cross), following which Voldemort's curses no longer have any power over him. This fulfills the scripture from 1 Corinthians quoted earlier in the book, "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death".

For those who wonder if this is all intentional, this quote from J K Rowling when asked is she was a Christian herself should end any argument:

"Yes I am. Which seems to offend the religious right far worse than if I said I thought there was no God. Every time I’ve been asked if I believe in God, I’ve said yes, because I do, but no one ever really has gone any more deeply into it than that, and I have to say that does suit me, because if I talk too freely about that I think the intelligent reader, whether 10 or 60, will be able to guess what’s coming in the books.”

After laying this out, Bowyer makes this devastating comment:

I think the problem is that so much of the religious right failed to see the Christianity in the Potter novels because it knows so little Christianity itself. Yes, there are a few ‘memory verses’ from Saint Paul, and various evangelical habits like the ‘sinner’s prayer’ and the alter call. However the gospel stories themselves, the various metaphors and figures of the Law and the Prophets, and their echoes down through the past two millennia of Christian literature and art are largely unknown to vast swaths of American Christendom, including its leaders.

I can't really add any more.

Cheap is Good

2007-07-18T17:26:00.001+01:00

Tesco have somehow managed to get into the recent seek.net booklet, The Internet Shoppers Guide to Going Green (actually in a sanitised version of the real product made for sale in supermarkets). As well as somehow selling themselves as an ethical supplier of entertainment product (... uh huh ... I'll blog about the neutralisation of ethical shopping by increased consumerisation another day) they also have an advert that reads as follows:

Books.
Once upon a time they seemed pricey.
So we decided to sell them.
Cheaply.
The end.

Yes. Very clever advert but utter rubbish. The fact is that Tesco, along with the other retailers, choose a few books each month to promote, demand extortionate discounts that only the biggest publishers can afford, and then choose at least one book to promote as a 'loss leader'. This means they will sell it cheaper than it can be bought by other retailers from a wholesaler and use it as a 'driver' for 'footfall' (forgive the retail-speak).

This does not help book retailing, in fact it cheapens the whole business of books, restricts the market to a few big players and reduces the amount that even they have to spend on developing new authors. This is not some act of salvation for the book trade by Tesco, it is the complete opposite.

Only the Hip Shall Be Redemmed

2007-07-08T19:13:00.000+01:00

More than a decade ago folk/punk band The Electrics wrote a great song, The Hip Shall Be Redeemed, with these immortal lines:

Only the hip shall be redeemed
The poor and the pathetic will all get creamed
When God comes back to judge us
He'll be wearing Levi jeans
'Cause only the hip shall be redeemed

This song has stayed with me since - the idea that the right sort of clothing (or the right music, haircut or anything else) has any value in the community of those following Jesus is so utterly repugnant that it beggars belief that people actually think that way. The song follows up with this great satire:

And if you do not look the part
The sorry man how sad thou art
If you don't fit our body can't be one

It has really bothered me as I have traveled on both sides of the atlantic that in the progressive churches and movements there is an increasing focus on looking hip. The number of trendy preachers, mission directors and others who wouldn't be seen dead in anything other than Nike trainers, the right label on their shirt or the right music on their iPod (and it has to be an iPod) has been noticable. I'm not sure if this is an attempt to be 'cool' or just an unconscious enculturalization but it means that the more important questions about the ethics of production and materialism get subjugated to having the right stuff.

Is this what the church should be?

On the banks of the Clyde

2007-07-01T10:39:00.000+01:00

Glasgow was a strange time. I arrived by train at about the same time that the attempted attack on Glasgow airport occurred, and having left London just 5 days earlier, and just prior to the car bomb attempts there, really brought home the closeness of the attacks. It is ironic that at a time like this I am travelling on a tour about non-violence.

The event itself went smoothly in the rather grand setting of the Royal Concert Hall, although the Scottish crowd were full of enthusiasm.

Rather surreal time afterwards, when I was offered a life back to my hotel by a couple of radio presenters (they do a show together) with whom I had just met. However, the driver got lost and I ended up getting a delightful tour of the motorway circling Glasgow whilst seeing my hotel retreat into the distance! It was fun (in a funny kind of way)!

I am now on the train down, managing to escape the worst of the delays etc) to Cambridge for the final night tonight.

Wolverhampton Town

2007-06-29T07:43:00.000+01:00

Okay - so this is a song sung by Rangers fans for their 1961 win in the Cup Winners' Cup, but at least it is a song!

After spending a relaxing day or so in Shrewsbury, it was off to the next gig. Last night's events was perhaps the best yet. The Wulfrun Hall is a great music venue seating around 650 (and 1100 standing) and had an incredible vibe to it. as a rock venue they are used to providing 'riders' in the dressing rooms - probably normally lots of cold beer, Jack Daniels etc, so I think they were a little bemused for our request for a plate of sandwiches, some cans of coke and a few bottles of water!

The crowd were loud, excited and Rob was really on form. The show is now really sharp, and the impact of the stories just seems to hi home even more. My favourite part of last night was the venue manager telling us how he has never seen his hardened security and technical staff affected by something before. Apparently they were 'blown away'!

Land of (their) Fathers

2007-06-27T09:24:00.000+01:00

Tonight's event was at the Coal Exchange in Cardiff - a really grungy music venue in the Bay area. Previous appearances here included The Alarm, The Levellers, Van Morrison and Howard Marks, so Rob was in great company. The venue lent a really 'edgy' feel to the evening, and there was a lot more audience interaction than we have seen in many venues (Manchester apart ... but that is Manchester!).

We arrived into Cardiff around 2pm today, checked into the hotel and was able to spend a bit of time exploring the bay area - a redeveloped old dock and port, now a thriving commercial area with restaurants, pubs, the Welsh Assembly building, the stunning Opera House (with the stirring poem emblazoned on on the building in both Welsh and English "In These Stones/ Horizons/ Sing" - in welsh the word for sing here is Awen which means so much more than the English - it recalls Bardic tradition). We were able to relax and have some dinner looking out over the bay in some rare sunshine before heading off to the venue.

The building, The Coal Exchange, is over 100 years old and used to be, you guessed it, the Coal Exchange! That is, it is where the coal stocks from around the world were traded, and Rob performed on what was the trading room floor. Although all the redevelopment is great, I couldn't help but feel sad that this great music venue was going to be turned into expensive apartments for over-paid bankers!

Off to Shrewsbury today (my home town - I get to sleep in my bed!), where we are staying for the Wolverhampton gig.

Southampton

2007-06-26T09:17:00.000+01:00

I racked my brain but couldn't think of any song reference for Southampton. Any ideas?

With Southampton we start the back half of the tour - just 4 dates to go now. Last night was at the Nuffield Theatre located on the Southampton University campus. A great theatre - about 500 capacity (and another sell-out) but feeling really intimate.

Rob has media interviews with the Tear Times (from Tearfund - see the last post) and Inspire magazine. We also all had chance to have some dinner with Delirious? (the band) and also a Pastor based here in Southampton called Billy Kennedy - see New Community, who is working with Oasis and Steve Chalke, working with some failing schools.

We head off now to Cardiff for tonight's event.

Up to the rigs of London Town

2007-06-24T12:04:00.000+01:00

Sorry about missing the Tuesday 19th event at church.co.uk. The planned 22nd date sold out in a couple of weeks so we added another date, but I had to go the States a the same time. By all accounts it went well. Rob was also able to take some time this week and talk with the staff from Tearfund and Oasis, two organisations who do an excellent work and reflect much of what this tour is about.

The 22nd of June was a great time. As well as spending some time with the staff from Oasis, who are based in the offices above Church.co.uk, Rob was interviewed by Premier Radio, Youthwork magazine and the Church Times. This reflects the breadth of interest in in Rob and the way in which thinkers such as Rob, Steve Chalke, Jim Wallis and others are breaking down the old religious boundaries within Christianity.

The event was great - another sell-out - and Rob was able to take some time at the end talking and praying with a number of people. We have had a relaxing weekend in London, and tomorrow we head off to Southampton for the next date.

See you then!

Manchester ... so much to answer for

2007-06-15T22:50:00.000+01:00

Wow! There was so much energy tonight. This was at the 1100 seat Tameside Hippodrome, and was again pretty much a sell-out. The audience did the north proud - loads of energy and feedback, even a wolf whistle for Rob!

The team was introduced to the great British delicacy of Fish and Chips (that's deep fried battered cod and fries soaked in salt and vinegar to the American friends), so the carb count was high, high, high - ha ha. The crew at the venue were wonderful, really professional and made it such an easy experience.

The real highlight was a full page feature in the front part of the Manchester Evening News - with the great line - "Christianity is Rob's Rock'n'Roll".

"In Dublin's Fair City"

2007-06-15T22:48:00.000+01:00

Following the hectic first day of arriving into Belfast, opening night nerves and a performance all in one day the two day trip into Dublin was really relaxing. Wednesday was spent exploring this amazing city, an incredible blend of the traditional and the very modern.

Thursday night performance was in St Mark's, a 250-year-old converted Church off the tourist trail. The venue seated around 400, and the shock on the faces of our local team was palpable as it filled up 30 minutes before the show - apparently this has never happened for ANYONE there before! In many ways the feel of the venue was very different. After playing to a venue seating 1000 or so in Belfast, 400 people all within eye contact made for a more intimate evening. When Rob spoke about the practical ways that we can show Shalom, the audience spontaneously broke into applause and the key word from many of those attending was 'inspiring'.

We are on the plane now flying over the Irish Sea to Manchester for the performance there tonight - from one legendary city to another.

Opening night!!!!

2007-06-13T07:40:00.000+01:00

First night over!

Rob and co all arrived safely yesterday afternoon, somewhat later than planned after a 3-hour wait in the plane on the tarmac at Newark!

Tonight was in Belfast, at the Spires Conference Centre, right in the city centre and the turnout was unbelievable! We opened the doors at 7pm, and the steady flow of people meant that we weren't far from filling the 1000 seat venue! We had sold all 800 issued tickets, but more people came and paid on the door.

Rob came on stage exactly at 8pm to whisltes, cheers and applause for the first night of this tour, and immediately launched into a great evening where he showed. from scripture, all that the Shalom of God means, bringing it right down to the practical needs of people around the world.

The response of the audience was amazing - and it was really moving to hear stories from all the people who are going out and making a difference in their communities, at least partly inspired by Rob's books and NOOMA.

Today we move on to Dublin and have a free evening tonight before speaking at St Mark's, an old converted Church - now a music venue - tomorrow night.

Off on tour!

2007-06-09T17:53:00.000+01:00

I'm very bad. I am sorry I haven't blogged for a while.

Anyway - on Tuesday I go off on tour with Rob Bell on the Calling All Peacemakers tour. The first stop is in Belfast on Tuesday at the Spires Conference Centre, followed by Dublin on the Thursday (14th). We then fly back to the UK, with Manchester on the 15th - I then disappear off to Grand Rapids for a few days - before two London dates on the 19th and 22nd, Southampton on the 25th, Cardiff on the 26th, Wolverhampton is the 28th, Glasgow the 30th and finally Cambridge on the 1st July. Whew!

It is exciting - we have exceeded ticket sales already on the first half of the tour, and the second half looks like it will follow suit.

So ... with this in mind I do plan to keep blogging during the tour giving a 'backstage' view of the events.

See you soon!

"War-cheerleading, crypto-racist, judgemental, hateful Christians"

2007-04-20T13:13:00.001+01:00

Mitch Benn, a superb satirist and musician who is one of the team on the BBC comedy The Now Show (listen to the latest one if you haven't heard of it) posted an excellent blog on his My Space site last year about Christians. It is so good I thought I ought to reproduce it in full. I hope he doesn't sue me!

___________________________________________________

CRC (Campaign For Real Christians)

One of the fun things about the internet is getting to "meet" - electronically anyway - people you would otherwise never encounter.In particular just recently I've had some humdingers of arguments with American Right-Wing "Christians". This is particularly fun because, living in Europe, the kind of Americans you actually meet face to face are almost always the OTHER kind of American. The kind with passports.

I've also met the other kind of Christian American. The kind who are as alarmed and appalled as I am by the particular brand of American "Christianity" which gets all the attention in the world media. The war-cheerleading, crypto-racist, judgemental, hateful kind. One in particular observed to me that he was sure that there were more American Christians who espoused HIS kind of Christianity - the tolerant, loving, inclusive kind - but that it was always the OTHER sort of Christian who got all the headlines.

What follows is my reply to him, and it goes out to all those who don't recognise the louder variety of "Christianity" as anything of the kind...

"So go GET some f**kin' headlines."

Seriously, dude... I'm no Christian myself but I was raised in what I guess you would call the Christian Tradition and you know, my RE teachers were nobody's idea of be-jumpered happy clappers (one of them in particular was a scary-eyed End-Timeser) but looking back, I seem to recall that the Jesus I read about WASN'T a hate-slinging gun-owning judgemental warmonger, but, well, frankly, a bit of a hippy. Maybe even a (whisper it) Liberal (gasps of horror, hands clapped over children's ears...). You know, preached tolerance, forbearance, love for one's fellow man, spoke out against violence and avarice, general tree-hugging sh1t like that.

Now if the Christian Right (who are neither) have managed to acquire a virtual monopoly over which voices of faith are heard in the media, it strikes me that this must be at least PARTIALLY due to Real Christians taking their collective eye off the ball with regards to getting their message heard.

Of course, it's always harder for moderates and reasonable people to grab headlines than it is for ranting nutters because moderates and reasonable people are so, well, moderate and reasonable. Nutters and hatemongers can get their voices heard because they ALWAYS have something to scream about.Well right now, you Real Christians REALLY have something to scream about, namely the hijacking of your faith and your spiritual identity! If you can't get indignant about the vile perversion of Jesus's teaching currently masquerading as "Christian values", what CAN you get indignant about?

The one time I seem to recall Jesus losing his rag was the casting out of the money-lenders from the Temple... Correct me if I'm wrong here but I remember the quotation as "My Father's house is a house of prayer, and you have turned it into a den of thieves!" Right now Christ's father's house - The Church - has been turned into a den of thieves, warmongers, bigots, liars, hypocrites and swindlers. So all you Real Christians out there - those of you who still recall all that hippy crap about peace and forgiveness - channel some of Jesus's righteous anger and cast those b@stards out. Heathens like me can't do it for ya."

Celebrity, real people and the whole tawdry business

2007-04-11T07:28:00.000+01:00

So it has finally been announced that some guy with bad hair has been proven to be the father of a little girl whose mother died in really sad circumstances. This led to wall-to-wall coverage on Fox News, CNN, SKY News, BBC as well as on the network TV shows on both sides of the Atlantic.

Anna Nicole Smith is not the issue here - it is so sad that someone was so duped by a sick and seriously twisted culture that she came to believe that the only thing worth pursuing was fame even when she acknowledged that it wasn't even making her happy. The problem I have is that this is somehow considered of public consequence. Have we got to the point where it is not just celebrity gossip magazines and tabloids that run stories of human tragedy for the benefit of entertainment, but that you can have serious journalists such as Hannity and Colmes actually having a debate over the results of a paternity test for the daughter of a former Playboy model? Is this all that is left in the modern world? The fight has been given up, and appealing to the lowest common denominator in sex, multiple lovers, drugs and death is what all 'news' is now about?

Our culture is at war with itself. On the one hand we ring our hands over the sexualisation of children, celebrity culture, exploitation of women, low educational standards and increasing violence; but then we create and buy Bratz dolls in fishnet stockings, jeans for 9 year old girls with 'Sexy' across the backside, we all watch people destroy themselves on Celebrity Big Brother, create mind-numbing TV and are, in the word's on Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death.

Rob Bell tour

2007-04-04T22:21:00.000+01:00

Cards on the table - I have been involved in organising this. However, I am really excited by the Rob Bell tour to the UK in June of this year. It is called Calling All Peacemakers and is visiting the following cities:

12th June Belfast – Spire Conference centre

14th June Dublin – Tripod

15th June Manchester – Tameside Hippodrome

22nd June London - Church.co.uk

25th June Southampton – Nuffield Theatre

26th June Cardiff – Coal Exchange

28th June Wolverhampton – Wulfrun Hall

30th June Glasgow – Royal Concert Hall

1st July Cambridge- Westroad Concert Hall

£1 from every ticket plus all profits will be donated to the Turami microfinance project. The Turami project, operated by World Relief, extends business loans to 3,500 individuals in Gitega and Bujumbura provinces of Burundi. It was judged by the United Nations to be the best microfinance operation in the country – see http://www.wr.org/wherewework/burundi.asp.

Tickets are available from PuraTickets.com

Is Consumerism an Empire

2007-04-02T18:07:00.000+01:00

I suppose it is because of the industry (publishing) in which I work, but so often I just skim books and often don't allow the book to make any real impact. Then, every so often, a book comes along that you know is going to change your life. One such book for me is Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire by Brian J Walsh and Sylvia C Keersmaat. Their main thesis is that as the Roman domination was the empire at the time of Paul writing the book of Colossians (and which he subverted in the text), so Global Consumerism is the Empire of our postmodern time. Here is a quote:

Globalization isn't just an aggressive stage in the history of capitalism. It is a religious movement of previously unheard-of proportions. Progress is its underlying myth, unlimited economic growth its foundational faith, the shopping mall (physical or online) its place of worship, consumerism its overriding image, "I'll have a Big Mac and fries" its ritual of initiation, and global domination its ultimate goal.

Slavery, Exploitation and Real People

2007-03-28T10:45:00.000+01:00

Phil Whittall, in his blog The Simple Pastor posted this video from the Stop the Traffik campaign about people trafficking. And I have to agree with Phil that it is to the credit of Daniel Bedingfield that he did this.

However, people trafficking is not the only slavery problem today. There are around 27 million real slaves in the world today - more than the total enslaved by the British Empire prior to the abolition. Stop the Traffik is a partner to the Amazing Change campaign (see here for more specific UK information) which campaigns to end all forms of slavery (including human trafficking, sexual slavery and traditional forms of slavery). Here is a video explaining more:

.

I watch these videos and think - what am I waiting for?

Making a Difference

2007-03-26T15:47:00.000+01:00

So on Sunday night my wife and I want to see Amazing Grace movie (it opened here on Friday to coincide with the 200th Anniversary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade - not the end of Slavery in the British Empire - this took another 26 years). As a movie it was ok - but as a piece of inspiration it was incredible. It summed up exactly where I am right now. I have been dwelling on Isaiah 58 for a couple of months now:

Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?
Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe him,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
and your healing will quickly appear;
then your righteousness will go before you,
and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard.
Then you will call, and the LORD will answer;
you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.
"If you do away with the yoke of oppression,
with the pointing finger and malicious talk,
and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,
then your light will rise in the darkness,
and your night will become like the noonday.

I cannot get out of my head the idea that to pour ourselves out on behalf of the opressed, enslaved, beaten down and hungry is the normal Christian life, and the surban-inspired excuses we give sound hollow and empty when compred with passages such as this. Can someone really be truly alive in a life spent paying the mortgage, booking the next vacation and saving for a new kitchen?

So many blogs art the moment are talking about how angry God is with various things - sin, the emerging church (give me a break!), various prominent preachers etc. However, I read this passage from Zechariah this morning:

And the word of the LORD came again to Zechariah:
This is what the LORD Almighty says: 'Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another. 10 Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the alien or the poor. In your hearts do not think evil of each other.'
But they refused to pay attention; stubbornly they turned their backs and stopped up their ears. 12 They made their hearts as hard as flint and would not listen to the law or to the words that the LORD Almighty had sent by his Spirit through the earlier prophets. So the LORD Almighty was very angry.

God was angry because they did not act on behalf of those who cannot act themselves. How much more offensive must our entire culture be in the west, where every buying decision we make for food, clothing, gifts and toys is a moral decision and we fail to make the right choice. Not only are we not acting on behalf of people, we are actively supporting their opporession by not forcing our western companies to stop exploiting people in other parts of the world.

I can hear the clamour of arguments about people needing jobs, that 'fair trade' is just too expensive (and what we mean by that is "If I don't pay the cheap prices and gain from the exploitation I cannot afford to buy that cool new DVD I wanted"!), that the issues are too complicated etc. but it still stands that our buying decisions are a moral decision and our consumerism is morally repugnant to God. Period.

Change, Change, Change

2007-03-23T09:11:00.000Z

A friend of mine, Cameron, wrote about change a couple of days ago:

I think I realized something the other day:
Things change, especially when you're single. It's as if the social networks
upon which you stand are constantly shifting, like plates under a giant
fault line.

Friends get married, people move, people start dating
and fall off the face of the earth, people buy houses, people get new jobs
in other cities.

People change.

This really got me thinking. How much changes so quickly. Some other friends of mine (see http://benjaminirwin.blogspot.com/) moved to Seattle and I haven't seen them since June of last year, and probably won't get chance until summer 2008 at the earliest - and I really miss them. Another friend and colleague has been going through a really tough time and has resigned his position because of this. It has been almost a year since Rob Lacey passed away (I still miss him so much) and yet it seems like life has moved on so much since then.

I think about all the ways in which we try and create stability in our lives - homes, careers, soicial networks, family; but how often it is in a state of constant change. I was talking with my wife this morning and how perhaps the best way to leave something permanent on earth (or as permanent as earth gets anyway) is in the lives of others. Rob Bell asked the question :"What makes you angry?" because whatever makes you angry is probably what you should be pouring your life into and out for. I need to find this - I don't want to look back in five years time to find that I vascilated and hesitated and haven't yet started to embrace the fulness of life.

2007-03-22T13:47:00.000Z

How Lord of the Rings should have ended - VERY funny!

Maybe if I told people about my blog ....

2007-03-22T10:06:00.000Z

It has occured to me that if I want a blog there are a few things I ought to do:

1. I really should post more than every 19 months or so ...

2. I should let people know I have this blog ...

3. I need to write something interesting.

As I have failed on all three so far I thought I would use this post to talk about an incredible article I found:

Looks like the evangelical christians beat us to it!!!

original article http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3061/preaching_revolution/

Preaching Revolution

A new evangelical movement offers lessons for the left

By Zack Exley

"Recently, I blogged a series of essays titled “The Revolution Misses You,” in which I called for progressives to revive the forgotten dream of practical yet radical change. Friends and colleagues immediately scolded me for using “extreme” terms such as “revolution” and “radical.” “You’ll only alienate people,” they said. “This will come back to haunt you.”
At first, I was surprised by what felt like a dramatic overreaction. But I soon realized why I had fallen out of sync with the progressive mainstream on the use of the “R-words”: I had been spending time listening to and reading evangelical Christians who are preaching revolution.
In Grand Rapids, Mich., a 36-year-old evangelical pastor named Rob Bell regularly describes his ministry as “revolutionary,” “radical” and “an insurgency.” Far from alienating people with such language, Bell’s Mars Hill Bible Church draws thousands of new worshipers each year from the mostly conservative and white suburbs of west Michigan. In one recent sermon, available as a podcast from MarsHill.org, Bell tells his congregation that the only time Jesus speaks of God directly taking someone’s life is the Parable of the Rich Fool (Luke 12:13-22), a story about a man who builds bigger barns to store a surplus harvest instead of sharing it with those in need. He closed the sermon by listing a dozen places around Grand Rapids where congregants could unload their own surplus wealth.

In his book Irresistible Revolution, 30-year-old author Shane Claiborne, who is currently living in Iraq to “stand in the way of war,” asks evangelicals why their literal reading of the Bible doesn’t lead them to do what Jesus so clearly told wealthy and middle-class people to do in his day: give up everything to help others.

The popular evangelical Christian magazine Relevant, launched in 2003 by Cameron Strang, the son of a Christian publishing magnate, contains a “Revolution” section complete with a raised red fist for a logo. They’ve also released The Revolution: A Field Manual for Changing Your World, a compilation by radical, Christian social-justice campaigners from around the world."So they got the whole altruistic, anti-imperialist anti-capitalist anti-classist thing going for them, and they're not crazy Trotskyests (not yet), but, you know, the whole "Jesus, and only Jesus, Saves" thing...I'm just trying to predict how this all might escalate in the future, the fall of American Capitalism championed by a brigade of militant, cross bearing, midwestern bible thumpers. Should I be afraid?

Bell and Claiborne are two of the better-known young voices of a broad, explicitly nonviolent, anti-imperialist and anticapitalist theology that is surging at the heart of white, suburban Evangelical Christianity. I first saw this movement at a local, conservative, nondenominational church in North Carolina where the pastor preached a sermon called “Two Fists in the Face of Empire.” Looking further, I found a movement whose book sales tower over their secular progressive counterparts in Amazon rankings; whose sermon podcasts reach thousands of listeners each week; and whose messages, in one form or another, reach millions of churchgoers. Bell alone preaches to more than 10,000 people every Sunday, with more than 50,000 listening in online.

—————————————

But this movement is still barely aware of its own existence, and has not chosen a label for itself. George Barna, who studies trends among Christians for clients such as the Billy Graham Evangelical Association and Focus on the Family, calls it simply “The Revolution” and its adherents “Revolutionaries.”

“The media are oblivious to it,” Barna wrote in his 2006 book Revolution: Finding Vibrant Faith Beyond the Walls of the Sanctuary. “Scholars are clueless about it. The government caught a glimpse of it in the 2004 presidential election but has mostly misinterpreted its nature and motivations.” According to his research, there are more than 20 million Revolutionaries in America, differentiated from mainstream evangelicals by a greater likelihood of serving their community and the poor and oppressed within it, a more “intimate, personally stirring worship of God” in daily life, and a much greater chance of studying the Bible every day.

One indication that this movement is new, nebulous and spontaneous is that Gregory Boyd, a like-minded mega-church pastor two states away in St. Paul, Minn., knew nothing of Rob Bell’s theology until recently. He only heard of the pastors’ conference after the fact because his book Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power is Destroying the Church was distributed to conference participants.

“There’s definitely something going on,” says Boyd. “I’ve only become aware of it as people have responded to my book. It’s not organized — it’s amorphic. It would include the ‘emerging church movement,’ but it’s bigger than that. It’s a vision of the kingdom [of God]. It’s a new kind of Christianity.”

Heather Zydek, the former “Revolution” section editor for Relevant magazine and the editor of The Revolution: A Field Manual for Changing Your World, says, “I definitely don’t have a name for it, but, yes, something is happening. Some people say it’s a Generation X — or Y — thing. But baby boomers are in on it too.”

Jim Wallis, the founder of Sojourners magazine and author of the bestseller God’s Politics, says, “‘Progressive evangelicals’ was thought to be a misnomer, but now we’re a movement.” He was as surprised as anyone when his 2006 book tour for God’s Politics began to develop the feel of a revival tour. At evangelical Christian Bethel University in St. Paul, Wallis spoke shortly after a rally held by Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family. More people attended Wallis’ event. “One of the Dobson organizers came over and told me, ‘If they make us keep focusing on just two issues [abortion and gay marriage], they’re going to lose all of us,’” he says.

Wallis has long been known on the left as a progressive evangelical voice in the wilderness. But in fact, over the past decades Wallis has had plenty of company, including Brian McLaren, Tony Campolo, Ron Sider and N.T. Wright, among others. And while this new generation has been inspired by many of those teachers, they do not have the same association with the organized left that some of their predecessors do. Shane Claiborne is one of the few young voices in this movement who at least knows the history of cross-pollination between the Left and Christianity, mentioning Catholic Worker founder Dorothy Day’s socialist origins in Irresistible Revolution.
Zydek characterizes the movement this way: “We want to get back to the roots of Christianity, to the essence of Christianity, which is about service to those in need, sacrifice, denial of self for others — it’s about [Jesus saying] ‘pick up your cross and follow me.’ But for too long we’ve spread a gospel of suburbanism, of self-centeredness, of capitalism, of political conservatism — but not the gospel: the gospel that came from Christ.”

—————————————

I had been a regular listener of Rob Bell’s sermon podcasts for a few months when he announced the January 20-21 “Isn’t She Beautiful” conference (“She” being the church). The invitation was open to “Church leaders, pastors, and basically just revolutionaries and insurgents from all over the world.” I signed right up.

I arrived at Mars Hill the evening before the conference, in a heavy snow, just in time to catch the regular Sunday night service. The Mars Hill church building is a converted mall. From the outside it looks just like any other old shopping center — they’ve never put up a sign. So when you walk in and see the teeming, logo-free community inside that has taken over every inch of this entire mall, you get the feeling that you’ve walked into an alternate universe. Imagine walking into a McDonalds to find your mom’s kitchen inside.

The sanctuary is a hollowed-out department store that used to host RV shows and swap meets — no decoration, just exposed aluminum walls, ducts and beams. As I walked in, a volunteer handed me a Bible. Three thousand people were on their feet, singing powerfully and worshiping in an explosive expression of collective joy that simply does not exist in the left of this era. There were certainly some “hipster Christians” in the crowd (tattoos, goatees, etc.), but overwhelmingly the congregants were mainstream-looking Michiganders.

Rob Bell finally took to the stage, sporting plastic-rim, hipster glasses, a white belt and cool shirt. He looks like a grown-up indie rock star (and used to play in a popular Grand Rapids band). The son of a Reagan-appointed federal judge, Bell graduated from Wheaton College, where male and female students live in separate dorms with curfews and are encouraged to abstain from physical intimacy. After receiving his M.Div from Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif., Bell interned at a conservative, non-denominational evangelical church in Grand Rapids, from which he launched Mars Hill as a “church plant” in February 1999. The name Mars Hill refers to the site where the apostle Paul preached to non-Jews by making the gospel current and relevant to their own culture.

On this night, Bell barely preached himself, and instead spent the evening, as he often does, interviewing a member of the church about how she was living out the gospel. She and her husband had moved to a broken inner-city neighborhood and begun a tutoring and family assistance ministry that is now in the process of expanding out of a church basement to fill an entire renovated warehouse.

If you compare the Mars Hill complex to progressive community centers or union halls, it has no rival. The entire mall has been converted. Most of the stores are now classrooms for the different grades of its enormous Sunday school. One of the large department stores has been converted into an events and youth meeting space with a stage, and ping pong and pool tables. The broad, carpeted concourse is now filled with comfy sofas and chairs for sitting and talking. Though the complex is perfectly clean and attractive, you get the feeling that the church, in renovating the facilities, has spent the minimum possible resources to meet functional needs.
More striking than the size of Mars Hill is the intensity of participation among the membership. The Mars Hill house church program — where small numbers of people come together in a home for Bible study, fellowship, mutual support and as a launching point for outreach into the community — involves more than 2,000 members in hundreds of groups, each with its own leaders. Several hundred volunteer as childcare providers and Sunday school teachers. And hundreds more serve each Sunday as ushers, parking helpers and medics. (With 3,500 people in a room, you never know what can happen.)

Yet Mars Hill is not atypical. According to the Barna Group, nine percent of Americans attend house churches (up from one percent 10 years ago). And tens of thousands of churches are de facto community centers, serving and supporting virtually all aspects of their members’ lives, usually with a significant percentage of members acting as volunteers. In this way, churches have left progressives in the dust in terms of serving and engaging people directly. The union hall is the left’s nearest equivalent, but not only is it dying, it rarely attempts to serve anywhere near as many of the needs — spiritual and practical — as churches do.

—————————————

Could the shift in focus from personal salvation to the building of the “kingdom of Heaven” be the inevitable result of the long rise of “back to the Bible” fundamentalism? Tens of millions of American Christians are not only reading the Bible, but getting together in groups and studying it — studying the historical context in which the authors wrote, the nuances of the original Greek and Hebrew, and the issues raised by translation and conflicting source texts.

Zydek says, “No matter how you pick and choose your favorite Bible passages, if you know that Jesus died on the cross for you, that’s going to affect the way you treat other people. If you’re a Bible-believing Christian, maybe you choose to emphasize evangelism or maybe you emphasize works, but you can’t ignore Jesus’ example of unconditional love on the cross.”

Wallis agrees. “The religious right is being replaced by Jesus,” he says. “They’re just really digging into Jesus, and what they read in [the Book of] Acts doesn’t correspond to their churches. And so they’re changing them or going out and creating new communities.”
The Revolutionaries’ faith in the Bible leads them to a gospel of social justice, but it also leads to a morality that is far out of step with mainstream American culture and the left. Sex outside of marriage, divorce, “lust,” “sexual immorality” and homosexuality are all things Jesus or other New Testament voices spoke about with varying degrees of intensity.

According to Wallis, the Revolutionaries are “breaking away from the Right in droves — but they will never be captured by the left. They’re going to challenge the left on a lot of things: For these Christians, sex is covenantal and not recreational. And they oppose abortion and they are not going to move away from that.”

Where Revolutionaries most part ways with many mainstream evangelical churches’ interpretation of the Bible is in their embrace of women as leaders, elders and preachers. Mars Hill’s lead elder (board chair) is a woman. A similar process of reversal of the restriction on women in leadership is taking place in many evangelical churches across the country.

—————————————

Boyd’s Myth of a Christian Nation is based on a series of six sermons called “The Cross and the Sword” he delivered at his St. Paul church in the politically-charged atmosphere of the 2004 presidential election, in which Minnesota was a heavily-targeted swing state. In those sermons, which made national news, he said:

Never in history have we had a Christian theocracy where it wasn’t bloody and barbaric. That’s why our Constitution wisely put in a separation of church and state. … I am sorry to tell you, that America is not the light of the world and the hope of the world. The light of the world and the hope of the world is Jesus Christ.

He also spoke out against the exclusive focus on abortion and gay marriage by many evangelical leaders. “Those are the two buttons to push if you want to get Christians to act,” he said. “And those are the two buttons Jesus never pushed.”

His not-very subtle rebuke of Republican electioneering caused around 1,000 members of his congregation to leave. “Close to 700 left during the six-week ‘Cross and the Sword’ sermon series,” he says. “Another 300 or so left when I ‘didn’t have the good sense’ to back off the topic but rather returned to it once again just prior to the election.” But 4,000 stayed. And he said he had never received so much positive feedback in his career: “Some people literally wept with gratitude, saying that they had always felt like outsiders in the evangelical community for not ‘toeing the conservative party line.’”

Yet the Revolution is not primarily a reaction to Republican attempts to politicize the church. What sets it apart from mainstream evangelicalism is not a liberal rejection of Republican politics, but rather a more radical rejection of conservatism and liberalism, and anything else that is not the “kingdom of God.”

To the Revolutionaries, what seems righteous or commonsensical to humans does not matter; all that matters is what God wants. Boyd writes in Myth of a Christian Nation: “To the extent that an individual or group looks like Jesus — dying for those who crucified him and praying for their forgiveness in the process — to that degree they can be said to manifest the kingdom of God. To the degree that they do not look like this, they do not manifest God’s kingdom.”
And that is where anticapitalism and anti-imperialism come in. Capitalism doesn’t look like Jesus. Empire doesn’t look like Jesus. In their critique of the political and economic institutions of the “kingdom of the world,” the Revolutionaries are following in the tradition of early Christianity. In Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire, pastor and theologian Brian J. Walsh and theologian Sylvia C. Keesmaat write:

Just as in the ancient world, the [Roman imperial] images of peace and prosperity masked the reality of inequality and violence, so the contemporary images projected by advertising mask the reality of sweatshops, inequality, and domestic and international violence created by our lifestyles. And in the face of the ubiquitous imagery of the empire, Paul proclaims Jesus as the true image of God (Col 1:15) and calls the Colossian Christians to bear the image of Jesus in shaping an alternative to the empire.

For the Revolutionaries, the new “temple” — from which Jesus chased the money changers in the Bible — is the shopping mall. They write:

Globalization isn’t just an aggressive stage in the history of capitalism. It is a religious movement of previously unheard-of proportions. Progress is its underlying myth, unlimited economic growth its foundational faith, the shopping mall its place of worship, consumerism its overriding image, ‘I’ll have a Big Mac and fries’ its ritual of initiation, and global domination its ultimate goal.

In the shopping mall liberated by Mars Hill, the Colossians Remixed authors — a married couple who home school their children — discussed their work during an all-day forum attended by a thousand suburban, white, middle-class moms and dads. How many authors from the anti-globalization left have presented their ideas to a willing mass audience of middle-class suburbanites?

The thinking and dreaming of this movement is as utopian as the most far-out sect of antiglobalization anarchists, yet they are living it right at the heart of mainstream America. And they are organizing with unbelievable success, attracting thousands of new participants every week and spawning hundreds of new churches and thousands of new small groups and house churches every year.

—————————————

At the “Isn’t She Beautiful” conference, the non-theological sessions were devoted to one of the secrets of this movement’s success: leaders — identifying them, recruiting them, “loving them” and letting them lead. The pastors at the conference all seemed to view their church memberships as seas of under-utilized leaders, and spent as much time as they could learning from each other and the Mars Hill staff how to be the best “fishers of men” they believe Jesus called them to be.

This high-density leadership organizing model stands in stark contrast to anything I’ve ever seen working in unions, progressive organizations and Democratic political campaigns. On the left, recruiting and mobilizing leaders has become devalued work that is typically left to inexperienced recent college graduates. The pastors at this conference, however, saw recruiting and inspiring leaders as one of their central callings. Too often, the left pays lip service to the grassroots, but lacks faith in grassroots leaders. The result is that too many of our organizations are one person deep and stretched impossibly thin. At the conference, I tried to imagine what Kerry campaign field offices (where I spent a lot of time in 2004) would have looked like if we had recruited leaders instead of “bodies” and expected them to be “faithful, committed members of a team” (words included in Mars Hill volunteer job descriptions). Some organizations on the left do include “leadership development” in their organizing models. But churches seem to assume that there are already plenty of “developed” leaders in their midst and go straight to giving them as much responsibility as they can.

Andrew Richards is the “local outreach pastor” at Mars Hill, charged with driving the Mars Hill house church program to reach people in need in the greater Grand Rapids community. “We’re not only taking care of the needs of our own community, but we want to respond to the needs that are in the greater community,” he said before a recent Sunday service while trying to recruit more leaders. He laid out five areas of focus: urban at-risk youth, refugees, poverty, community development and HIV/AIDS.

Rob Bell and other church leaders seem to be building up to a big challenge. It is unclear exactly what is in the works. (Bell does not give interviews.) But he has been preaching more and more about “systemic oppression,” poverty, debt and disease — not just locally but globally. And other leaders have indicated to the membership that the current level of sacrifice for others in the community and the world is not in line with Jesus’ teachings.

On Dec. 10, 2006, Bell kicked off a series of sermons, titled “Calling all Peacemakers,” during
which he said:

Never before in history have there been a group of people as resourced as us. … Never before has there been a group of people who could look at the most pressing needs of the world and think: well, we could do it … History is like sitting right there, in the middle of war, and great expenditure, and violence, and the world torn apart in a thousand directions — [waiting for] a whole ground swell of people to say, ‘Well, we could, we could, we could do this. We could do what Jesus said to do.’

But, as of now, the Revolutionaries seem to be embracing person-to-person, “be the alternative” solutions to the exclusion of advocating for social policy that is more in line with their vision of the kingdom. Boyd says, “I never see Jesus trying to resolve any of Caesar’s problems.”
Wallis believes this reluctance comes from the recent experience of being dragged into the mess of partisan politics on the terms of the Republican party.

“But the prophets [of the Bible] don’t talk about just being an island of hope — they talk about land, labor, capital, equity, fairness, wages,” says Wallis. “And who are the prophets addressing? Employers, judges, rulers. On behalf of widows, orphans, workers, farmers, ordinary people. The gospel is deeply political. It’s not partisan politics, but a prophetic politics. It is what the prophets and Jesus finally call us to.”

“Take any big issue we’ve got: Politics is failing to deal with it. They see that,” Wallis continues. “But I’m saying that we need to change politics. Social movements change politics — and the strongest social movements have spiritual foundations.”

I asked Wallis if leaders like Rob Bell were part of a rebirth of the Liberation Theology movement that took root in Latin America in the ’60s and ’70s. “This movement is in a sense liberation theology in the best sense of the word,” he says, “but it’s more personally faith-based, more street-based and finally more community-based. I remember you’d go to a [liberation theology] event and it would be analysis, analysis, analysis — and there would never even be a prayer.”

This new generation of Christian Revolutionaries most definitely places prayer above analysis. But where will their prayers lead them? Will they forever restrict themselves to person-to-person, “relational” solutions? Or will they choose to influence political leaders on issues they share with the left — poverty, war, environmental destruction — with the same force that the Christian Right exerted around abortion, gay marriage and other areas?

All that’s certain is that they will keep praying for answers with a desperate yearning and remarkable openness — as Rob Bell did recently:

God, give us a vision for a new kind of world. We grieve, we honor, we condemn. But we want to move through that. We want to have asked the hard, hard questions. But we want to move though that too. And we want to be people of a dream, which we believe is your dream for the world. But then, God, we want to move past that. We want to move to action. … God, what would this look like? Show us millions of different ways to bless — to bless in such a way that it would literally shake the foundation of the Earth and capture us with this kind of dream. … Please, God, open our eyes.

And 10,000 American suburbanites replied, “Amen"

So long away

2005-08-03T13:05:00.000+01:00

So Long Away

Sorry - I have busy at work and didn't get round to visitng.

I have now finished reading the new HP - excellent. I cried and cried and cried. The writing improves every book.

I was at the International Christian Retail Show a few weeks ago and was amazed at the continual number of books published about Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Narnia etc. Is it good dialogue or shameless cashing in?

I'm a right winger!!!

2005-04-20T19:47:00.000+01:00

Lost in the Heart of Somewhere

Oh No!!!!! I took part in Who Should You Vote For and it says I should vote UKIP!!! Aaargggh I seem to have turned into a little englander!!! Here are my results:

Who should I vote for?

Your expected outcome:

Conservative

Your actual outcome:

Labour -5
	Conservative 10
	Liberal Democrat 6
	UK Independence Party 17
	Green 7

You should vote: UK Independence Party

UKIP's primary focus is on Europe, where the party is strongly against joining both the EU constitution and the Euro. UKIP is also firmly in favour of limiting immigration. The party does not take a clear line on some other policy issues, but supports scrapping university tuition fees; it is strongly against income tax rises and favour reducing fuel duty.

Take the test at Who Should You Vote For

So I am leaving

2005-01-29T21:51:00.000Z

I am now in the process of leaving Church. This will be a three month process at least, discussing the relational, vocational and theological implications with my current Pastor.

Shameless Publicity

2005-01-14T14:07:00.000Z

In a shameless way I want to promote a couple of new books coming from the company I work for.

Word on the Street is an excellent retelling of scripture form Rob Lacey. If you haven't come across the guy - do check it out!

Another great title is a new one from the great blogger Conrad Gempf called Mealtime Habits of the Messiah - Superb!!!

Been Away

2005-01-12T17:31:00.000Z

Yes - I have been away - but I am back now. Still undecided re Church. How can I stay in a reformed Charismatic church when I am neither reformed nor charismatic?

Here is my big problem - should we, as a family, be a member of one congragation? Canw ebe nominally a member of one congragation (one that some find acceptabel) but then also be members of another?

Bush Wins

2004-11-04T08:08:00.000Z

Lost in the Heart of Somewhere

So how do I feel about this? I'm really not sure - I wanted Kerry to win at the time, but I can see how another four years of Bush may encourage some movement towards the centre in US politics. I do infinitely prefer the US political scene to ours in the UK where the Tories are uselss, Labour a bunch of Statist Control Freaks and the LibDems unreconstructed hippies. What ever happened to Ramsay Macdonald and Benjamin Disraeli. I don't even know who to vote for next year!

Liberal backslider?

2004-10-25T15:40:00.000+01:00

I think I am goping to leave my Church. I am a sort of post-Charismatic, post-conservative, post-just-about-everything. I keep worrying that I don't actually believe anything anymore, then I read this by Clark Pinnock:

"Liberalism typically thinks that ... if we could just discard the element of the gospel that the current culture dislikes, we would ensure a future for it. What actually happens is that the salt loses its savor. There is no future for liberal Christianity because it just listens to culture and has nothing to contribute. It allows itself to be led around by the nose, while ruining churches and robbing the world of the gospel. If we follow [this] people ... Will not know learn of a new creation or of God reconciling the world to himself. The Christian faith should not make people feel superior - it should make them feel happiness for the nations because now there is hope and knowledge of salvation."

So as I have moved away from conservative Evangelicalism I cannot move towards liberalism. This quote has reminded me of what is great about evangelicalism - perhaps it has saved me from wandering too far in the wilderness.

The Start - Where Are We?

2004-10-24T13:55:00.000+01:00

Okay - so here we have the first post. Hi to anyone who may read it. Where do we start ...?

Steve Chalke

2004-10-24T13:06:00.000+01:00

Okay - so Steve is now becoming the bloggers friend - it seems everyone is writing about him! I declare an interest - his book, The Lost Message of Jesus, is published by my company and I am involved in this current debate (albeit behind the scenes). However, another of our authors, Conrad Gempf, is keeping an excellent blog at his site.

There are some other interesting blogs. Have a look at Leaving Munster.

I am amazed at the controversy this has caused - and the sloppy scholarship that seems to exist around the atonement.

Ho hum