New Car for Christians Who Don't Want Friends

ht Jesus Needs New PR.

I'm guessing this only really works in London, or anywhere else where traffic speed and walking pace are roughly the same.

What Shall We Do with the Daft Street Preacher?

Author and Greenbelt speaker Shane Clairborne has a piece in the latest issue of mens magazine Esquire. It starts with an apology:

I feel like I should begin with a confession. I am sorry that so often the biggest obstacle to God has been Christians. Christians who have had so much to say with our mouths and so little to show with our lives

and illustrates this with a scene from the Philadelphia street scene

We passed a great magician who did some pretty sweet tricks like pour change out of his iPhone, and then there was a preacher. He wasn't quite as captivating as the magician. He stood on a box, yelling into a microphone, and beside him was a coffin with a fake dead body inside. He talked about how we are all going to die and go to hell if we don't know Jesus.

Clairborne had a dilemma

Some folks snickered. Some told him to shut the hell up. A couple of teenagers tried to steal the dead body in the coffin. All I could do was think to myself, I want to jump up on a box beside him and yell at the top of my lungs, "God is not a monster." Maybe next time I will.

and we're reminded of what Jesus did
In fact, the entire story of Jesus is about a God who did not just want to stay "out there" but who moves into the neighborhood, a neighborhood where folks said, "Nothing good could come." It is this Jesus who was accused of being a glutton and drunkard and rabble-rouser for hanging out with all of society's rejects, and who died on the imperial cross of Rome reserved for bandits and failed messiahs. This is why the triumph over the cross was a triumph over everything ugly we do to ourselves and to others. It is the final promise that love wins.

I really really wish that all the Christians would have a moratorium on being weird, whether it's passing on conspiracy theories about a global economic order, shouting at people on street corners, or even doing those prayers which you suspect aren't really directed at God at all, but a covert form of preaching to everyone else who's listening. Maybe it's just time to shut up for a bit.

and what would you do with the street preacher? If option A is to set the Christmas Linebacker on him, what's option B?

HT Banksyboy.

Wii Pray

my money's on a spoof. Ht Tech Central/Dave Walker. But if you disagree, you can pre-order from tomorrow.

Church Signs

Good post at Swiss Toni about church signs, and the rights and wrongs of proclaiming your beliefs as if they were hard fact. Ht the Britblog roundup, hosted by Amused Cynicism. Above is one of my favourites, but there are some truly dreadful ones here. Like this:

this is slightly better, though they probably cribbed the joke from Bruce Almighty


If all this makes you despair a Christendom's ability to come up with anything funny, then fear not. The Beaker Folk of Husborne Crawley have put up an advert for a new druid.

We are a group of 12 Beaker communities scattered across the hamlets to the east of Spalding.
Well, when we say communities, strictly speaking four of these communities have only one member each and there's only twenty-three of us in total. But we are dedicated to keeping true to our roots. Which is why we insist on worshipping only each within our our own Moot Houses, coming together only for the annual Falling Out ceremony where we remember why we don't get together any more often.

There's more, much more, and I'm overjoyed to discover that Ruth Gledhill has spotted this as well. Much deserved recognition for 'Archdruid Eileen', whoever he may be.

Will the World End in 2012?

Having joined 'the Bible' on Facebook, I spotted a comment by someone speculating that the end of the world was due in 2012, when an asteroid would hit the earth. I asked the chap to check his sources and after doing so he revised it to 2036.

But he's not alone: 2012 conspiracy theories are doing the rounds of the New Age community, and there's a disaster movie of the same name ready to retread Day After Tomorrow territory, by the same chap who directed Day After Tomorrow. This slightly tongue-in-cheek article surveys the possible suspects.

Thoughts:
1. By the sound of it, some Christians are jumping on the 2012 bandwagon without really thinking about where the idea comes from. Following Jesus clearly isn't exciting enough for them. Stop and think people: if lots of gullible evangelicals (because it will be evangelicals) start wittering on about 2012, and it doesn't happen (which it won't, most likely), then they'll look gullible. That won't add much credibility to the faith they stand for.

2. We seem to need these things: 1999/2000, now 2012, wonder when the next one will be? There seems to be an inbuilt desire for the apocalyptic to be, at least, possible.

3. A Facebook friend noted the inherent contradiction of a green-tinged New Ager getting into 2012 conspiracy theories. What's the point of saving the planet if it's only got 3 years left?

4. Christians do believe that God, at some stage, will step decisively into history, that Jesus will return. We're also cautioned not to speculate about when it will happen, and history is littered with idiotic predictions about the end of the world. It's more important to live holy lives today than get caught up in conspiracy theories about tomorrow. Whether or not the world has 3, or 3 million years left, makes not one jot of difference to how Christians should be living. We should still be trying to commend our faith to others, and we should still be trying to live as loving stewards of this planet rather than rapacious landlords.

5. The best use of this kind of nonsense is to get people thinking about the future. There are some things that are going to kick in (and are kicking in already) during the next generation: fuel shortages, water shortages, climate change etc. We need to live in the present in a way that is loving and generous towards future generations. The enemy is ourselves, and our approach to life, and the way the capitalist system has encouraged spiralling consumption and greed. Unless we change, this is the way the world as we know it ends: not with a whim but with a banker*.

*not my original line, sadly.

Starbucks Church

Absolutely brilliant 'what if Starbucks was like church?' video




Ht Start the Week, the original is at Beyond Relevance, and the related post is well worth reading:

The challenge is, if we think door hangers or websites will solve our marketing problem, then we have a bigger problem. The average church in America has less than a 15% retention rate of first-time visitors.

If I owned a pizza parlor and more than 85% of the people who ate there once decided to never come back, I would think a mailer ( = mailshot?) might just kill the business. It would bring people in faster and increase the speed of my demise. I, more likely, need to be working on things like... my recipe, my wait staff, my decor--anything and everything that could increase my retention rate outside of bringing more people in.

The principle is stewardship. What are we accomplishing with what God is sending us? If we are not converting that, scripture would reveal that we are not ready for more (Luke 16:10).

Mission, Money and Membership. And Boxing.

Start the Week highlights a major report on the spending of CofE Mission funding: 'A Review of the Church of Englands Mission Development Funding 2002-7' . £24m has been allocated over the last 5 years, most of it spent on new projects, though the report seems to conclude that, because monitoring of results is patchy, it's hard to draw firm conclusions. Mission funding seems, from anecdotal evidence, to be working, but there is little more than anecdote to go on.

Thursday (I think) sees the publication of the latest CofE attendance stats. 'Latest' being 2007, we're currently in the middle of collecting membership figures for 2008, and have to record how many people come to our services each week in October. It would be really interesting to see how the 12 months from collecting this data to publishing it actually pans out......

Meanwhile, a couple of good examples of local mission this week, clowning vicar Roly Bain is coming to Chilthorne Domer Village Hall at 4pm on Sunday 26th October to help launch 'God4All' a Sunday afternoon all-age service in a local village. All welcome, he really is worth seeing in action.

And Howard Davenport, utterly bonkers pastor of the local Elim Church, is having a boxing match with the proprietor of the Devils Den tatoo parlour. On a bouncy castle. The 'Heaven Versus Hell Smackdown' is on Wednesday at the Orange Box in Yeovil. It's for charity, apparently.

Please Tell Me This Isn't True

From Evangelism UK

Gospel sent by blue-tooth?
A device that can send Bible text and Gospel messages to anyone within 100 yards, won an award at the Christian Resources Exhibition recently. The Gabriel Communicator, said the Church Times on Friday, can 'send evangelistic text messages to unsuspecting passers-by'. Good source of information is the original CRE notification:

http://www.creonline.co.uk/news/1078.htm

No, no, no, NO, NO!!!! This is the worst idea in Christendom. Has anyone thought how the 'unsuspecting passers by' are going to feel about getting 'evangelistic text messages'? Are they going to get down on their knees in the street, or just decide that Christians are annoying interfering prats who bombard you with stuff you've not asked for. This is a rubbish invention, and if you use one anywhere near me then I will personally baptise it for you.

What would Jesus do? Not this.

Am I Missing Something:?

This from the Christian Resources Exhibition website:

Gabriel Communicator Sparks New Generation Of Mobile Evangelists
24 January 2008
A new device that could spawn a generation of mobile evangelists will be unveiled at the Heart of England Christian Resources Exhibition next month (21-23 Feb 08).

The tiny Gabriel Communicator from Txttouch, which can be placed in a backpack or handbag, uses Bluetooth technology to beam text messages to all mobile phones within a 100-metre radius.

'Bible verses or even digital gospel tracts can be sent to local mobile phones from this device.' explains Txttouch managing director Nicholas Maguire, who has been involved in Church leadership for nearly 15 years. 'This is a culturally relevant way to contact people regardless of their age.'

Ok it may use up to date technology, but that doesn't make it culturally relevant. Unsolicited texts and emails are a great pestilence to mobile users, and all the more irritating if they turn out to be Bible verses rather than a free muffin at Starbucks. THIS WILL PUT EVERYONE WITHIN 100 METRES OFF CHRISTIANITY and once everyone twigs to what's going on, look out. I wouldn't want to be surrounded to a depth of 100 metres by people I'd simultaneously ticked off all at the same time.

Avoid this like the plague. It will not make you a mobile evangelist. It will make you a nuisance.