Spring Harvest 2009

Better late than never, a few reflections on Spring Harvest Week 3 in Minehead.

Highs

• Good opening night - often these are a bit low key, as the SH team try to allow for people to settle in and get their heads round things, but instead we had an upbeat evening, great talk from Jeff Lucas, and a slightly complex questionnaire to help people work out their learning styles. I came out as a 'Theorist' (alternatives were Reflector, Activist and Pragmatist. Reflectors wanted to change the questions, pragmatists wanted to know why they were filling in a questionnaire, Activists wanted to get on with the rest of the evening and not do the questionnaire at all).
• Lots of challenging teaching around the theme of Discipleship, including plenty on how we help people to grow as disciples in a local church context, and on discipleship as a whole-life thing, rather than something measured in 'churchy' terms. SH has got more 'catholic' in where it draws teaching and wisdom from, and it was good to see the idea of a Rule of Life being taken seriously.
• Good childrens programme - our two enjoyed themselves and got stuck into their groups
• Excellent band for the Big Top, led by Vicky Beeching (who I discovered on Spotify on returning from SH, which was nice). Just as energetic at 9am as 9pm, in what must have been an exhausting week for them.
• Minehead beach, which has been covered in sand since I last saw it, and is great.
• More interesting seminars than I could fit in, which is unusual - in recent years the programme has looked all too familiar, with very little which hasn't already been done a couple of times before. It was nice to have lots to chew on.
• Good seminars by Alastair Burt MP and a guy from LICC, on discipleship and modern culture.
• The bookstall. I just love all that browsing.
• Cbeebies on the chalet TV's for when the children needed some downtime.
• Excellent study notes, as always, with plenty to chew on and challenge
• Just the whole experience of being there.

Lows (relatively speaking)

• One or two speakers trying to copy the 'anecdote' style, rather than being authentically themselves. I tuned out of one talk and ended up spending 20 minutes thinking about Peters confession of Christ in Mark 8, which actually turned out to be quite fruitful.
• Too much marketing of stuff through events which were supposed to be for worship. Put me in mind of Pete Wards critique of 'selling worship'. One event was particularly blatant, and felt very uncomfortable.
• A lack of seriousness - yes SH should be fun, but if we're supposed to be meeting with God then I'm not sure that stories about the bodily functions of seagulls really help us with that, though perhaps it really spoke to someone. Maybe I was just in the wrong mood that evening.
• Powerpoint training - some speakers had clearly got the hang of what powerpoint/visuals are for, others hadn't, cramming the screen with as much text as possible, and skipping to the next slide before you had time to digest it.
• Finnegans fish and chips. Awful. Skegness-goers, it may be perishing cold by the North Sea, but at least you've got Harry Ramsdens.
• Lack of a decent international speaker. It may be false memory syndrome, but SH used to regularly bring in well known speakers from outside the UK. Having been inspired by Tony Campolo and Don Carson at SH in the past, it would be great to hear Brian MacLaren, Tim Keller, Alan Hirsch, Tom Sine, Bill Hybels, Jackie Pullinger, (insert your own favourite) etc. Or maybe I'm just spoilt. (or, see below, maybe I went to the wrong week!!)

Will post some quotes from the speakers in a few days, if I can decipher my notes.

Not a mention, by the way, of New Word Alive, which parted company with Spring Harvest a couple of years ago. Adrian Warnock has a detailed blog from the event, which gives a flavour of what it was like. I hope the two festivals don't retreat to separate sides of a wall, writing messages in Chalke but no longer communicating.

There were also no major speakers from New Wine, another major evangelical network - possibly because they're all prepping for their leaders conference in a fortnight. It's worryingly easy to pigeon-hole a lot of well-known church leaders into the conference you'd expect to hear them speak at, which isn't healthy. We need to listen to people we aren't necessarily going to agree with.

Other Spring Harvest bloggers
Tom Bullock who was there as an 8-11s leader
Dan Kingsley
David Derbyshire
Sean Stillman
Abigail
Sammy
Nigel Wright - reading his blog it sounds like we did get Brian Maclaren, just not when I was there!
Forbidden Fruits Frustrated Writings, going back after a 20 year gap.
Help i work with children who helped lead the 5-7's work at Skeggy

and probably loads more....

What would the Rabbi say to the Spin Doctor?

Just had a very good few days at Spring Harvest in Minehead, 2 questions buzzing round my head:

1. Would Jesus have called Derek Draper to be one of his disciples? At SH we've been looking at the story of the call of Matthew the tax collector, among other things. Collaborator, crook, thief, traitor, probably had people beaten up for non-payment, generally an unpleasant guy. Everyone else would have pilloried him, Jesus called him. And he changed.

Who else's name could you put in there?

2. Why did the BBC pull the 'religion' programme in Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle on Easter Monday? It's now being shown tomorrow night, and timetabled nicely so that you can catch the first episode of the new Ashes to Ashes. Lee is the man behind 'Jerry Springer, the Opera', but the series has been one of the treats of the early spring, on the whole both very funny and very thoughtful, though some of the skits have started to get a bit Chris Morris. The fact the Beeb didn't want to show the religion episode on the Easter weekend suggests they were a bit wobbly about the content.

On Spring Harvest itself, more in a couple of days, it's interesting to read what Dave Walker thought of it all.

Spring Harvest 2008

Dave Walker has already blogged extensively about his experience at Spring Harvest in Skegness, painting a rather mixed picture (!), other bloggers enjoyed it a bit more, like AndyG and the remarkable blog that is Simons Journal (straight into my bookmarks). Meanwhile Adrian Warnock has virtually a moment by moment account of 'New Word Alive', which went separate ways from Spring Harvest for this year, with various interviews with key speakers, MP3's etc.

We went to Minehead for the final week of Spring Harvest 2008, and I had a much better time than I'd expected to. Speaking personally, I have more and more of a struggle with modern worship songs, as I find I'd much prefer to listen to Evanescence and Coldplay than Matt Redman. They are just more my taste in music. So I've struggled a bit with the 'Big Top' worship at Spring Harvest, but as a worship leader Andy Flannagan was superb, creative in an understated way, and led things very well.

The speakers were more of a mixture: SH always has to tread the line between familiar, tried and tested speakers who consistently turn up with the goods (Jeff Lucas, Steve Chalke, Ian Coffey, Gerard Kelly), and bringing in new faces to keep a sense of progress and innovation. All credit to them for giving 2 emerging church pioneers the main speaking slot on 2 different nights - Philip Jinadu (evangelist in Bristol) and Danielle Strickland (Salvation Army church planter from Canada) were refreshing, clear and challenging. Their morning 'zone' was excellent too: I guess having heard more teaching than is good for me, what communicates more and more is real life stories of people putting into practice the stuff they are speaking about. I want to hear about people who pray and get answers, who plant churches and see growth, who uproot to move into needy neighbourhoods, who use their skills and vocations creatively to serve others.

Another good innovation was the open plan cafe in the central 'Skyline' area, which was used for Q&A sessions with the key speaker (Malcolm Duncan of Faithworks) after the morning Bible teaching. A real plus in the programme, giving the chance for real debate to take place, and geniune questions to be wrestled with.

Lots of big questions this year: the theme was 'One Hope', looking at how the bible sees the future, including the future of the planet. There was lots of wrestling with Tom Wrights work on resurrection and 'heaven' (or not) and how we should think about all of that. Lots of good input and resources on the environment and green issues.

Finally, my personal highlight (depite getting picked on one night) was Tim Vine and John Archers late show. Looks like they are now on a national tour, judging by TV's website. Vine holds the world record for most jokes told in an hour (499), and made the perfect end to the day. "So I went outside, and this cup fell from the sky and hit me on the head. Then another one hit the ground beside me. I went back inside and my wife asked 'hows the weather' I said 'Muggy'... Friends of the Earth rang me yesterday and told me to eat less pasta. Apparently we all need to reduce our Carbonara footprint...." and so on.

Going back for more next year, hopefully with a bigger group from our church. Oh yes, and the kids loved it, though they were completely pooped by the end of the week.