Lavinia Brennan (L) and Natasha Rufus Isaacs c/o IDEA Magazine

Lady Natasha Rufus Isaacs and Lavinia Brennan are not what I'd expected. They are friends of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and now list the likes of supermodel Kate Moss and film star Demi Moore among the clients of their ethical fashion label Beulah, which in less than two years has captured the media's attention.

But these are no ordinary fashionistas. In many ways they contradict the stereotype of the fashion industry being vapid and shallow. The pair attend Alliance member church Holy Trinity Brompton and have a deep sense of God’s calling them into this industry.
 
Their luxury clothing brand has featured in the media spotlight in recent months. Their popularity was also boosted when the Duchess of Cambridge wore one of their stunning gowns at a charity event. “We’ve been quite fortunate with the press,” says Natasha. “People love a brand with a story.”
 
The name Beulah is a biblical term that means ‘to come from a place of darkness into one of light’; and that is what the girls are trying to do with their fashion brand. Natasha and Lavinia set up Beulah London after returning from a trip to India, where they became aware of the horrors of human trafficking while working with rape victims in the slums of Delhi and Kolkata.
 
Beulah London employs some of these women in India to create needlework for the products. “We’re trying to make sure that the production is ethical,” says Lavinia. “For us, it’s really key that we are transparent in what we’re doing. Our end goal is to have the girls involved in production.”
 
Lavinia and Natasha certainly look the part. But the fashion industry is not where they thought they would end up. Lavinia is a theology graduate, while Natasha previously worked at auctioneers Sotheby’s and for Al Gordon, worship leader at HTB.
 
Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (Credit: Clarence House)Giving up full-time employment to start a fashion label was a daunting prospect, but, as Natasha explains: “We both had to be obedient and listen to what God called us into doing. It was incredibly risky and quite a scary thing to plunge ourselves into, but I think He’s really blessed our obedience in that.”
 
I’m surprised at how candid they are about their faith. They give glory to God for the business’s popularity and dotted around their office in Parsons Green are Bible verses and words of inspiration.
 
They are just as open with the secular press, who often focus on their Christianity in newspaper articles. It’s strange to hear about faith within fashion, but they are up for the challenge of being salt and light.
 
“We’re called to be in the world and not of it,” says Lavinia. “You can’t shed light in dark areas if you don’t go into those areas… People are really drawn to our difference and our faith is quite a conversation starter as people are always intrigued by it.”
 
The girls really want to bring hope through their fashion label. They have recently joined the UN’s Blue Heart Campaign against human trafficking and a proportion of the profits from each product they sell will go towards the initiative.
 
“Our whole aim is to make women feel beautiful both inside and out,” says Lavinia. Little touches, such as inscribing many of their items with, “Love like you’ve never been hurt, dance as though no-one is watching, sing as though no can hear you,” means they are doing just that.
 
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This article has been copied with permission from Evangelical Alliance UK and was originally published in Idea Magazine.

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By Midas Gordon-Farleigh

Making the winning pitch at Pinewood Studios, by Midas Gordon-Farleigh

At the start of 2010, Rob McLellan was a film studies tutor at a sixth form college in the north of England. Today he is in discussions in Hollywood about the possibility of making a feature film.

Such is the success of Bible-based film competition Enter the Pitch, brainchild of Bible Society’s Arts Development Officer Luke Walton. We asked Luke to tell us about it.

What is Enter the Pitch?
 
It’s a competition to win £25,000 production budget and also a load of professional help to make a short film drawing inspiration from the Bible.
 
Where did the idea come from?
 
In 2007, Bible Society was working on a campaign in Manchester to engage young people. We wanted to come up with a film concept and that led to the idea of bringing together a group of people to support and initiate a competition. The connection between the Bible and Hollywood has been very strong, right from the word go, both in creating historical dramas and in terms of shaping the arc and the story line of many different stories. There are lots more cracking stories in there, though, that have never been made into epic films.
 
We wanted to see what people’s ideas were and then raise the game. One of the challenges for anybody who’s trying to progress in filmmaking is finding the funding to really raise their game. What is lacking in the film industry is people with pots of this kind of money. Offering a prize of £25,000 is about substantially raising the game to a industry level for short film making.
 
So where have you been able to get that kind of money from?
 
Our funding is drawn from a number of sources and individuals, I won’t state who the individuals are, but we’re very grateful for their support. The organisations that are currently participating in this are Pinewood Studios, The Grand, Clitheroe which has a solid link across music, theatre and cinematic arts – and crucially Bible Society. We’re increasingly seeing wider interest in participating in our project and we welcome and invite that.
 
It’s not all about the money though, is it, you’ve got some amazing people on board as judges, helping to make the films and giving of their time and expertise to the winners – Nev Pierce, Nick Park, David Suchet, David Oyelowo, Stuart Hazeldene and X-Men producer Ralph Winter to name just a few. How does a guy working for a charity based in Swindon manage to get these people to give such a huge amount of their time?
 
I am really thankful for the way this network has come together. I already knew Nick Park [creator of Wallace and Gromit], and without that, almost certainly getting contact with some of these people would have been very, very tricky indeed. I also owe a huge amount to Mark Blaney and Jackie Sheppard of Footprint Films who have been with me every step of the way as consultants to the project. They have been outstanding and tireless supporters of the project, bringing feature-level business skills to the short film format.  I’m also grateful to Nev Pierce [Editor-at-large of EMPIRE magazine], who was a contact through a former colleague. I’ve gone to these people because I’m interested in their work, and am committed to working professionally and at a proper standard with integrity. We’ve had to work slowly, building the relationships, the contacts, the networks that add up until the point where you have a certain momentum and others are able to join in.
 
For example, the screenwriter Stuart Hazeldene is on the panel this year, he joined us after David Oyelowo, on the panel in 2010, invited him to join us. 
 
In such a relationally-based industry, it has been important that the people who work with us have enjoyed it; they’ve found that it’s been encouraging to them and a positive experience. They’ve seen that we’re serious about what we’re doing; we’re not just trying to get a bit of free polemic or using it for a didactic purpose, but are genuinely interested in the process of creating something excellent, and just happen to have a particular source of inspiration.
 
Christian films tend not to do very well in the UK. Is part of the goal of Enter the Pitch to try to change that?
 
We’re not about making specifically Christian films. In fact our film makers are not necessarily Christians or of any faith disposition, and we welcome, and have welcomed, people of all backgrounds to participate in the competition. We are interested in the genuine dramatic human nature of the stories in scripture, and in drawing people to something which is enduring and universal. I firmly believe that film makers are the very best story tellers and are the very best at identifying those enduring human stories in a way that speaks to a new generation.
 
Can you explain how the process works?
 
We’re looking for a 2-minute pitch for a short film. To pitch you must upload a short film onto the website selling your idea. (The site will open to submissions in summer 2012. Register on the site to hear when dates are announced).
 
A panel will review all the pitches and create a shortlist which will then be uploaded onto the website. The public then have one month to watch a minimum of six pitches and vote for a minimum of three. The reason we do this is to ensure that people vote on the quality of the pitches, not just for their friends.
 
The top twenty pitches are then viewed by the judging panel, who whittle them down to ten. These ten finalists are invited to come to Pinewood Studios for a weekend to present their pitches live to the panel. We’re pretty unique in being a live pitching competition, and for those ten, the prize really is the opportunity to simply put their idea in front of a professional panel in the industry. You can’t buy 20 minutes with people at this level; you have to have shown your merit to get this far, and the experience people have gained from it has been a benefit in and of itself.
 
The judges then select a final three, who are invited to stay on and give a longer pitch the following day. Interestingly, our top three pitchers over the last two years have all gone away the night before and come back with a more thoroughly worked up and developed proposal. They have shown themselves to be adaptable to the critique from the panel. It’s a very creative and consultative process as well as obviously being quite nerve-wracking and testing. It means, though, that those who go through to the second day of the final weekend actually have shown their ability to address the weaknesses that have been uncovered in their pitch and take it to another level. That’s part of the business as well. If you’re going to a studio to pitch an idea anywhere in the industry, those kind of skills need to be developed, and they’re not necessarily skills that people learn in film colleges and places where they are honing their practical film making skills.
 
Wow, that’s an intensive process. It’s no wonder you’re able to come out with such high-quality films. What has happened to Simeon Lumgair and Rob McLellan since they won the 2009 and 2010 competitions?
 
Simeon has got several film festivals coming up, one based in Toronto, one in India and one in China, and he is working on a number of projects he’s got on the slate as well as running his film company, Quirky Motion.
 
Rob is just at the beginning of his year, he’s only just entering Rahab into competitions now, so we will see what the festival circuit looks like for him. He has had one invitation to screen already, so that’s looking very positive. He has also received an invitation to consider directing a feature in America as a result of his trip out there [as part of his prize], and has received a number of other professional approaches. So for Rob it looks a very, very positive year coming, though it’s always difficult to predict exactly how it will fall out. We are currently exploring the development of the Rahab short as a feature, following particular interest from the industry.
 
That’s amazing, so it really can launch someone into a career in films!
 
Yes, I’ve got a video of Rob in Hollywood, after we’d taken him to meet with the people at Industrial Light and Magic, and he’s really excited. He says, “You win the competition and that’s just the start. It changes your life forever!”
 
So for anyone considering entering in 2012, what are your top tips for making a stand-out pitch?
 
My top tip is that story is key. Make sure that your pitch really conveys your story, whether you do that by speaking to the camera or by showing a clip of what you think it’ll feel like or even by doing just story boards, you have to above all be telling us what is your compelling story. If you have not read Save the Cat by Blake Snyder you could do far worse than to start with that excellent book. Snyder would tell you that if you can’t sell your film with the title and the log line then you haven’t got it yet. With only two minutes to pitch, that is advice well worth following.
 
Secondly, think about how you change the context from how the original story was told to a more contemporary context. There are various techniques that people have used to avoid some of the more difficult comparatives, so horror or science-fiction genres enable people to leap to a different context and retell the story in a new way.
 
My third tip is avoid all polemic. It never works, whether you’re trying to make a point about how miserable and horrible this book is, or when it becomes nothing but a sermon on screen. Neither of those things belong in our competition. We’re interested in good human stories that have a enduring relevance.
 
Finally, I really think comedy hasn’t been plundered enough. It’s a natural human reaction to laugh at things we find difficult, and sometimes it’s a good way of exploring what we feel about those things. There is some laughter to be had at all the strange moments in the Bible.
 
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The winner of Enter the Pitch 2011 has just been announced and his project is now in development for a shoot later in the year. Submissions for the 2012 competition will open in summer 2012. Visit the website and register to be kept in touch with the key dates, but don’t wait until then to start finding your story and filming your pitch.
 
Main picture: After the announcement of the winner of The Pitch 2011: Right to Left: Winner Tim Bassford, runner up Jodi De Souza, Judge Nick Park (creator of Wallace and Gromit), Steve Lancaster (representing one of the sponsors: The Grand, Clitheroe), runner up Carolyn Goodyear and Producer for The Pitch Luke Walton.

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ain't too small to dream big. by DaedaLusT

I would love to hang a sign outside my church saying “Dreamers Wanted”. In churches as a rule there are lots of ‘nuts and bolts’ people, but not a lot of dreamers. Both are vital to the life of the Church.

Picasso, speaking of the creative process, once said “I dream my painting, then I paint my dream”. Our nation will benefit hugely from those who will dream big and then follow the dreams that God gives them, so I want to ask you: What’s your dream?
 
The dreaming process is incredibly important. Without it we spend a lot of time and energy on things that neither fulfil us nor make the unique difference that God designed us to make. So take a minute to ask yourself, what is it that God has put on your heart? What would be your contribution to God’s mission?
 
Here are a couple of signposts that can help indicate whether you’re on the right track:
 
It will be fun. Whatever your contribution to God’s mission is to be, it will be great, huge, enormous fun for you! You should pinch yourself from time to time that you’re really allowed to serve God and do this. It may mean that there are days when you sleep less or get up early because you’ve found something that demands your attention, your energy, your passion and your life. Eric Liddell, the Olympic Athlete profiled in the film Chariots of Fire, expressed it like this: “God made me fast. And when I run I feel His pleasure.”
 
It will be worth sacrificing for. When you’re following your dream, you’ll find you are willing to sacrifice things you never thought you could give up. There may be times where you’ll take a job with a lower salary, you might live somewhere you never thought you’d live, or work with people you never thought you would work with. Any time you get a bigger vision you’ll find that suddenly there are things you’ll sacrifice that you never would have done otherwise.
 
It will use your gifts. Do you know what your gifts are? Do you know yourself? There are some people who are really energised by being around people – they wake up talking in the morning, talk all day, and go to bed talking! They just love interacting with people. Whatever their contribution is, in their part of God’s mission, it is with people.
 
Others love organising things. If they go to an event that is badly organised, it frustrates them, and they struggle to concentrate on what is being said because of how it is organised. If that’s the case for you, then you need to be finding your part of God’s mission, then getting involved in the organisation and the running of it. It should fit with your gifts.
 
It is important to know who you are and where your gifts lie, and also to understand that no big dream has ever been implemented by just one person. As you start to dream, it’s easy to think ‘I’m the key player in this task’, but that is not always the case. William Wilberforce is the name we associate with the abolition of the slave trade, but without the great team he had around him – famously known as the Clapham Sect – bringing their money, their influence and their gifts to bear on the situation, he would not have achieved the great victory he did.
 
Remember too that your walk with God is as much about the person you become as the goals you achieve. Ireneaus said “The glory of God is a man fully alive”. When you’re living in your dream, having great fun, feeling God’s pleasure, that is when you will bring most glory to Him. And that of course is our ultimate aim.
 
So what steps should you take?
Firstly, try to get a clear sense of the end goal, even if that is 20 or 30 years away. It is very important that our churches have some men and women with what one writer calls ‘big, hairy, audacious goals’.
 
Don’t over-worry about getting the details precisely right, because it will develop over time. Nevertheless, without a clear goal, you will be unable to take any useful steps, or to share your vision with others and get them on board.
 
Secondly, ask yourself ‘What can I do tomorrow to make a step towards it?’ Knowing the destination you’re heading towards is important, but sometimes people get so focussed on the end goal that they never get going. The only way to get there is to start doing something.
 
I once had a meeting with Patrick Dixon, an amazingly prolific author and business consultant, often described as a ‘Futurist’. I asked him how he managed to achieve so much. He told me: “Every morning I get up and ask myself ‘What can I do that will bring the most glory to God in the next ten minutes?’ and I do it. As soon as I’ve done it, I ask the question again, and I do that, then I do the next thing, and so on.”
 
My encouragement to you would be to think about what you can do to work towards your goal in the next 24 hours. Maybe it’s dropping an email to someone whose advice you need to get, or making a phone call, or booking a place on a course you think would really help you. Decide what that thing is, then do it. And when you’ve done that, think of what the next thing is and do it. It’s vital that we learn to live with what Martin Luther King called “the fierce urgency of now”.
 
Thirdly, don’t let fear shape you. Decide not to procrastinate or give in to fear or insecurity. Or to put it the other way around: challenge fear. If there’s something you know would move you closer towards your goal but you’re tempted to let fear get in the way of doing it, face up to that fear, and do it anyway.
 
If you were to do even one thing a week that makes you scared, but would take you another step towards your part of God’s mission, you would be amazed at the progress you could make in a single year.
 
At the Everything conference on 17 March 2012 we will be hearing from and about several people who have dared to dream big, then faced their fears and followed the dream. They are people who have found their place in God’s mission and are making a remarkable difference as a result.
 
Tickets on the door will be £25, but booking in advance gives you 20% off that price. Follow this link and your ticket will cost just £20. Hurry though, there are a limited number of tickets available, and when they’re gone, they’re gone.
 
Why not make booking your ticket the one thing you do today to move you nearer to your big, hairy, audacious goal? You won’t regret it.

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Medellin Escalator by AP Photo/Luis Benavides via Daily Telegraph

When faced with seemingly-intractable problems, city chiefs need to think laterally. The problem presenting itself may not be the one which most needs to be tackled, at least not directly.

Medellín, Columbia, was once known as the murder capital of the world, with gang violence fuelled by drug-trafficking and controlled by a deadly mafia. Crime and social breakdown were the trademarks of the city, and to many the situation must have seemed hopeless. Yet today Medellín is a popular tourist destination, having undergone what has been described as a ‘dramatic transformation’. The key? An improved transport system.
 
This report from the BBC in summer 2010 identifies a vastly-improved metro system and a cable car as central to the regeneration of the city. Both have made it easier for poorer residents to travel into the business centre from their favelas on the hills surrounding the city. “If the view isn’t spectacular enough for you,” comments the reporter, “You can always borrow poetry and literature from one of the Metro’s four libraries.” Tourists now visit the former no-go areas, while residents are able to travel much further afield to find work.

A succession of visionary local leaders set about removing the intimidation and violence that were part and parcel of the drug trade here. Their main aim was to connect the mountainside slums with the rest of the city.

   
After putting the Metro into place, Mayor Sergio Fajardo moved onto phase 2 of his plan: to ensure that the city’s most beautiful buildings were situated in the poorest areas. State of the art schools, parks, museums and libraries bring in the tourists, but also encourage aspiration in the slums’ young people, to such an extent that “Medellín has become an example of how urban transformation based on good architecture can reshape the mentality of its inhabitants.”
 
“From the time I was a child, it was clear to me what aesthetics meant as a tool for social transformation, as a message of inclusion,” Fajardo explained in an interview with architect Giancarlo Mazzanti, “Underneath it all is the most important word in all of those urban interventions in which architecture plays an important role: dignity… The poor are habitually given crumbs, but our proposal was to give them the very best. We had to break away and show another way.”
 
The whole article is well-worth a read, as it gives a fascinating insight into the heart of a man who sought social justice for the poorest of his city, and set processes in motion which are well on the way to achieving that goal.
 
Farjado’s tenure as mayor ended in 2007, but his legacy lives on, and this Christmas the poor of the Comuna 13 district were given a new gift – a series of outdoor escalators scaling the 384m (1,260ft) hillside and saving them a climb equivalent to 28 flights of stairs - daunting enough at the best of times, but soul-destroying to face at the end of a long day’s work.
 
Medellín’s leaders have been tough on crime and on criminals, but they have recognised that reducing crime-rates is about far more than simply fighting crime. It requires taking a good, hard look at the bigger picture and making changes across the board, often to things which seem to have little immediate bearing on the issues in hand.
 
The transformation of a community requires every inhabitant of that community to be treated – and regarded – as a valuable participant in its flourishing. A giant escalator may not be the answer to every city’s problems, but it meets the needs of Comuna 13. What is the big need in your community? What could you do to meet that need, and to restore dignity and hope to those who need it the most?

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My heart in your hands By aussiegall

“Sex and religion are often considered uncomfortable bedfellows.” - ‘Religion, Youth & Sexuality’ Selected Key Findings from a Multi-Faith Exploration – Nottingham University.

But maybe there is more that unites than divides. As American author, Susan Sontag, observes, ‘Religion is probably, after sex, the second oldest resource which human beings have available to them for blowing their minds!’

However, in an increasingly sexually progressive culture, where there is more and more pressure for SRE (Sex and Relationships Education) to be a value-free/ unbiased/ neutral/ information only, activity, ‘religious’ teaching on sexuality can often be viewed as being intrusive, overly moralistic, ‘sex-negative’ and out-dated.
 
It is against this backdrop that, in 2005, a production company set out to see if doing things the ‘God-way’ still had any relevance, in a brave 3-part BBC series. They found Christian Youth Workers, Rachel Gardner and Dan Burke and together created and filmed the very first Romance Academy project for twelve teenagers from North London. It ran for five months, consisted of 2-hour weekly sessions and encouraged the young people to abstain from sexual activity for the duration of the project (through a joint pledge), in order to explore the value of relationships and each other.
 
The result?
 
Well, let’s just say that 6 years later, Romance Academy is still going strong. It is now a registered charity training and equipping other youth workers and working in different contexts across the country. We passionately believe that the world is built on the success and failure of our relationships, which is why our material is built around biblical wisdom for relationships: faithfulness, love and commitment – virtues that are vital for human flourishing. Whilst there is no explicit Christian teaching in our material, our faith still informs what we do.

As Sex Educators, we want young people not only to be informed but also empathetic: to think, feel and care about themselves and each other – to see the bigger picture. In order for us to do this even better, we feel that there needs to be a greater focus in wider SRE on the spiritual dimension. Sex is after all, more than simply a physical act.
 
Spirituality is about the cultivation of the inner world that encourages reflection, imagination, and the development of moral character. Whether religiously tethered or not, it engages young people’s creativity and enables them to deal with issues on a personal level – providing a framework for understanding the purpose and meaning of sex and opening up discussion about identity.
 
Editor of the Pacific News, Kathie Dobie, puts it like this: ‘‘Who’d have thought that teenagers talking about sex would end up talking about their souls…’cos that’s what they’re talking about isn’t it?  Not the adventure of skin on skin…but something bigger than themselves to live for.”
 
For that reason, it is not uncommon to hear reports from some of our Christian RA leaders that conversations about sex have lead to conversations about faith. As we all know, life is a journey. At times we need to be told where we’re going wrong and at other times we need understanding and companionship for the road. Romance Academy wants to help young people towards a greater understanding of themselves and so has deliberately designed a project that facilitates big discussion and creates space for journeying and exploration. In a sense, meeting young people where they’re at and talking about issues to do with sexuality, will always mean that spirituality is never far behind, we just don’t choose to start there.

Fundamentally, RA believes that good SRE should be about the heart, as much as it is about the parts and helping young people have access to people, places and projects that alleviate some of pressure to be sexually active can be a lifeline. Good Faith and Good Sex both depend on this belief–that each one of us is free. Free to say no or yes. Free to be ourselves, free to love, free to have faith.
 
Romance Academy’s big vision is to break the cycle of damaging relationships. Practically, we would love to be in touch with/train more leaders to engage with the hot topics. We think it’s important that the church engages with this stuff and we’d love, one day, for every young person in the UK to be within 10 miles of an Academy. Since our re-launch in January 2011 we have licenced around 80 organizations to use our material, with 2012 looking set to be even bigger. We are passionate about partnership and believe that joined up thinking across the secular/sacred divide, can ensure that a generation of young people are able to embrace their self-worth, appreciate their interconnectedness and exercise their freedom to make choices that don’t damage themselves or others.

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Lime Street Exchange

The ancient Athenians were committed to building a great society. They put huge amounts of thought into what that would look like, and had a word for people who didn't see its importance: that word was idiot.

We are convinced that God wants us to love the society in which He has put us, and commit ourselves to helping it reach its full potential. The Everything Conference is a key part of this, and on the evening before it, we are offering the opportunity for people who want to explore in more detail what it means to be Salt and Light in society, through the Everything Dinner on Friday, 16 March 2012.

The Everything Dinner draws together people from all walks of life who are passionate about seeking the flourishing of our society, for a three-course meal in a central London location. Renowned author, social analyst and public speaker Os Guinness will be joining us for the evening and speaking on “Christian influence in the public sphere”. This will be an inspirational evening with opportunities to ask questions, connect with others, share stories and see the potential we have to make a difference together in our nation.
 
This year’s venue will be the Lime Street Exchange, situated in the heart of the City of London, within easy reach of several mainline and underground stations. It takes place on Friday, 16 March at 7:00pm.
 
Follow this link to book your place and choose from a selection of delicious menu options. Please note that this ticket does not give you entry to the Everything Conference on the following day. Tickets for the conference are booked separately through this link.
 
Places at the dinner are very limited, so book your place as soon as possible.

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Is God a delusion? Are science and Christian faith incompatible? There is a popular myth at large in both modern society and in many churches. According to this myth science and Christianity have been engaged in a long battle over the centuries. For many secularists this means that we must embrace science and reject religion, whilst for some Christians it means the exact opposite. But are science and Christian faith really in a conflict?

Test of Faith looks at the stories of ten respected scientists who share their life stories and their reflections on science and faith. Here's a summary of the chapter by Deborah B. Haarsma, the first of a number of extracts that we'll be publishing over the coming weeks and months, with kind permission of the authors and publishers.

Heart and Mind: Understanding Science and Faith
By Deborah B. Haarsma, Associate Professor in Physics & Astronomy, Calvin College, Michigan

It’s almost a universal human experience to look up at the stars in the dark night sky and say, ‘Wow, that’s amazing! That’s beautiful!’ But as a Christian, I have a deeper experience. I not only see the wonder and the vastness of the universe but see a connection back to the Creator who made it. I believe that the God of the Bible created all that we see in the whole universe and part of what God has commanded us to do is to study and take care of it.

As an undergraduate I majored in physics and music. Then I went on to do a PhD in astrophysics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston.

I see the fact that we can do science at all as a tremendous testimony of God’s faithfulness: the laws of physics are stable in every time and place where we test them. There’s a great passage in the Bible (Jer. 33:25), where God says he has “established my covenant with day and night and the fixed laws of heaven and earth…” God is speaking to the nation of Israel and points to the fixed laws of nature as a testimony of how faithful he’s going to be to his people. The only reason that physics works at all is that experiments are repeatable, and the only reason they’re repeatable is because God is faithful in governing the universe.

I can understand how some scientists look at the natural world and decide not to believe in God, because I don’t believe that nature gives us proof of God. There are a few scientists that have come to faith because science pointed them that way but I think for most of us it was something in our personal lives. It was a person we met, it was seeing Christians in action, it was finding that Christianity explains human nature, it was sensing the presence of God. These non-scientific arguments are more important in making a religious commitment than logic and scientific evidence.

It’s unfortunate that both the Bible and science have been hijacked at different times. There are people who will take scientific evidence and say, ‘We have a scientific explanation for X, and therefore God is not involved in X and we don’t need God.’ There are other people who say, ‘Science can’t explain X, so God must be involved and that’s proof of God.’ The two sides argue against each other, driving each other to more extreme statements. I think both sides are completely wrong. Both make the assumption that a scientific explanation is opposed to God’s involvement. In the Bible, though, God is described as in charge of every part of the physical world in regular patterns. In my view, science is merely describing how God works in nature. God is also present in the X that science doesn’t understand yet but it’s foolish to use that as proof of God’s existence. God wouldn’t disappear as soon as a scientific explanation for X is found.

Everybody brings their own perspective to science, so it’s impossible to have pure scientific results without any other influence. I think most scientists today see science that way: as a human activity. We talk about ‘The standard model of particle physics’ or ‘The big bang theory’ or ‘The theory of general relativity.’ We say ‘model’ and ‘theory’ instead of ‘law’ because we know that we don’t have it all figured out yet. So how do we know that the results of science are reliable at all?

Science functions as a community, with people from different philosophical or religious backgrounds working together. In my research I’ve collaborated with people of many different belief systems. We can work together because we all recognise the worth of this kind of investigation. All scientists share certain philosophical beliefs: that the universe is regular in its operation; that there are regular laws; that humans are capable of understanding and describing those laws; that we need to do experiments to test those laws and make sure our understanding is correct. We might all come to those beliefs from a different angle. I come to them because I believe in the Christian God who faithfully governs the universe. An atheist might choose to believe them just because they seem to work. We can overlap in those beliefs even while disagreeing about other things, and where we overlap we’re all doing science on basically the same playing field.

If many scientists with different viewpoints can get together and come to the same conclusion, that gives you some sense that they are probably on the right track. It is unlikely that they are all biased in the same way. The scientific process, including the way that scientific papers are reviewed, helps us overcome biases and get at something closer to the truth. There’s a similar process in biblical scholarship, where different scholars share their work or work together. Christians read the Bible in different ways and see different meanings in the same passage, so not everybody is right about their own interpretation. The practice of correcting and challenging each other helps them come to a better understanding of Scripture.

I believe that God would not say something through the Bible that contradicts what he reveals though the created world. The conflict comes at the level of human interpretation. We could be wrong in how we interpret the Bible or wrong in our scientific interpretation of nature (or both!). As Christians, we can’t deal with conflicts by throwing out science or ignoring parts of the Bible because we believe God speaks through both. Instead, our role is to continue to investigate both aspects of God’s revelation and keep looking for that underlying truth.

This is an extract from Ruth Bancewicz (ed.), Test of FAITH: Spiritual Journeys with Scientists (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2009/Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock, 2010). Used with permission of the publishers and the Test of FAITH project.  www.testoffaith.com

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Lunch Box By David Zellaby

How do you get Bible readings on national television against the will of the schedulers? I recently stumbled across the following article by Lee Habeeb telling the story of how Charles M Schultz - creator of Charlie Brown and Snoopy - managed just that. It is reproduced here by kind permission of National Review Online.

The Gospel According to Peanuts
How A Charlie Brown Christmas almost didn’t happen

by Lee Habeeb
 
Few headlines about network television make me giddy. Fewer still make me hopeful that all is good in the world. But back in August of 2010, I read the following headline from the media pages with great excitement: “Charlie Brown Is Here to Stay: ABC Picks Up ‘Peanuts’ Specials Through 2015.” The first of these to be made, the famous Christmas special, was an instant classic when it was created by Charles Schulz on a shoestring budget back in 1965, and thanks to some smart television executives, it will be around for at least another five years for all of us to see and enjoy.

What people don’t know is that the Christmas special almost didn’t happen, because some not-so-smart television executives almost didn’t let it air. You see, Charles Schulz had some ideas that challenged the way of thinking of those executives 46 years ago, and one of them had to do with the inclusion in his Christmas cartoon of a reading from the King James Bible’s version of the Gospel of Luke.

The more things change, the more things stay the same.

As far back as 1965 — just a few years before Time magazine asked “Is God Dead?” — CBS executives thought a Bible reading might turn off a nation populated with Christians. And during a Christmas special, no less! Ah, the perils of living on an island in the northeast called Manhattan.

“A Charlie Brown Christmas” was a groundbreaking program in so many ways, as we learned watching the great PBS American Masters series on Charles Schulz, known by his friends and colleagues as “Sparky.” It was based on the comic strip Peanuts, and was produced and directed by former Warner Brothers animator Bill Melendez, who also supplied the voice for Snoopy.

We learned in that PBS special that the cartoon happened by mere serendipity.

“We got a call from Coca-Cola,” remembered Melendez. “And they said, ‘Have you and Mr. Schulz ever considered doing a Christmas show with the characters?’ and I immediately said ‘Yes.’ And it was Wednesday and they said, ‘If you can send us an outline by Monday, we might be interested in it.’ So I called Sparky on the phone and told him I’d just sold ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas,’ and he said, ‘What’s that?’ and I said, ‘It’s something you’ve got to write tomorrow.’”

We learned in that American Masters series that Schulz had some ideas of his own for the Christmas special, ideas that didn’t make the network suits very happy. First and foremost, there was no laugh track, something unimaginable in that era of television. Schulz thought that the audience should be able to enjoy the show at its own pace, without being cued when to laugh. CBS created a version of the show with a laugh track added, just in case Schulz changed his mind. Luckily, he didn’t.

The second big battle was waged over voiceovers. The network executives were not happy that the Schulz’s team had chosen to use children to do the voice acting, rather than employing adults. Indeed, in this remarkable world created by Charles Schulz, we never hear the voice of an adult.

The executives also had a problem with the jazz soundtrack by Vince Guaraldi. They thought the music would not work well for a children’s program, and that it distracted from the general tone. They wanted something more . . . well . . . young.

Last but not least, the executives did not want to have Linus reciting the story of the birth of Christ from the Gospel of Luke. The network orthodoxy of the time assumed that viewers would not want to sit through passages of the King James Bible.

There was a standoff of sorts, but Schulz did not back down, and because of the tight production schedule and CBS’s prior promotion, the network executives aired the special as Schulz intended it. But they were certain they had a flop on their hands.

“They were freaking out about something so overtly religious in a Christmas special,” explained Melendez. “They basically wrote it off, like, hey, this is just isn’t going to be interesting to anyone, and it’s just going to be like a big tax write-off.”

Melendez himself was somewhat hesitant about the reading from Luke. “I was leery of the religion that came into it, and I was right away opposed to it. But Sparky just assumed what he had to say was important to somebody.”

Which is why Charles Schulz was Charles Schulz. He knew that the Luke reading by Linus was the heart and soul of the story.

As Charlie Brown sinks into a state of despair trying to find the true meaning of Christmas, Linus quietly saves the day. He walks to the center of the stage where the Peanuts characters have gathered, and under a narrow spotlight, quotes the second chapter of the Gospel According to Luke, verses 8 through 14:

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace and goodwill towards men.

“ . . . And that’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown,” Linus concluded.

The scene lasted 51 seconds. When Linus finished up, Charlie Brown realized he did not have to let commercialism ruin his Christmas. With a sense of inspiration and purpose, he picked up his fragile tree and walked out of the auditorium, intending to take it home to decorate and show all who cared to see how it would work in the school play.

When CBS executives saw the final product, they were horrified. They believed the special would be a complete flop. CBS programmers were equally pessimistic, informing the production team, “We will, of course, air it next week, but I’m afraid we won’t be ordering any more.”

The half-hour special aired on Thursday, December 9, 1965, preempting The Munsters and following Gilligan’s Island. To the surprise of the executives, 50 percent of the televisions in the United States tuned in to the first broadcast. The cartoon was a critical and commercial hit; it won an Emmy and a Peabody award.

Linus’s recitation was hailed by critic Harriet Van Horne of the New York World-Telegram, who wrote, “Linus’ reading of the story of the Nativity was, quite simply, the dramatic highlight of the season.”

A Charlie Brown Christmas is equaled only perhaps by the 1966 How the Grinch Stole Christmas! in its popularity among young and old alike. Thank God the Grinch-like executives at CBS chose to air the special back in 1965 despite their misgivings. If it had been left to their gut instincts, we would have had one less national treasure to cherish come Christmas time.

— Lee Habeeb is the vice president of content at Salem Radio Network, which syndicates Bill Bennett, Mike Gallagher, Dennis Prager, Michael Medved, and Hugh Hewitt. He lives in Oxford, Miss., with his wife, Valerie, and daughter Reagan.

This article originally appeared in National Review Online. © 2011 by National Review, Inc., Reprinted by permission.

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In this video Hannah from Mosaic Church in Leeds talks about some of the things that she is doing to affect her community as well as some of the other ways that the church is serving the people there.

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Steve Bamford is a Graphic Designer with an interesting sideline in scarves. We asked him how he was using his business acumen to help the homeless.

So Steve, you sell scarves, right? What’s the big idea?

TwoToo is about bringing some warmth and hope to those who need it most.  For every TwoToo scarf sold we give another one away to a homeless person who needs help to keep them warm.

TwoToo is the opposite of most designer labels. Instead of implying exclusivity and superiority it expresses support and identification with those in need - a touch of equality in an unequal world.

What a great idea! Have you always been a scarf salesman?

No! I’ve spent most of my life as a Graphic Designer and I have been running my own design consultancy for the last 26 years. I was one of those insensitive people who felt that homeless people that I saw begging on the streets should just go and get themselves a job. However, I felt challenged about my attitude and wanted to do something about it. My church, St John’s, Harborne, was involved in the Birmingham Soup Run, so I decided to go along and see what it was like. My attitude was totally changed through meeting and talking to the homeless people and hearing the many different reasons why they’d ended up on the streets.

I started volunteering there one Friday per month. In the autumn of my second year with the Soup Run I thought it would be good to find a way to give the homeless people that we met something extra at Christmas. I wanted to be able to give them all scarves as a way to make them warmer than they would otherwise have been and to show that people were thinking about them.

Your website says you initially thought you could probably sell 50 scarves in the run-up to Christmas 2007. How many did you actually sell?

We usually had about 50 people turning up at the Soup Runs for food each night and so I thought that if I could find a way to fund the cost to buy 50 scarves I could then give those scarves away to the homeless people. I researched the cost to buy scarves wholesale and typical retail prices for similar items and realized that I could sell a scarf at a very reasonable £5 and finance the cost of a second one that could then be given away. I could have just bought and sold plain, non-branded scarves but I wanted to give the whole process some identity and that’s where the idea of TwoToo came in! I presented the idea to our Soup Run team who loved the idea, then presented it to our church leaders to see if we could potentially promote it to the church members. The support was so great that we ended up selling just over 500 scarves instead of the 50 that I’d been aiming for! 

We’ve now given away around 1200 scarves, and are hoping to be able to donate 500 more this Christmas.

I think one reason for its popularity is that people can identify directly with the concept. If they buy a scarf and are wearing it they can easily visualise the homeless person wearing theirs. Also I think people appreciate that we’re not just asking for donations so that we can give scarves away, instead they are actually receiving something of value in return for their money as well as them contributing to the cost of the scarf that’s given away.

Who has received the benefit of all those donated scarves? 

Initially we were involved directly with handing them out to the homeless people we met on the Soup Run and they were genuinely pleased to receive them. They are often given secondhand items of clothing but they really appreciated that they were actually getting something new.

In the first winter we also gave scarves to vulnerable elderly people that the church had contact with, and a week later one lady said: “I haven’t taken it off yet, it’s really comfortable and warm!”

Since that first year we’ve worked to develop a network for distribution that ensures that the right people receive the scarves. Now that my wife and I are living in Poole, having moved in the summer of 2010, we have developed strong relationships with local homeless projects that really appreciate receiving and distributing the scarves to their contacts. These include Bournemouth BCHA’s St Paul’s night shelter ‘Sleep Safe’ Campaign; ‘Michael House, providers of emergency and longer-term accommodation to homeless people and Routes to Roots who provide Soup-Runs and a Drop-In centre in Poole. We will also continue to support the Birmingham Soup Run for homeless people and are working on finding other homeless projects around the country who would like to partner with us.

My wife and I moved to Poole in 2010 and joined Citygate Church in Bournemouth. It’s a great church, and we really identified with the work they do with homeless people and people in recovery from a variety of addictions. They work closely with ‘Michael House’ a local homeless hostel, which will be receiving TwoToo scarves this year. I’ve been promoting TwoToo through business networking events that I’ve been to and I’ve been really encouraged by the support that I’ve had from a number of marketing and PR people who have helped to get the news out at no cost to us at all.

How many staff do you have? 

Staff?! That’s just myself and my wife, Barbara. It’s been very much a ‘cottage industry’ so far with extra volunteers at busy times.

I would love to expand the business further and ideally on a ‘For profit’ basis, as I think that model is a better fit for TwoToo than either a Charity or Not-for Profit model. There is nothing unbiblical about making a profit and the main aim for TwoToo achieving a profit would be to able to give as many scarves away as possible.

What makes TwoToo distinctively Christian?

It is living out the call to help the homeless that Isaiah 58 best describes and Jesus repeatedly calls us to. However, the idea of TwoToo resonates extremely positively with non Christians and I’ve been surprised that a lot of the support that we’ve had has come from non church sources.

We’ve also always aimed to source our Scarves and T-Shirts from ethical sources. So far we have been buying from wholesale suppliers who profess to have ethical policies relating to their suppliers. If we can develop TwoToo to a larger business we’d like to be able to buy from source and therefore have more direct control on where we buy from.

There are a lot of people out there who have great ideas like this, but who aren’t sure how to act on them. What advice would you give them?

Being a creative person, running a design business and needing to have creative ideas on a daily basis, is a real privilege. The tricky part is deciding which ideas are the good ones!

In the same way that we need to have discernment in our spiritual lives, I find I need to have discernment of my creative ideas. If an idea comes to me and then is gone by the next day that usually means it wasn’t very good. TwoToo is one of those that wouldn’t go away! I had the thought of the original idea quite a few months before I shared it with anyone, and it kept coming back to me during that time. This is one of the signs of an idea that is worth thinking about! You need to have that confidence to push an idea forward as it does take a lot of time and energy as well as capital to start something like TwoToo.

Balancing TwoToo and the demands of church and family life can be difficult at times but I view TwoToo as a combination of my church commitment and everything I do, and I’m fortunate that I have an understanding wife! Rest is something that I’m not so good at but part of the plan in moving to Poole was to enjoy the area and I’ve recently taken up windsurfing, and Poole is the perfect place to start! 

Has there been a time when you wanted to give up?

Yes, I’ve frequently thought about giving up! Particularly when I’ve been putting lots of time in and not seeing results. Often people are really supportive, but when it comes down to it, nothing happens unless I do it!

As I mentioned earlier, a belief in what you’re doing is very important and in helping to keep your passion. Having confidence in the idea and that you’re doing the right thing is a very real help to keep me motivated. Since we started TwoToo in Autumn 2007, as each year has come around I’ve thought “Should we carry on?” So far the answer has been ‘Yes’ and this year I’m putting even more time and effort into it to push as hard as possible to see it there is a future for it.

Bottom line: what’s your big dream? What’s the difference you’re trying to make?

I am very aware that, on its own, giving away scarves isn’t going to cure homelessness. However it does create awareness of the situation and shows those receiving scarves that there are people who care about them. That in itself makes a real difference to a homeless person.

I would love to see the TwoToo concept being extended to other areas of need, it is very transferable to simply say ‘Buy x and we’ll give another x to someone else who needs it’. This concept can be sustainable as we’re not asking people to give us something with nothing in return. If they buy a TwoToo they are getting something in return for their payment.

Thank you so much for your time, Steve, your goal of donating over 500 scarves this winter is a pretty big one; remind us where we can go to buy a scarf and help the homeless.

Thank you for your interest in TwoToo. A full range of scarves for men and women are available and start at £5 + p+p each (which includes the cost of the scarf that’s given away).

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Cops & Robbers

Cops & Robbers is a comic book telling real life stories of ex-offenders and others who are now Christians. Started in 2004 by Paul Senior, a member at the Community Church in Bishop’s Stortford, Cops & Robbers is an example of the kingdom of God reaching out into places that seem hard to reach for most Christians. Paul shares the story of Cops & Robbers.

Cops & Robbers started life in 2004 as an initiative of the Christian Police Association (CPA) London which aimed to reduce crime, particularly knife crime, amongst young people. Permission was given by the Metropolitan Police for comic books, telling true stories of ex-offenders and others who are now Christians, to be placed in cells. However, when the first edition of 10,000 was produced, permission was withdrawn as one of the stories showed a black man with a knife – a ‘racial stereotype’, according to the Met – even though this was a true story.
 
The Daily Mail and BBC got hold of the story and what might have been seen by 300 – 500 young people in custody, ended up in a national newspaper and on the BBC news with Des, the subject of the story, telling millions of viewers how the power of God had changed his life.
 
There followed a second and third edition of the comic published by me before I retired from the Met after 30 years’ service, but not before a special edition was produced in conjunction with T.R.U.C.E. (To Reach Urban Communities Everywhere, a Nicky Cruz organisation which uses ex-drug addicts and dealers to reach young people with the gospel). These editions were used around the country by police forces putting them in cells, by churches as outreach, and as part of Operation Blunt (a Metropolitan Police initiative to reduce knife crime).
 
In Devon and Cornwall the Youth Offending Team made the comic available to young offenders and several became Christians. Wherever the comic has been used it has been well received. It has been particularly well received by prisons and many thousands of copies have been given out for free.
 
Upon my retirement it looked as though there would be no more editions but in the space of two days, three things happened:
1. A friend at church offered to pay for an edition to be printed;
2. Devon and Cornwall requested a special edition to be done for them; and
3. Mike Smith, a Metropolitan Police Officer had a vision from God for young people to exchange their weapons for his: their guns and knives for Bibles.
 
This led to a new smaller ‘pocket’ edition being produced and distributed. The Metropolitan Police paid for 5,000 copies to be printed for use with Word4Weapons, a scheme started by Mike Smith in London where young people can surrender their knives and guns in specially adapted weapons bins and in exchange receive a Bible, a comic, information, etc. in a special ‘All I Need’ bag.
 
A chance meeting then led to Teen Challenge producing their own edition which they distribute when they do street evangelism six days a week in London. Some of the stories in the comics are from them and others from people who attend Transformed, a church for ex-offenders in Brixton.
 
With the help of supporters we produced a special edition in Thai for use by John Robinson, the first ex-offender I met after I became a Christian who, with his family, now works in prisons and orphanages in Thailand.  John wrote Nobody’s Child, a very moving story of a young lad brought up in care and with spells in prison before becoming a Christian.
 
It costs about £5,000 to produce each edition of the comic, and though most are given away, we rely on donations to raise funds for subsequent editions. In 2010 my church, Community Church Bishop’s Stortford, committed to support the production the next two editions. I am currently preparing an edition for 2012. I have been blessed by the work of a number of illustrators including one who works for Marvel Comics in the States and has done a wonderful job for me.
 
To date over 100,000 copies, 10 editions, have been produced and distributed. I am working with Avanti Ministries to produce a special edition for them and copies have been distributed worldwide as and when they have been requested. The stories are all available to read on the website where donations towards the work can also be made. All I ask from people if they would like hard copies is payment of post and packing and a donation.
 
God has been very good in starting this work and allowing it to continue. We all have a story, and these are very easy to follow, especially by those for whom literacy is a problem – over half the prison population have difficulties with literacy and numeracy.
 
I have recently been appointed the Word4Weapons tri-borough co-ordinator (Southwark, Lambeth and Westminster).
 
The 2012 edition is currently being prepared. If any church would like to pre-order 1,000 copies for outreach, etc. at a cost of £250 (which includes delivery in the UK) please contact Bishop’s Stortford before the end of December 2011. This will help us to plan an increased print run which is much more cost efficient.

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Blue Plaque on the home of Josephine Butler by Jessica Mul

Josephine Elizabeth Butler was a passionate Christian who once said, “God and one woman make a majority”, and proved the truth of those words by playing a major role in social reform in the 19th century and vastly improving conditions for women in education and health.

She was born in 1828 into a family that already had a history of social reform, and I shall let Josephine talk about her father from her book: An Autobiographical Memoir.

My father was a man with a deeply rooted, fiery hatred of all injustice… My father’s connection with the great public movements of the day - the first Reform Bill, the Abolition of the Slave Trade and Slavery, and the Free Trade movement - gave me very early an interest in public questions and in the history of the country.

The love of justice was a passion with him. Probably I have inherited this passion. When my father spoke to us, his children, of the great wrong of slavery, I have felt his powerful frame tremble and his voice would break. He told us sad stories of the hideous wrong inflicted on negro men and women.

 
In 1852 she married scholar and cleric George Butler, who shared both her Christian faith and her commitment to liberal reformation and together they had four children. However, sadly, at age six their only daughter died, and to cope with her grief Josephine threw herself into ministering to those with greater pain than her own, working particularly for the rights of women.

Josephine began a campaign in 1869 to repeal the Contagious Diseases Acts (CDAs) in the same year that they were fully introduced. These Acts were designed to protect soldiers from sexually transmitted diseases but placed the blame entirely on prostitutes. In addition it gave police the power to force an examination on any woman who could not provide proof that she wasn’t a prostitute. The women accused often had their reputations destroyed and this caused them to be unable to find work or lodgings, except in a brothel.

The CDAs stood in stark contrast to her Christian views that placed value on all people and so even when she realised that the chance of a quick victory was lost, she continued on regardless. Wherever possible she persuaded sympathetic MPs to introduce the repeal bill to Parliament even with no chance of success, as keeping it in the public eye was incredibly valuable. It would be 14 years before she finally saw the Acts suspended and three more years before they were repealed entirely.

At the same time, as part of another campaign for women’s rights, she saw the age of sexual consent in Britain rise from 13 to 16. This began to combat the child prostitution that Josephine knew existed in her hometown of Liverpool and also changed the laws that protected girls against sexual abuse. Before the bill was introduced only the father of the child could bring a charge of abduction so the law was useless if the father was dead or had abandoned the mother.

George Lansbury explains in his book Looking Backwards and Forwards (1935) some of the character that made Josephine the influential woman that she was.

[A] very gentle and lovable woman was Mrs. Josephine Butler. Once, in the big St. Mary’s schoolroom in Whitechapel, I listened to her with tears running down my cheeks as she told of the cruel and barbarous workings of the Contagious Diseases Acts. Mrs. Butler left a comfortable rectory to fight this fight on behalf of womanhood. She had to face tremendous opposition, gross distortion and misrepresentation. There was at the beginning no organisation, either of women or men, to stand with her. Nor did her own sex support her. But the unremitting toil of this fine Christian woman, not overblessed with physical strength, and not an orator in the accepted sense, at last won her victory, and the “C.D.” Acts were repealed.

Josephine also had a huge part to play in women’s education during the 19th century, a time when many girls resorted to prostitution due to poor education creating poverty. To respond to this need she started training them in more skilled work as well as setting up a small workshop to make envelopes. The profits from this endeavour helped cover the running costs of a hostel, which she had set up as a woman’s refuge.

In addition to her personal work for the women she came in contact with, she also became president of the ‘North of England Council for Promoting the Higher Education of Women’. One of the council’s activities was petitioning Cambridge University to admit women to its Higher Local Examinations, and they saw success in 1869, opening up a vast array of new options for women in education.

There is no doubt that Josephine Butler was one of the most remarkable women of the 19th century. Many of the reforms that she brought about in her lifetime still stand today and her life is an inspiration to all of us who seek to change culture for the better.

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Uncertainty By Nicu Buculei

As an artist, all is uncertain. Whether a dancer, musician, sculptor, photographer, writer like myself, or creative of another ilk, uncertainty has a way of painting itself across your work. Uncertainty at the quality of your work, ‘Will any audience like this song?’, uncertainty at financial viability, ‘Is this really going to be commissioned?’, and, most crucially, uncertainty of your calling, ‘Am I just dreaming, is this really what God has got for me?’ Thankfully, uncertainty is crucial, it is God’s proving ground, a place of unparalleled character growth.

Uncertainty breeds faith
 
We find, in Hebrews, the famous verse, ‘Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.’  Faith is reliant on the unseen, the hoped for yet unrealised.  Without uncertainty, faith has no place.
 
When Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were presented with the fiery furnace, they had a choice, a choice to doubt for a moment, one moment of weakness, and kneel to Nebuchadnezzar’s golden image, or to trust.  What would come out of their trust was uncertain, unseen, yet hoped for, they had surely never witnessed God pluck others from a fiery furnace but their response is never in question, ‘We have no need to answer you in this matter,’ they say, ‘Our God, whom we serve, is able to deliver us . . . if not, be it known . . . we will not serve your gods.’ Never had their future been more in doubt, and never had they a greater opportunity to rely on God.  Great uncertainty breeds great faith.
 
For the artist, every new endeavour, every blank page in the diary, every bank statement is an opportunity to rely on God.  Seek, at all times, His ‘assurance of the things hoped for,’ His ‘conviction of things not seen’.
 
Uncertainty breeds works
 
Imagine a sport.  Two teams take the field, both knowing the outcome, knowing the eventual score line, knowing who’ll score, who’ll miss, who’ll leave the field injured.  Do you imagine the blood is pumping, adrenaline flowing, or do you see the inevitable lack-lustre affair?  In life as in sport, uncertainty drives us.  James contains another famed passage on faith, ‘Faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.’  Like the sportsman who believes, unknowing, in a favourable outcome, who sweats and strives for every moment of the game, every yard won, uncertainty demands we work, demands we give our all to grasp the hoped for, the unseen.  Without works, faith is dead.
 
Joshua never stopped striving for the unseen, promised inheritance.  When ‘all the people of Israel’ rebelled against God, and, in fear, refused to enter the promised land, Joshua, along with Caleb, still proclaimed, ‘The Lord is with us; do not fear them.’  When presented with the vast unassailable walls of Jericho, Joshua trusted in a plan that no human military strategist would advise, leading God’s people, step by step, undoubtedly hounded by taunts and cackles from the besieged city, on their circular march.  When ‘All the kings of the Amorites,’ were gathered against them, ‘Joshua [still] went up . . . he and all the people of war.’

Uncertainty, from a worldly perspective, leaves us slaves to indecision.  As Christian artists, great uncertainty leads to great works of faith.
 
Uncertainty Speaks of God’s Commission
 
When told by a certain scribe that he would follow him wherever he went, Jesus declared to the earnest man, ‘Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head’.  A life following Jesus is a life marked by uncertainty.  ‘Behold,’ Jesus said, ‘I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves.’  He never called us to a life of certainty.  ‘You will be dragged before governers and kings,’ ‘you will be hated by all.’  The expectation of the Christian should be uncertainty, an uncertain life on earth, knowing that we are a people sent.  Jesus sends us, not to a cosy, rosy existence, but to one of challenge, risk and uncertain outcomes, for every moment of challenge is a moment to trust and better glorify Him.
 
‘Do all things,’ persevere in every penniless project, perform at every tiny venue, pursue every commission, no matter how small, ‘without grumbling or complaining,’ in spite of the uncertainty, in spite of the challenge, in spite of the obstacles, ‘that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world.’  This is what he calls us too, for we are his servant, in whom He will be glorified.
 
A Note on Certainty
 
Faith, in the face of an uncertain future, sets the Christian apart, but it is not, like our analogous sportsman, faith in one’s own ability, it is a faith set in The Rock of certainty.  The most common promise in the Bible is one of certainty, ‘I will be with you.’  ‘I chose you before the creation of the World,’ I knitted you together in your mother’s womb, ‘the hairs of your head are all numbered,’ when you sit and when you rise, I know, I shall renew your strength, I hem you in before and behind and lay my hand upon you, ‘I know the plans I have for you,’ even though you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, you will fear no evil, for I am with you, ‘behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’ This is his certain promise to us, through all uncertainty, he will be with us, Immanuel.

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Who ever would have thought of caring for the poor by brewing beer?

Arthur Guinness would. The water in Dublin in the eighteenth century was so unhealthy that the poor were drinking gin as a cheap alternative. Disturbed by the ill-health and poverty this caused, Guinness used his knowledge and business-skills to brew up something that was more drinkable than the water, more healthy than gin and hugely profitable.

Meanwhile, other members of the family were sending people out across the world, planting churches and winning the lost in many other nations. What a great family! And what a great summary of the heart of the Everything conference.

We are thrilled to be welcoming Dr Os Guinness, a direct descendent of this family, as our keynote speaker in 2012. Os will be giving us some practical ways in which believers can connect with and influence their world, and through interviews and short videos we will hear the fascinating stories of others putting this into action, including:

Award-winning comedian Paul Kerensa, a script-writer of the hit comedy show Miranda, explaining how a Christian can bring something of God into a secular comedy-writing team;
 
Three businessman-brothers telling us about the really innovative way they are fighting the sex-trade;
 
Finding out why a small group of people have committed to live in an inner-city community for a number of decades and how they are seeking to bring about change within that community;
 
And much more!

I will also be speaking, and we will complete the package with Spirit-filled worship, prayer and ministry. It’s shaping up to be an amazing day.

Whatever you are passionate about, Everything 2012 has inspiration, ideas and tools you can put into practice in your world – you don’t want to miss it. Advance tickets are on sale now for just £20 (tickets on the door will cost £25), so click here to book, then spread the word.

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A couple of years ago I was at a church meeting for leaders where we were asked to discuss in groups what we felt God had specifically called us to. As each person in my group began to share about their call to leading worship, eldership, children’s ministry in the church, discipleship, etc., I started to feel a little nervous about my answer. My turn came last, and I was almost apologetic as I explained that I felt called to – dare I say it – my secular field of employment.

Gathering with 800 other Christians at the Everything conference in London in March reassured me that there are lots of people just like me, eager to find out more about how to be salt and light in the settings in which God has placed us, wanting to make a difference and influence the little bit of world that’s around us Monday to Friday.
 
A packed programme started with worshipping Jesus, before David Stroud spoke excellently about seeking the peace and prosperity of our nation. His interactive session got us talking to the people around us about where there is a lack of ‘shalom’ in our communities and how the church can help society to flourish. Keynote speaker Andy Crouch, the Pennsylvania-based author of Culture Making, delivered three talks over the course of the day, with the highlight for me being his thought-provoking first session where he talked about the fact that Christians are often known for what they are against, rather than what they are for. Memorably utilising verbs beginning with the letter C, Andy challenged us that, rather than condemning, critiquing, copying or consuming culture, Christians should be known for cultivating and creating it.
 
The conference was peppered with real life stories of people and churches doing exactly that. Script-writer Rhydian Brook, whose 2010 film Africa United was described by The Telegraph as “moving, funny…a road movie with a difference”, was interviewed on stage. And we heard from Matt Hatch about members of Mosaic Church in Leeds – musicians performing at open mic nights, a stand-up comedian who tells jokes about not having sex before marriage, a freelance TV producer who raises awareness of social justice issues, and many other ordinary people who are playing their part in shaping culture.
 
But it was one of the videos that has remained with me daily in the couple of weeks since the Everything conference: a film featuring Renewal Church, Solihull Pastor David Carr’s provocation to be so engaged with our communities that they would notice straight away if we closed our doors. The friends with me at the conference were also struck by this footage, particularly how the church so effectively worked with public services such as the police and healthcare. The Everything conference challenged me, changed some of my thinking and inspired me to actively seek out what I can do to influence the culture around me, particularly in my field of work. If every delegate left feeling the same way, there’s no doubt that our communities – and our nation – will be changed.

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http://www.flickr.com/photos/zen/1585255/">old typewriter by zen

As I rode the underground this morning, ‘i-podded’ and head buried in my book, cocooning myself in a blanket of media with which to blot out the world around me, I stumbled across a poem. It stopped me in my tracks, caused me to raise my head, remove my headphones and look around me with fresh eyes.

Upon arriving at my destination, I read up on the poet. I’m no great aficionado of poetry and I had never before come across Anne Sexton, but from what I discovered, she was a troubled lady who grappled with depression and mental health issues, and who took up poetry at the advice of her therapist.
 
I don’t know enough about her to comment on her faith or theology; if indeed she ever possessed either. This poem comes from her final collection of work, The Awful Rowing Toward God. The story goes that towards the end of her life she met with a Roman Catholic Priest, who refused to administer last rites, but told her, “God is in your typewriter.” Inspired, she wrote this collection in twenty days, refusing to allow it to be published until after her death, which came in 1974, as she tragically took her own life. 
 
Since the Earth is the Lord’s and everything in it (Psalm 24:1), perhaps, just perhaps, God was in her typewriter. Not in some pagan quasi-pantheistic way, lurking beneath the ribbon, or ‘one with the keys’, but operating through common grace, providing glimpses of His truth and beauty.
 
What was it Paul said, after all, quoting some of the pagan poets of Athens?

‘From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. “For in him we live and move and have our being.” As some of your own poets have said, “We are his offspring.”’ (Acts 17:26-28)

 
Whatever Anne Sexton may have thought, felt, believed or meant by her writing, her poem lifted my head, caused me to look around and appreciate the morning in a new light. Everything does matter to God. It does all belong to Him. He is the source of every good and perfect gift, and Sexton’s words evoked a smattering of thanks from my lips. Perhaps they might do the same for you:

Welcome Morning
Anne Sexton
   
There is joy
in all:
in the hair I brush each morning,
in the Cannon towel, newly washed,
that I rub my body with each morning,
in the chapel of eggs I cook
each morning,
in the outcry from the kettle
that heats my coffee
each morning,
in the spoon and the chair
that cry “hello there, Anne”
each morning,
in the godhead of the table
that I set my silver, plate, cup upon
each morning.

All this is God,
right here in my pea-green house
each morning
and I mean,
though often forget,
to give thanks,
to faint down by the kitchen table
in a prayer of rejoicing
as the holy birds at the kitchen window
peck into their marriage of seeds.

So while I think of it,
let me paint a thank-you on my palm
for this God, this laughter of the morning,
lest it go unspoken.

The Joy that isn’t shared, I’ve heard,
dies young.

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A few months on from Everything 2011, we caught up with Andy Crouch to hear some of his reflections on the event and his trip to the UK.

If you had to briefly summarise your message at the Everything Conference, how would you put it?

We are made to be culture makers - not primarily cultural critics or mere culture consumers. As image-bearers of God, our vocation is what I call cultivating and creating - both sustaining and tending the good that is already in the world, and adding new cultural goods to the world. And as Christians we are servants of the most culturally influential person who ever lived, who accomplished for us, and works in us, the cultural creativity that Adam’s descendants lost - so for us cultivating and creating culture is not just our human duty, but our Christian joy.

What were the highlights of your trip?

Well, the weather happened to be wonderful! But as is almost always true, the highlights were people - the hospitable, generous, and thoughtful leaders from all walks of life whom I met at ChristChurch London and at the Everything Conference. I also was deeply encouraged by being immersed in an expectant atmosphere of worship and prayer - it was quite moving and refreshing for me after a season of intense travel.

What were your impressions of the Everything Conference?

In addition to the heartfelt worship, I was really struck by the stories of small- and large-scale cultural creativity that were shared, from local churches to feature-filmmaking. I also sensed that the Newfrontiers movement is ready to take on a deeper sense of cultural responsibility - to see the formation of thriving churches not as an end in itself, but as a platform for equipping Christians to contribute in every walk of life.

Do you have any reflections on other aspects of the trip?

It was quite extraordinary to spend an afternoon with national church leaders who were so eager to learn from one another and support each other, to think both critically and creatively, and to see their congregations and movements grow, even if that required radically rethinking the church’s mission in order to include a calling that is bigger than just building churches.

What do you perceive to be the major differences between the US and UK contexts?
 
I suppose the biggest difference comes down to this: I perceive Christians in the US as over-confident in their own ability to transform culture. Whereas my sense of UK Christians is they tend to underestimate their capacity to make transformative contributions to government, media, business, and the arts. This may well reflect national character traits, of course! The other big difference is that American Christianity has a regrettable legacy of populist anti-intellectualism that really hinders serious cultural creativity, and that is much less prevalent in the UK. Culture making is both serious and joyful business, and I experienced a lot of serious joy during my visit.

What challenges do you foresee us facing as we pursue this agenda?
 
Cultures resist change. That is true not just of societies, but of our churches as well. If we are really creating culture, we will encounter real resistance, starting right in our own hearts and souls - we ourselves resist creativity and change. I do think the headwinds of secularism blow more fiercely in the UK, and any serious, large-scale contribution to culture in the UK will be met by serious resistance. We need to be prepared for that and have appropriately thick skins - not that we ignore our critics but that we not be defined by our reaction to their criticism. That has been one of the real weaknesses of evangelical Christians in the US - we allowed ourselves to become better known by what we are against than what we are for.
 
How can our churches better support people in creating culture?
 
In the church world, you get what you celebrate. Too often churches only celebrate leadership within the church, when we should be celebrating people who are following Christ in every sphere of life. So the number one change I would recommend is intentionally celebrating cultural leadership more often. This requires a kind of humility and courage from pastors, because they have to be willing to celebrate people pouring their energies into things other than the church itself. But I truly believe that kind of generosity will be more than compensated for by the energy that is unleashed when people realize the church cares about what they do every day of the week, not just Sunday.

What did you personally take away from the trip?

Well, to be very honest I was reminded of my deep need for worship, prayer, and dependence on the Holy Spirit. I came to faith through the charismatic renewal in the United States, but much of my time these days is spent in parts of the evangelical movement that are rather distant from the charismatic movement’s focus on daily, personal, intentional pursuit of encounter with God. Ultimately it is not enough for us to seek to be culture makers; we have to be transformed, ourselves, by the renewing work of God in order to have anything to offer. To borrow John Wesley’s famous phrase, my heart was “strangely warmed” by my time with you all, and I hope my own cultivating and creating will be richer and deeper for it.
 

Check out Andy’s talks at Everything 2011 at our Media Resources page.

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Mal Fletcher is a respected social commentator, global leadership speaker and author. He has pioneered several major leadership networks across the world, and is a regular contributor for the BBC and Sky TV. He is the Chairman of 2020 Plus, a think tank on social affairs, and Director of Next Wave International, a faith-based communications group which trains organisations to engage the future and move society forward in a positive direction.
2020plus.net

In this interview, Mal speaks about influence, the future, leadership and some of the people and projects who have inspired him.

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Archeology by sharkbait

Think of your perfect town... what would it have? What would it not have? Now how can you make a difference, right now, right where you live?

In this talk from Newday 2011, Tim Frisby shares about how to put our theology into practice and make a difference in our communities. He looks at the causes of poverty, God’s heart for the poor, and how we can make our neighbourhoods a better place.

Click here to listen to the talk, and follow along with his interactive presentation below.

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Nietzsche by eozikune

Nietzsche, Freud, Descartes, Kant... Who are the some of the big thinkers who have changed culture? What can we learn from them, and what are the challenges they pose?

In this seminar at Newday 2011, Andrew Wilson gave a whistlestop tour of the history of philosophy, helping us to understand where some of our modern presuppositions come from.

Click here to download Big ideas that have changed the world.

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God's Plan to Change the World

What's wrong with the world? How did it get this way? And what's God going to do about it?

These are some of the questions we considered in the first talk of the How to Change the World seminar stream at Newday 2011. Around 350 youth, aged 15-18, came to a week of seminars designed to help them engage with the world around them and make it a better place.

You can download the talk here and follow the interactive presentation below:

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Black is Bright by Ernie|Bert

Tom Wright, former Bishop of Durham, wrote a provocative piece in The Spectator last weekend, in which he argued that though the godless may mock, it’s not yet time for Christians to clamour for the lifeboats!

The church, he explains, has a much-needed role in society:

‘It exists […] to do and be for the world what Jesus had been for his contemporaries: to bring healing and hope, to rescue people trapped in their own folly and sin, to straighten out the distorted pictures of reality that every age manages to produce, and to enable people to live by, and in, God’s true reality. It exists not to rescue people from the world but to rescue them for the world: to see lives transformed by the gospel so that people can discover a new depth and resonance of what it means to be human, precisely by looking beyond themselves to God, to the beauties and glories of his creation, and to their neighbours, particularly those in need. The Church does this through liturgy and laughter; through music and drug-rehabilitation programmes; through prayer and protest marches; through preaching and campaigning; through soaking itself in the Bible and immersing itself in the needs of the world. When God wants to change the world, he doesn’t send in the tanks (as many, including many critics, think he should). He sends in the meek; and by the time the world realises what’s going on, the meek have set up clinics and schools, taught people to read and to sing, and given them a hope, meaning and purpose which secular modernism (which gave us, after all, Passchendaele and Auschwitz as well as modern medicine and space travel) has failed to provide.’

 
 
The whole article is worth a read. Check it out, and share your thoughts and reflections below… but here are just a couple of key quotes for your delectation:

‘Snapshots from my time in Durham tell a true story of what the Church is there for. The foot-and-mouth crisis strikes the Dales, and the local vicar is the only person the desperate farmers know they can trust. A local authority begs the Church to take over a failing school, and within months, when I visit, a teenage boy tells me, ‘Well, sir, it’s amazing: the teachers come to lessons on time now.’ Miners’ leaders speak of the massive coal stocks still lying there unused, and we campaign, in the Lords and elsewhere, for the new technology that can release it. The new vicar at a city-centre church, dead on its feet a few years ago, apologises that the weekday service is a few minutes late in starting; he has been helping a young, frightened asylum-seeker whose case is coming up the next day. In one old mining community, so many shops had closed that the bank shut as well; the local churches have taken it over, and run it as a credit union, a literacy training centre and a day centre for the very old and the very young. In a world where ‘family’ means ‘the people in the neighbouring streets who are there for you when you need them’, I ask a young adult what’s different now she’s become a worshipping member of the Church, and she replies, ‘It’s like having a great big second family.’ The Church, said William Temple, is the only society in the world that exists for the benefit of its non-members. I have to report that this vision is alive and well, and that the Church of England, though not its only local expression, is in the middle of it.’

‘This is the real ‘Big Society’. It’s always been there; it hasn’t gone away. Check out the volunteers in the prison, in the hospice, in charity shops. It’s remarkable how many of them are practising Christians. They aren’t volunteering because the government has told them we can’t afford to pay for such work any more. They do it because of Jesus. Often they aren’t very articulate about this. They just find, in their bones, that they need and want to help, especially when things are really dire. But if you trace this awareness to its source, you’ll find, as often as not, that the lines lead back to a parish church or near equivalent, to the regular reading of the Bible, to the life of prayer and sacrament and fellowship. To the regular saying and singing of prayers and hymns that announce, however surprising or shocking it may be to our sceptical world, that God is God, that Jesus is Lord, that the Holy Spirit is alive and well and active in a community near you.’

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Fatherless by quinn.anya

As I write the debate rages as to the causes of the recent riots and spates of looting that swept through England’s major cities. Some will point to the growing level of youth unemployment, which is currently around 20% compared to 7.9% nationally. Others will attribute the violence to the funding cuts, which have decimated the youth sector. Many will cast their stones at parents and teachers.

Through all the noisy blame there has been one reason which rings most true for me. ‘We are reaping what we have sown,’ was a friend’s comment. We have raised a fatherless generation and a fatherless generation is what we have. One which is disenchanted with the idea of authority, disenfranchised with the ideals of mutual respect, and has therefore disassociated themselves from the established social model.

What’s to be done?

Along with many brothers I work with young people. I don’t believe that there are many schools or youth centres in the country where a Christian does not work. And like many, my heart has been broken over the fatherless children I have worked with, some abandoned, others in mourning, all desperate for a father’s hand. 
 
We are arguably the only people who know fatherhood in its truest sense. Through Christ, the way, the truth, and the life, we have come to The Father. We are in a unique position to show this generation that a father, who wields ultimate authority, who holds His arms out ready to accept, who finds a place for the hopeless and the dissolute alike, does exist. So, how do we point to the father in our workplace?

Set Boundaries

Any teacher worth their salt knows how to set boundaries, rules, guidelines to get a class to listen, to learn. But only Christians’ moral compass is being set in line with the laws of The Father. Therefore set boundaries that go beyond the classroom, set boundaries for life. As the proverb goes, ‘Train a child up in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.’
 
Train young people in morality, respect, love, not just classroom behaviour. A previous group of boys I taught were in the awful habit of jeering rather than cheering others successes. It would have been easy to change behaviour, to set rules, enforced with clear consequences, much harder to change attitudes, but this had to be the aim.

Be the ears that they lack

Two parents equals four ears, one parent equals two ears. As professionals working in a sector having every penny squeezed out of it, our time is more precious than ever but I would urge you to be interruptible. I work with a class of thirty children and, like many, I know each individual’s story. I know which ones are fatherless, which are seeking asylum, whose parents lie in a hospital bed, and I try, not always successfully to be the ears that they need whenever they need them.
 
A few months ago I had the opportunity to go after the 1 and leave the 99. A usually tough young man come into class in tears, his story is one of recent loss, his father returning to their home country without the rest of the family, so I left the class, (I still don’t know what they got up to!) he needed my ears.

A place to belong

With the breakdown of family many lack what is an intrinsic human need placed in us by The Father. As the redeemed we’ve found ultimate acceptance and belonging in the arms of our loving daddy. We, rightly, have restrictions, as adults working with children, in the ways we can show love. Within these restrictions we must do all we can to welcome, to accept, to include. 
 
We all work with children who abuse us sometimes, swear at us, are violent, aggressive, show us nothing but disdain and hostility. At one time we were at enmity with God, we spat in the face of His goodness, turned our backs, yet His love endured. ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,’ Christ says, just as he did.

In all this

 
Finally, in all this, take every opportunity to talk about your faith. In a secular setting, these opportunities can be limited; make the most of every one. ‘How will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching.’ The Father is the answer for this fatherless generation. We must be light, both shining something of true fathering and guiding a way to The Father.

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Globe by hownowdesign

Cornelius Van Till wrote: ‘The Bible is authoritative on everything of which it speaks. And it speaks of everything.’

We are called to change culture, but change it to what? Believers need a worldview on all aspects of life. From where do we get this – culture or the Bible?

This talk,  recorded at Together on a Mission 2010, looks at how we can discern unbiblical worldviews, and how to respond to them? Click here to download the talk and here to download notes from the talk

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Brooms Up Clapham! That's the spirit! by belkus

Social networking was used to draw hundreds onto London’s streets yesterday. Armed and ready to do battle, they descended on Clapham, Brixton and Hackney. Units later broke out in Manchester and Birmingham. Yet these gangs were not armed with face-masks and firebombs; they came with bin bags and brooms. Their goal was not to tear down and destroy, but to cleanse and to heal.

At some point during Monday night, a website and twitter feed entitled ‘riotcleanup’ were created. By mid-afternoon @riotcleanup had over 70,000 followers, and 600 people were waiting in Clapham for police to open the roads and allow them to swoop in and sweep up.
 
Even more heartening, though, was the fact that at the top of Twitter’s ‘trending’ list, showing what key words are being most used across the micro-blogging site worldwide, the hashtag #prayforlondon sat at the top of the list for most of the day. That means that every time anyone anywhere in the world logged on to twitter’s home page, the call to pray for the UK’s capital city was in the most prominent position.

Christian groups and charities were also taking advantage of the social media networks to circulate suggestions for how to pray and how to give practical help: some sent out appeals for clothes they could give to those whose homes had been burned out; others suggested baking goodies for the hard-working police and fire crews; still others publicised prayer vigils being held across the city.
 
Looking at the scenes on TV and the internet, it would be possible to think that the UK had descended into anarchy. Violence and destruction seemed to rule the streets, yet when dawn broke, good people, who cared about their neighbourhoods, were ready and willing to put their compassion into action. This is the famous sociological ‘Broken Windows Theory’ on a grand scale.
 
Simply put, the theory, posited by George L. Kelling and James Q. Wilson in Atlantic Magazine nearly 30 years ago, states that if a neighbourhood is such that broken windows remain broken and graffiti remains disfiguring the walls, then it will not take long before more windows are broken, more graffiti appears, and vandalism generally increases. If, however, windows are fixed, walls are cleaned up and the area is generally well-tended, it will remain well-tended and will feel both a safer and a more pleasant place to live.
 
Londoners and residents of other cities across the UK could have hidden indoors, battening down the hatches and sheltering from the storm. They could have called on the local councils to clear up the mess. In taking the responsibility and making a stand, though, they have chosen to reclaim their streets and not surrender them to violence and destruction.
 
When the world looks darkest, it is important that we not lose hope, but focus on the good that remains, and allow our light to shine brightly.
 
However you choose to respond, remember to stay safe, and to work with the local authorities to help and not hinder their work.

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Louisiana mudbug by Jeffrey K. Edwards

Picture a typically English summer scene: a corner of the Suffolk countryside, the farmland crisscrossed by tents and caravans of all shapes and colours...

Dads chase renegade toddlers whose curiosity has taken them too close to the sheep or the open water; mums settle down on plastic picnic rugs; teenagers make the most of being released from school and parental control; students free of exams spend hard-earned loans on Suffolk cider. The rain mostly pours, punctuated by occasional showers, turning the ground to an indistinct mud lake and brightly-coloured wellies to homogenous brown. The occasion is Latitude, an annual weekend festival of music, art, poetry, theatre, comedy and every type of food under the sun – or rain.

Being very English, the weather brings us together. Huddling under umbrellas and shouting over the noise of the raindrops to the neighbour in the coffee queue, thoughts are exchanged on the best acts to see – those under any sort of cover, apparently.
 
The festival programme is a feast of delights, the creative capacity of human beings trying to make something of their world – money, hedonism, sense, fun – played out in glorious technicolour. Hilarious comedy sets, thought-provoking debate between MPs and journalists, frank interviews with charming actors, uncomfortably real theatre and achingly beautiful music, with a big welly-full of pop through the decades thrown in for good measure.  Artists stretch out their talent in questions and answers, and their audiences respond.  Adoring fans surge towards vast stages, pressing forward for a glimpse of their idols, hands instinctively lifted exuberantly high as symphonic melodies, soaring voices and flashing lights create a heady mix.
 
It’s easy to see why Suede have re-formed after so many years: Brett Anderson struts the stage, embracing the adulation just as he did fifteen years ago.  The music washes over the thousands who join in with The Naked and Famous singing, ambiguously,

“All of this is tearing us apart,
I don’t know where us or this start…
As the plans turn into compromise,
the promises all turn to lies.”

 
The lead singer of The National drops down into the crowd, and, with technical team clutching the microphone lead and racing after him, propels through his fans who reach out to touch the man whose whole body cries out,

“Sorrow found me when I was young,
Sorrow waited, sorrow won…
Don’t leave my half a heart alone
On the water.”

 
The remarkable Johnny Flynn defies explanation as he sings whilst simultaneously playing the violin, before exchanging it for a trumpet, followed by several different guitars. 

“We’re all digging, if you wanna know,
Fixing, digging far too slow, far too slow.
We dug for money, we shovelled four tons.
And the end wasn’t funny, though we’d all had fun.
Limping and broken, the tunnel fell in,
I’ve been limping from tunnels since my original sin.”

 
There is a curious mix amongst the artists on show of unabashed indulgence in their creation, or in the celebrity it generates, alongside an honesty that confesses neither artist nor their work can ultimately satisfy.  It is a truth most brutally voiced by an extraordinarily gifted young south London rapper turned poet named Kate Tempest, whose disarming, physical frankness has us spellbound.

“I’m out for the truth, I’ll shout it from the rooftops.
Too many are too lost…
It’s never too late to see beyond the surface.
I don’t care about the hype, what I care’s about integrity, cos you only build them up to burn their effigy anyway.
I’m so hungry for something sustainable, something with truth, something unchangeable.”

 
I left Latitude wondering if the 25,000-strong crowd, artists and punters alike, weren’t united beyond their muddy, musical weekend by a hunger for something greater than all the brilliance of creation they had witnessed.

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Dr Bob Roberts Jr is the founding pastor of NorthWood Church in Dallas, Texas, a church of several thousand, from which he has planted over 200 churches. Bob also works in Australia, Asia, Afghanistan, Mexico, and Nepal helping with church planting, development and global engagement.

In this interview, Bob explains his understanding of the gospel of the Kingdom, and how churches can make a difference on a global scale.

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O is for Occipital Lobe by illuminaut

A man who wears two hats looks stupid, or so my mother used to tell me... Aged 30, I found myself training as a psychiatrist in the NHS and serving as an elder in a church. Carl Jung may have said that ‘psychiatrists are the new priests’, but I thought this was taking things a step too far. There was little connection between what I did on Sunday and my work on Monday.

Wearing two hats is also unstable. One typically falls off, usually at an inopportune time. God gave us one head and, though we may have to juggle roles such as family and work, there is meant to be communication between the two. Shared themes, core beliefs, common ground. I realised I was not well thought through and that this would lead to me making assumptions (in both roles) unless I addressed this.
 
I also realised that this would be a relatively poorly trodden path. There are Christian psychiatrists older than I, to whom I am indebted, but their views needed to be translated for the 21st Century. There were also people who only spoke from one perspective – Psychiatrists who happened to be Christians, or Christians who happened to be Psychiatrists. With a lot of help and wisdom from God, I was going to have to try and get the right mix.
 
To try and sort out my head, I did what many people did in the ‘noughties’ and started a blog. I wrote about my faith, my work, my conflicts and my thoughts. To my surprise, other people thought it was worth reading; and their comments honed both my writing and my conclusions. One regular theme was my anger at the injustice people with mental health problems face. This was not only in society, where raw deals are common, but also in the church where surely the bride of Christ is meant to manage things better.
 
Like Habakkuk’s complaint against God (Hab 1:2), this was a driving force for my life – the fire in my belly that meant I not only ought to work or wished to work, but wanted to work. I couldn’t not. The writing became a conversation, then a meeting in my front room, then in a bigger room in a pub – and slowly a movement.
 
God calls leaders in the Bible, but he rarely calls them alone. I met an old University friend, Will Van Der Hart, by now ordained, and found he had similar ideas. We discovered groups meeting across the country and many unanswered questions in the church. We teamed up with Premier Christian Media and, in 2007, Mind and Soul in its current form was born.
 
The blessing and grace of God have been amazing. As both of us have seen the arrival of two young children over the past three years, we were not exactly putting ourselves forward. Yet almost the less we did, the more we seemed to be offered. We have partnered with some amazing groups to run large conferences. We’ve been able to put hundreds of resources on a free website. We’ve published one book and the second is at the printers. We’ve been invited to Whitehall… Not to the Palace yet, though!
 
We have both also learned huge lessons and are still very much on a journey. The most important lesson is that this work is nothing without Him, and it stands or falls on the extent to which we realise this. It is not a social concern or charity initiative; it is something close to God’s heart for the ‘poor in spirit’. We take this momentum as a sign of His blessing and of having hit a painful nail on the head.
 
This is also a task unfinished. Our ten-year goals are to see a church that understands mental illness and a mental health service that understands what the church can offer. Both Mind AND Soul in the mix together and 100% of both; not an uneasy 50-50 truce. We have only begun to scratch the surface with what we have done so far, but there is a strategy and a growing influence.
 
As I consider the years ahead, three things must be core to who I am. The first is sustainability. One blessing of living in Edinburgh (apart from the beautiful buildings and fancy shops!) is that I can easily say ‘No’ to invitations to speak from down south. I turn down far more than I accept. Technology is a great help – a mobile phone, email, an automated website with free downloads. But not too much technology – I don’t have an iPhone, I keep date nights with my wife. I know where the ‘off’ button is.
 
The second is to remember that sustainability leads to succession (without which there is no success, as someone said).  This is Mind and Soul, a national network. Not me, not Will – we pray it will out-live us if the task is still ahead. If we have tapped into something big, then harnessing that power and the people involved is part of the future. As we are asked to do more, delegation and trust becomes musts. And it enriches us so much more than going it alone.
 
The third thing is the most important. Jesus said to Martha that she was worried about many things, but praised Martha for choosing what was better (Luke 10:41-42). Am I worried about the future of Mind and Soul? I have all the usual concerns, but in truth I am concerned with only one thing – that I retain my hunger for God and the complaint he has placed in me.

For more information and resources, visit Mind and Soul

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Om Nom Nom Nom!!! by Chris J Bowley

My wife is growing strawberries. I don't hold out much hope for them. They are wind-battered and rain-beleaguered and look, to be honest, more than half dead!

She is confident, however, that they will flourish, and more than fulfill our summer fruit needs. I reminded her of last year’s crop; a measly three, sour as battery acid. Proud and undeterred she informed me that strawberry plants never produce much of a crop on their first year; the bumper crop comes in the second season. You have to take a long term view.
 
I was provoked this week by reading an article by Matt Perman, in which he quotes from the founding letters of both Google and Amazon. You can read the full article here. What challenged me was the fact that both companies have resisted the temptation to think ‘short term’, instead have taken a ‘long term’ view in order to maximise their effectiveness.
 
Perman opens his article by commenting:

‘It is noteworthy that two of the companies that have made the greatest impact over the last ten years, and continue to do so, have explicitly rejected the common approach of focusing on the short-term over the long-term.’

 
I am not naturally patient; I like to buy my strawberry plants one year old, or better still, in a punnet! Sometimes I struggle to see beyond the short term immediate benefits to the long term goal. That myopic view is why, according to Perman, many companies ‘fail to become great.’
 
Says the founder of Google:

‘Our goal is to develop services that significantly improve the lives of as many people as possible. In pursuing this goal, we may do things that we believe have a positive impact on the world, even if the near term financial returns are not obvious… As a private company, we have concentrated on the long term, and this has served us well. As a public company, we will do the same. In our opinion, outside pressures too often tempt companies to sacrifice long term opportunities to meet quarterly market expectations… If opportunities arise that might cause us to sacrifice short term results but are in the best long term interest of our shareholders, we will take those opportunities. We will have the fortitude to do this.’

 
That challenges me. I don’t know about you, but I think Jesus’ instruction to be Salt and Light is a long term call. It’s not about momentary, flash-in-the-pan, short-lived random acts of saltiness. Rather, we are called to take the long term view, working to bring out the best in society in anticipation of God’s final, long-term (eternal!) goal: the renewal of all things.
 
This inevitably means that at times we will have to resist the temptation to pursue instant gratification and short term gain. We will need to invest in the long term, even when it seems more risky, more costly, and less intuitive.
 
Culture making is not a quick-fix solution, but a long term way of life; like growing strawberries. No wonder it all began with the call to cultivate a garden…

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Paul Kerensa

Paul Kerensa is a standup comedian and award-winning scriptwriter for Not Going Out and Miranda. His work has received numerous awards, including the British Comedy Awards 2010 for Best New Comedy - Winner (Miranda), and a nomination at BAFTA 2010 for Best Scripted Comedy (Miranda). Paul trained at Guildford School of Acting and is the only bellybutton-less comedian in the world.

How did you get involved with writing for Miranda?

I submitted jokes for the open-door show of its day, Radio 2’s Parsons and Naylor’s Pull-Out Sections. That producer moved to The News Quiz and took me with her. One of her successors moved to Lee Mack’s Radio 2 show, and took me with her. Lee moved to TV with the sitcom Not Going Out, and took me with him. Miranda Hart appeared in Not Going Out, then got her own show, and took me with her. So the lesson there: jump on as many coat-tails as possible. Then cling, cling.

What is it you love most about comedy writing?

What’s not to love about comedy writing? Apart from the loneliness and the sheer fear of facing a blank page with absolutely no ideas. When it goes well though, it’s great fun, cracking hours, you can often write from home, and you have a job that involves making people laugh. Any day where your work involves making people happier can only be good. The only other down side? I used to love sitcoms. I grew up adoring Blackadder and Fawlty Towers and Red Dwarf and Joking Apart and Murder Most Horrid and Bonjour La Classe and other obscure shows. Now I don’t so much laugh at sitcoms, as see them as work. Rather than ‘hahaha’, sitcoms illicit from me a ‘oh, that’s a clever use of the pull-back-and-reveal’.

How does your Christian faith influence your comedy writing?

My faith influences my writing in the same way it influences the rest of my life, and the same way it probably affects most people’s work lives. It informs who I am, the decisions I make (especially editorial decisions, what ideas I will and won’t entertain), but I wouldn’t say I approach every day thinking how I can evangelise with a script. I’m not in the habit of smuggling God into scenes so that every script has a message that we should all become Christians - mainly because that’s impossible. I work with producers, who have the last word (or the penultimate word, before the executive producer, the commissioner, or whoever else may be there between me and the audience). So instead it’s more about entertaining and informing, which I’ll always do from my perspective, as a Christian, as a father, as a ginger Cornishman.

An example: when table-writing (i.e. maybe eight of us around a table, working on a script for which one of us has written the first draft), I’ve encountered lines that include my saviour’s name, being used in a way I feel is inappropriate. I, personally, don’t mind the odd swear word, but I shudder at blasphemy, as many Christians do. So what do I do in this situation? Do I kick up a fuss, explaining to the table that as a Christian I feel we should not punctuate the script liberally with JCs and Gs? No, largely because I feel that this will cause the other writers to put their defences up, to treat me as a hurdle. Instead I set about thinking of better, funnier (and yes, non-blasphemous) lines that can replace it. My form of evangelism in the workplace is more often this: trying to do what I think and hope God would want, not by holier-than-thou complaining, but by better-than-blasphemy creating, constructively.

Is there anything about the Bible that has inspired your comedy writing?

In one sense, very specifically, yes. I wrote and performed a stand-up show at the Edinburgh Festival based on the book of Genesis. So that was as inspired by the Bible as it’s possible to be. The idea was for it to be the first of 66 annual consecutive shows, culminating when I’m 94. But I stopped, for now. Bit scared at the prospect of getting 60 minutes of entertainment from Micah. Genesis though - I wanted to bring it to a secular audience. The stories are familiar yet undertold. And I felt that the Bible as a whole is more than theology - it contains great history, great literature, and is something everyone should read more. Whatever your faith or lack of it, it’s such an important part of civilisation, we all need to know it better. I hope those who read it will be transformed by it. If they’re not, they should read it anyway.

In your opinion, was Jesus a comedian?

If he was - and absolutely no disrespect to my Lord and saviour - he wasn’t a very good comedian. But that’s a good thing! I don’t want my Messiah finishing parables with “But seriously…”. That said, Jesus was a brilliant communicator, he could improvise, had great imagination with the stories he would relate, and he was willing to adapt what he was saying to whoever he was addressing.

I’ve always pictured a Venn diagram of comedian, teacher and vicar, with a big crossover in the middle. I think Jesus had more of the latter two in him. All three have an element of crowd control, and consist of trying to get your message across to a potentially bored or uninterested audience. Jesus could certainly play whichever room or mount he was in/on.

Do you see comedy playing a role in transforming society?

It’s perhaps too grand to think that my little stage act, or contributions to sitcom scripts, have any effect on society, but I hope it’s cumulative, and that the effect is positive. We all do what we do to uplift and entertain. So yes, we want to transform society for the better, whether that means making people think more, or just making them laugh. Society has enough eroding influences - it would be nice to think that comedy can do some good. I’d love for people to walk away from something I’d written or performed thinking: “Comedy can be upbeat and entertaining without being nasty.”

This interview was originally published in Culture Footprint. Visit their website to get the Culture Footprint email delivered to your inbox.

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The feedback from Everything 2011 has been terrific. People have talked a lot about the insightful teaching, inspiring stories and engaging interviews in a context of worship and praying for one another. For me it was a great day of equipping Christians to live their lives 'fully alive', whichever part of society they are involved with.

You will be glad to know, plans for Everything 2012 are well under way. We’ve secured a great venue in Central London, and are beginning to put together a stellar lineup of speakers and subjects. I’m looking forward to sharing more information with you as plans take shape.

But for now, save the date: 17 March 2012.

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Twitter Bird Sketch by shawncampbell

Calling all twitterholics... If you tweet, then check out the official hashtag for the event: #everythingconf

You can use this hashtag to tweet before, during and after the day so we can pool everyone’s tweets together, see what others are thinking, and inundate the web with comments, emotions and opinions on everything Everything!

What are your hopes and expectations for the event? Let the world know, in 140 character, bite-sized chunks. On the day, why not update people on your thoughts about the event: if a point in a talk hits you, a story inspires you, a video bedazzles you or something creative makes you chuckle, let us know.

And if you’re not attending the event, check out the hashtag to find out what you’re missing… just try not to weep tears of jealousy all over your iPhone!

Also, don’t forget to follow @everythingconf for updates, information, and the odd bit of fun-filled whimsy! It’s going to be a great day…

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Moses by Caleb Simmons

David by Caleb Simmons

Jesus by Caleb Simmons

Resurrection by Caleb Simmons

‘The more I think, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.’ - Vincent van Gogh

Art takes many forms, and is found in many locations. It has the potential to be powerful, provocative, educational and captivating. If Van Gogh is correct, I would propose that art is at its most powerful when it is coupled with a deep love for people.

In 2008, Caleb Simmons, an illustrator and designer from Canterbury was commissioned to create some artwork for an interfaith chapel in a secure training centre for young offenders.
 
‘I was asked to create four stained glass windows,’ he explained ‘which would be printed on metre-squared transparent stickers, and stuck on the chapel windows. This was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up, to be able to create art that spoke of the grace and love of God to people in a troubled place.’
 
The windows were to serve as teaching aids in a religious space used by both Christians and Muslims. This raised challenges on a number of levels; cultural, logistical and theological. Stained glass windows are a regular feature of the Christian tradition, but don’t easily translate for a Muslim context. The content therefore needed to be strong enough to cross this cultural boundary. The second challenge was a logistical one. When the chapel was used by Christians, the whole space was open, but when it was used for Muslim worship, the Imam would pull a curtain across to cover up the altar, the cross and two of the four windows. This variable layout meant that the first two windows had to be applicable to people from both faiths, whilst the third and fourth windows could be explicitly Christian in content.
 
This provided the third challenge; a theological one. ‘I wanted to create a series of images that held together as a whole narrative,’ explained Caleb, ‘but which could also stand alone in their own right. I wanted to respect both Muslim and Christian worshippers, but without compromising on my own belief in the exclusivity of Jesus. As I researched, I found that both faiths shared certain foundational stories and principles upon which I could draw: an affirmation of creation, the stories of Abraham, Moses and David. I decided that the first two windows should depict some of these shared elements, in a way that respected Muslim beliefs, but provoked some curiosity about the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.’
 
By way of a number of recurring themes, weaved through the windows, Caleb sought to narrate a story that ultimately reached its climax in Christ.
 
‘The idea that held it all together was covenant. The narrative of each window is depicted by a series of lines that rise and fall with the story of humanity. From creation we follow the downward lines, which depict the fall into sin and slavery, then rise again towards the giving of the law. The position of Moses is deliberately lower than that of the initial creation, representing the fact that even the Exodus and the giving of the Law still falls short of fully restoring humanity.’
 
‘David’s story depicts lowly beginning of a shepherd boy, and his rise to prominence, calling to mind his humble prayer, “Who am I, O Lord God, and what is my house, that you have brought me thus far?” (2 Samuel 20:19). The descending lines of the third window depict the incarnation, and the subsequent humiliation of Jesus, before he is then lifted up at the cross. The fourth and final window begins low, at the tomb of Jesus, building through his resurrection towards and a renewed humanity even greater than that of Eden.’
 
Aside from the main narrative, Caleb chose to tell a number of sub-plots along the way. He particularly featured characters to whom the young offenders would be able to relate: ‘David was a youngster from an obscure background. He faced rejection, was pursued and fell into fear, lust, deception and violence. Similarly, Peter was a fallible disciple who made many mistakes, felt worthless, acted impulsively and violently. Mary was a woman who Jesus delivered from torment. He stood up for her by accusing her accusers. In the third window she is seen alone at the foot of the cross, looking abandoned and dejected. She was a point of connection for many of the female offenders who could relate to her experience, and needed a saviour like Jesus.’
 
Each of these characters served as a teaching aid for how the grace of God can restore broken people, and scattered throughout the windows we see glimmers of hope; A lost coin, a lost sheep and a lost son, all speaking of Jesus’ commitment to seek and save the lost.
 
I am drawn to Caleb’s story as a great example of a Christian taking their art and their faith seriously, and employing both in an effort to educate, as well as provide comfort and hope for the marginalised in society. His work demonstrates a commitment to portraying how all human longings are ultimately fulfilled in Jesus, whilst also displaying great respect for people of other faiths. It is a wonderful example of thoughtful, provocative, but winsome, cultural engagement.
 
__________
 
Caleb is a member of The City Church Canterbury. See more of his artwork at calebsimmons.co.uk

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EveryPetal by Rethinkmedia

Everything 2011 is fast approaching. In just a few days’ time, many hundreds of us will be converging on Parliament Square to celebrate the truth that ‘The Earth is the Lord’s and everything in it’ (Psalm 24:1). We will not be alone…

As some of you may be aware, the Trades Union Congress has arranged for a march to take place in London on 26 March. The March for the Alternative will bring around 500,000 protesters from right across the country to protest against the Government spending cuts. And their protest will happen right on our doorstep!
 
I don’t know how that makes you feel, but the prospect excites me. After all, what better backdrop could there be to the Everything Conference than half a million people deeply aware the fact that our nation is in great need?
 
In the plan of God, this is no coincidence, and I am deeply fired up by the symbolism of what will happen in Westminster on 26 March. As 500,000 people descend upon London, hoping that by their presence they will be able to change the fate of a nation, little will they know that hundreds of Christians will be making the same journey, for the same reason, gathering only metres away to learn, network, pray and worship the King of Kings!
 
There is no more important time for us to be at the heart of the action. I am convinced that we have an enormous amount to contribute to this nation, and I am confident that we can be a shining light and a city on the hill, in turbulent times. 
 
We have taken advice from the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre and the Metropolitan Police, both of whom are confident that our event can go ahead safely. The march will begin gathering at Victoria Embankment from 11.00 and will not start moving until 12.00. The protesters will begin to reach Hyde Park around 13.30, with their rally ending at approximately 16.30. So delegates for the Everything Conference will be safely in the venue and the programme will have begun before protesters have even begun to gather.
 
We have put together some travel advice to help you ensure you can travel to and from the event safely and easily. If you are already booked in for the day, please familiarise yourself with this and plan your travel accordingly. 
 
If you are not yet decided about attending, I hope you will book in and join us. There are still a number of discounted tickets available; on the day they will increase in price to £25, so get in quick. I do believe that this will be an excellent day, which will galvanise us for the future, as we learn to Create, Cultivate and Collaborate for His glory.

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Litmus paper, 1934 by Chemical Heritage Foundation

‘What do you do?’ is a question that I sometimes dread. My job is either a conversation stopper or a conversation starter, depending on who’s asking…

I work at the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion in Cambridge. After my postgraduate studies in genetics I started working as a research scientist in a lab in Edinburgh. I was preparing for a move to the US to work on Parkinson’s Disease in fruit flies (as you do), but a few months into my job in Edinburgh I had a change of mind. I had been finding myself gravitating away from the lab bench, towards my desk, and realised that my passion was more for communicating science than doing experiments.
 
I found a new niche working for Christians in Science. This is an amazing group that draws together Christians working in all areas of science – academia, industry, and teaching, as well as students and non-scientists who are simply interested in science-faith issues. I discovered a depth of thinking about the interaction between science and faith that I hadn’t encountered before. I was challenged to confront some difficult topics – such as human evolution, use of stem cells and climate change – head on. I also met people who modelled for me how debates on sensitive issues can be conducted with grace.
 
It was while I was working for Christians in Science that we realised that many non-scientists in churches were looking for resources to help them think through the relationship between science and Christianity. At the time we didn’t have much to give them apart from books and academic papers. When the Faraday Institute started up in Cambridge I wanted to be part of the action, and was offered the opportunity to work on a project dedicated to developing accessible resources for churches, schools, youth groups – any context where science and faith is an issue.
 
Test of Faith is a collection of resources, born out of the desire to equip people to think through the challenges that science can throw at people of faith. At times the conflict is only imagined and much of what needs to be done is ‘myth busting’ or telling the stories of scientists who are Christians. But there are also some real issues that need to be discussed, such as ethics, the environment, the interpretation of Genesis, or discoveries in brain research. I’ve found it enormously helpful to have the opportunity to speak to the experts in these fields, bounce ideas off theologians and biblical scholars, and have tried to share that experience with the people of all ages who make up the Test of Faith audience.
 
Now that we’ve completed the Test of Faith materials I often travel around speaking to audiences in churches, schools and universities. It’s exciting to be able to challenge some of the assumptions that cause people to think that a Christian scientist must be a deeply divided, confused person. The one message that I hope people will go away with is that science and faith are friends, not foes.
 
One of the main things that I hope to do through this work is to encourage and equip the scientists and future scientists who will be at the front edge of ‘culture making’ in their various spheres.

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Untitled by eflon

What does changing culture mean for me first thing on a Monday morning? How should that impact the way we lead our churches? How can mums change culture? How do we release everybody into everyday mission and discipleship?

In this talk from the Everything stream at Together on a Mission 2010, I explore some of these questions, encouraging leaders to think through the day-to-day challenge of changing culture.

Click here to listen.

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London - Shaftesbury Memorial by ...::: Antman :::...

Anthony Ashley Cooper was a man who understood what it meant to be Salt and Light in society. The son of a wealthy landowner in an age when Britain’s fortunes were built on the broken backs of the poor, he disappointed his father, was derided by his contemporaries and deprived himself and his family of many of life’s luxuries in his lifelong campaign for social justice.

Equally at ease conversing with royalty and chimney sweeps, Anthony cared little for his position or reputation, but devoted his life to serving the God he loved. He is commemorated in the name of one of Central London’s busiest streets, and with one of its most famous monuments; and it is no exaggeration to say that his tireless work saved the lives, as well as the souls, of many thousands of people. He was dubbed in his life time ‘the Great Reformer’ and ‘the best friend the poor ever had’, but is most commonly known today simply as Lord Shaftesbury.
 
As was the case for many children of the rich at the time, Anthony’s early years – he was born in 1801 – were ones of loneliness and deprivation, even in the midst of his parents’ wealth. The love we might have expected to be provided by his parents came instead from the devout Christian housekeeper Maria Millis. While the church and his father taught Anthony to know and obey the teachings of the Bible, Maria taught him to know and love the God of the Bible; she introduced him to the faith that was to sustain and drive him for the rest of his life.
 
As a teenager at Harrow School he once witnessed a ramshackle, undignified pauper’s funeral. His compassion welled up for the dead man, and he resolved then to commit his life to making a difference to the fates of the lower classes. He asked God to help him to use the power and influence that were coming his way (he was to become an MP for many years before inheriting his father’s Earldom) ‘to plead the cause of the poor and friendless and to give them a better life.’
 
It is almost easier to list the areas of poverty and injustice in 19th Century Britain that Shaftesbury didn’t try to solve than those he did. He campaigned for better treatment of mental health patients and proper regulation of the asylums; for improved working conditions, fewer hours and the provision of education for children working in factories and cotton mills; for the prohibition of the employment of children under ten and women in coal mines; for the abolition of the use of small boys to sweep chimneys, and against animal vivisection. He was a strong supporter of the London City Mission, an active participant in the establishment of ‘Ragged Schools’ (free schools established to teach the poorest children reading, writing, arithmetic, the Bible and a marketable skill), and an opponent of the wholesale destruction of poor people’s housing to make way for the new railways. He sought the regulation of boarding houses (which sometimes housed up to thirty people of both sexes in a single room), the placing of new cemeteries within easy reach of the poor in London, and the provision of clean water and proper sanitation for the city. In short, Lord Shaftesbury made good on his intention to give his life to the improvement of every aspect of life for the poor and friendless.
 
If this list appears exhausting in itself, consider the even more remarkable aspect of Shaftesbury’s work, and the thing which made him so persuasive: he didn’t merely campaign for these reforms from the warmth and safety of his London office or his country estate, but made a point of backing up his rhetoric with first-hand evidence. He travelled to the north of England to see conditions in the factories and meet the hunched, wizened, half-crippled children who worked as many as nineteen hours per day during the ‘rush months’ (and fourteen the rest of the year) darting among the noisy, dusty, potentially lethal machinery in the cotton mills. Then it was down into the coal mines, taking an artist with him this time, the better to convey the dark, cramped conditions in which children as young as four years old would often be found working. The pictures and stories revealed six-year olds carrying loads too heavy for a grown man, boys and girls with their legs rubbed raw crawling along the passageways dragging cartloads of coal to the surface, chained to their loads like pack horses, a young girl sitting alone in a dark passage hour after hour listening out for the rumble of a cart signalling that she should open the trap door to let it through. Alone, afraid, hungry and tired, she sat at her post all day every day, earning a few pennies to help keep her family from starvation.
 
The Mines and Collieries Bill was passed relatively quickly, due in no small measure to the powerful first-hand evidence and testimony that Shaftesbury was able to give. The Government tried to prevent the evidence from reaching the public domain, but it was leaked and doubtless the public outcry contributed to the success of the Bill. Other measures did not fare so well. It took 41 years before the Ten Hours Bill regulating the length of time children could work in factories was fully functional! Then as now, the complexity of issues surrounding any legislation was so great, and the interests of the mill owners and the MPs who were in Parliament thanks to their votes were so strong that to do what was right for one part of society would upset the finely balanced economy and, so it was argued, damage the prosperity and health of the nation. Shaftesbury would not give in, though, refusing to ‘let my fears or my love of ease come before my sense of what is right and of what God wants.’
 
But that was still not all. Not content with using his influence and his testimony to make a difference, Lord Shaftesbury used his own meagre resources to be of immediate assistance, too. One biographer described him as, like many of the landed gentry of his day, ‘asset-rich but income-poor’. (By this time too, he and his wife, Minny, had nine children to feed, clothe, educate and, sadly, in a couple of cases provide expensive medical care for.) He was constantly in debt, yet constantly giving to others whose needs were even greater than his own. On finding pupils at one of the Ragged Schools too hungry to concentrate on their work, he went home and got his cook to boil up a cauldron of soup, which he took to the school. He provided the same for the school every day for the rest of the winter.
 
A story which encapsulates the esteem in which he was held by the poorest of the city, tells of the time when a small boy picked his pocket and made off with his gold watch. The pick-pocket’s friends recognised the watch and promptly bundled thief and timepiece into a sack, tied it up and deposited it outside Lord Shaftesbury’s front door! History does not record how the Earl dealt with the ragamuffin, but the example of countless other such encounters would suggest he was more likely to give the child a bath and a hot meal than a beating.
 
Shaftesbury was not only a friend of the poor, though. He was encouraged and supported (often with very generous financial gifts) by Lord Palmerston, offered positions of power by successive governments, and was counted by Prince Albert as a confidant and friend.
 
Story after story could be told of this great man who humbled himself and gave all he could to befriend the friendless and live out his faith in practical action. He was deeply concerned for the souls of the lost, but knew that calls to repentance would go unheeded unless their hearts were softened by experiencing the love of the God he served.
 
The statue of Anteros, or the Angel of Christian Charity, was erected in memory of him in Piccadilly Circus, at the foot of the street named in his honour: Shaftesbury Avenue. Anthony Ashley Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, died in 1885 at the age of 84. His funeral was held at Westminster Abbey, and he was offered a burial place there, but asked instead to be buried at his home, Wimborne St Giles. The words he chose for his gravestone sum up the philosophy that motivated his life’s work, his generosity and his love: ‘What hast thou that thou didst not receive?’ (1 Cor 4:7) He worked, not to earn God’s favour, but out of gratitude for the blessings, love and salvation the Father had lavished upon him. It took time and effort, it was exhausting and often discouraging, he often felt almost entirely alone in his fight (save for the faithful support of his wife), and his support of the rights of the poor over the profits of the rich alienated him not just from his political colleagues but from his own father, yet considering whether it was worth it, Shaftesbury once wrote:

‘In spite of all vexations, insults, toil, expense, weariness, all loss of political position – in spite of always being secretly despised and often publicly ignored, I would for myself say “Yes”’.

__________

Further reading:

Richard Turnbull, Shaftesbury: The Great Reformer (Lion Hudson, 2010) – a very thorough, detailed account of the many areas of Shaftesbury’s interest and campaigning.
 
Jenny Robertson, I Stand Alone: The Life of Lord Shaftesbury (Scripture Union, 1985) – written for children, but manages to be both thorough and engaging. Turnbull’s book will give you a clear catalogue of the facts, but Robertson’s adds to that a vibrant sense of the man and his character.

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Mother&Daughter by rolands.lakis

In 2004, two women began running parenting courses in a school in a deprived area of Dorset. At that time, neither of them could have envisaged the journey they had begun…

“I was working in a school in a deprived area of Dorset, specialising in behavioural and pastoral support. In 2004, I was asked by the head teacher to enquire about parenting courses that we could offer to families within the school.
 
I attended a parenting course along with Karen Todd, a friend who had for many years volunteered with children, young people and families in various churches to which she had belonged. We decided to adopt the course to run in the school, and shortly after decided to make some changes to make it more current and user friendly.
 
Following the success of the first course, the local education partnership of 27 schools asked if we would run courses for other staff in the locality and train them to lead courses in each of their schools. Having found the material to be rather antiquated, we started to put together a programme of our own ideas and suggested to the partnership about designing a new course. The CEO of the partnership saw the potential of the embryonic material and introduced us to The Innovation Unit, which at the time was linked to the government department for Children, Schools and Families.
 
As we shared our enthusiasm for families with the Innovation Unit, we were encouraged by the response. As a result of that first meeting we were asked to develop a new British universal parenting programme that could be easy to access, easy to lead and easy to participate in. The Innovation Unit offered to fund the writing of the course and assigned a consultant to support us throughout the process.
 
What started out to be simply serving our local community in an area we felt passionate about was rapidly growing into something way bigger than we could possibly have imagined. This was a huge privilege and we saw God’s favour time and time again as more doors and opportunities opened to us.
 
Throughout the process of writing the materials, we were both very aware of God’s provision and blessing over them. As we prayed together about the course, we felt keen to develop the materials to be used in a number of settings. We wanted to see God’s heart for family penetrate into all aspects of community and felt it was right to make the resource available for mainstream use, rather than just for the church.
 
After we made that decision, we were at a meeting finalising the course, and were unexpectedly joined by the Extended Services Coordinator for Dorset County Council. After a short flick through the materials, she offered to buy into the initial print-run and wanted to provide course materials for all 175 schools in Dorset.
 
Suddenly, every week brought a new development. As the materials were nearing completion, the excitement of launching the product was met with the reality of needing to start a business in order to train people to facilitate the course. We had regularly consulted with parents and professionals and the strongest message that came through was how easily people felt judged as being ‘bad parents’ if they needed to go on a parenting course. For this reason, we chose a name to reflect a more positive reaction to improving family life and to represent all those involved in the family. Fusion - Skills and Strategies for the Family was launched in April 2008.
 
Initially the course was mainly used in the education sector, with some children’s centres and private organisations also adopting it. We have so far seen success in schools, family centres and churches in parts of Dorset, Somerset and Cambridgeshire with approximately 300 facilitators trained to lead Fusion.
 
The course has been welcomed as an outreach tool in some churches, as a means of engaging the local community. One church is using the course with their toddler group parents, whilst another course is being run as a gateway into the community with plans to offer Alpha as a follow up to Fusion.
 
Whilst delivering Fusion courses facilitators have told us that ‘they have found a natural supportive community has formed between the participants on the course which often leads to a desire to continue to meet together’. In one church this was demonstrated by a group of women regularly meeting for a ladies Alpha course having previously attended a parenting course together.
 
Our passion is to see families supported, and we believe that the church is the best place to do this as families can experience God’s love in a practical way.
 
In 2009 Jeff Moss (Lead Elder, Taunton Family Church) introduced us to Ranjit and Cynthia Rodrigues from Goa. The couple trialled a Fusion course in their home and shared that it was the first time they had had so many different religions represented in their home. They were excited about the relationships they were growing and the opportunities this could lead to in sharing more of their faith. They are able to build relationship with people they would never normally have an opportunity to.
 
We were also privileged to meet key leaders who oversee churches in Kenya, and were invited to work with them in developing a similar course in their nation.
 
Now we are in the process of writing a second British course called Resolution - Skills and Strategies for Families with Teenagers.  We have been able to train up others and now have a team working with us. With some big changes facing us this year we eagerly await what God will do next.”
 
For more information go to www.betterparents.co.uk or email .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

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Follow the money trail by penguincakes

The spending review announced by the Coalition Government in October will be remembered as one of the biggest political events of our generation. In the months and years to come families and individuals could see their incomes reduced, and the public services they have come to rely on scaled back or closed altogether. Public sector job losses and changes to benefits could mean that some families face substantial hardship.

In response to this, the elders of my church (Emmanuel Church Oxford) asked me and a few other politically minded guys to discuss what was going on, and then pull together a paper explaining what the cuts will look like in practice and what we could consider doing in response in Oxford.
 
Our main conclusion was that for the Church, this primarily provides an opportunity to serve. Many people, within and outside the church community, will find themselves in need. Christians have a chance to love and serve in practical ways motivated by our love for Christ and his command to serve the poor.
 
But we are also presented with a longer-term opportunity. For the first time in a generation people are discussing what the role of the state actually is as the government stops providing some services and welfare payments. The Church has the chance to position itself as an alternative provider of these services and of support for the poor. Christians need to mobilise themselves to provide services councils can no longer afford to, such as youth services, and to commit to projects such as The Besom Project.
 
This article isn’t about whether the cuts are the right thing to do or not, and it is in no way intended to be party political. It is rather an attempt to make sure that we as Christians are clued up about what’s going on around us, what the implications are, and how our churches can respond.
 
What cuts have been announced?
 
The cuts which have been announced in the June 2010 Budget and the Spending Review can be roughly divided into two categories:
 
Income: Individuals and families could see their incomes reduced through a combination of benefit changes (Housing Benefit, Council Tax Benefit, Employment and Support Allowance, Tax Credits, and Child Benefit are being reformed or removed from some recipients, and Educational Maintenance Allowance is being abolished), tax rises (VAT rose from 17.5% to 20% on 4 January 2011), and public sector unemployment (330,000 jobs are expected to be lost in the public sector over the next four years).
 
Public services: The public services which people had come to rely on will in many cases face cutbacks or, in some cases, complete abolition, particularly where these services are provided by local authorities. By far the biggest cuts will be seen at a local level. Services provided by local councils are diverse and often go unnoticed by council tax payers. However, the Department for Communities and Local Government received by far the largest cut to its departmental budget – 51% over four years – and this will have a direct impact on the grants which councils receive from central government, falling by 26% over four years. This could affect anything from youth provision to care services.
 
Obviously there is some overlap here, but these categories are useful to bear in mind when considering how best to respond to the government spending reductions.
 
What could the Church consider in response?
 
The impact of these cuts on individuals and families will be far from uniform: some may notice no change or only a modest change in their financial circumstances, whereas those facing unemployment obviously face considerably more hardship. Churches must be aware that people in general could be proportionally worse off than they have been thus far, some drastically so. In response, we could consider the following:
 
Job clubs: Acknowledging the fact that more people are currently unemployed than at any point in the last ten years, with only relatively small economic growth predicted for the next few years, job clubs are an appropriate response. These could give people the confidence and skills to give them the best possible chance of employment in a very competitive market.
 
CAP: Christians Against Poverty has been something of a phenomenon since its foundation, and its reputation beyond the Church is very high indeed. It could be worth exploring the possibility of having people trained as CAP Debt Counsellors, who can help those in dire straits to plan their way out of trouble by helping them budget and renegotiating loans with the bank.
 
Openness and discussion: Poverty and joblessness are perceived to be something of a taboo, particularly among the aspirational working classes and middle classes. Those in need are unlikely to say that they need help. Within a church, this could mean being frank about the issue in preaching etc. Beyond the church community, practical means such as CAP, CEF and job clubs are good ways to practically love and serve those most in need.
 
Meals: Food costs are a significant part of anyone’s monthly outgoings, and they are currently rising above the general rate of inflation. If meals were to be provided, hopefully on an informal but regular basis for those in a church who are in need, this could be a huge blessing.
 
Foodbanks: Foodbanks practically serve those who cannot afford to buy food. Churches could encourage their members to give to these charities (usually locally run), or even offer administrative support.
 
Besom: The Besom Project enables people to use their time, money and skills to help the poorest and most vulnerable in society. It is possible that the number of people requiring help from projects such as Besom will increase, but whether or not there is an increase, serving in such projects is a practical and loving demonstration of our love for the poor, which is especially pertinent in these tough economic times.
 
Childcare: The Sure Start programme was introduced by the Labour Government which combined childcare, early education, health and family support. Funding for the service is likely to be cut: the majority of councils are unable to give guarantees about the future of the service. Providing similar albeit scaled down services such as mother and toddler groups could be a way of stepping into the gap created by the closure of Sure Start centres.
 
Youth provision: Youth services it seems have been particularly vulnerable when local councils have been considering which services to cut. Churches should examine as a matter of urgency how they could work with councils to provide similar services funded from their own budgets and staffed with some of their own volunteers.
 
Community centres: Some councils are considering the idea of giving smaller community centres and green spaces over to local communities to own and manage themselves. Churches could explore the possibility of working with communities, ideally where there is already a link, to run these.

Parks and green spaces: One of the easiest areas for a council to cut will be in the upkeep of green spaces, reducing the frequency or extent of the work it does. Church members may consider volunteering to tidy community spaces near where they live.
 
Conclusion
 
The Church always has an obligation to help the poor, both within and outside the church community. Many of these suggestions will therefore be applicable to any point in an economic cycle; indeed Jesus himself reminds his disciples that ‘you will always have the poor among you’ (John 12:8). However, the spending cuts we in Britain are currently faced with provide an opportunity for the Church to make a fresh, concerted effort to help the financially worse off, enhancing its profile in the community as it does so.
 
Whilst meeting short term felt needs is imperative, it is also crucial for the Church to be taking a longer term view about its role in communities, and indeed the country. As a result of both the spending cuts and the Conservatives’ ‘Big Society’ initiative, for the first time in a generation the role of the state is up for question. Christians cannot afford to miss out on this opportunity: as the Government steps back from provision of welfare and public services, the Church should be the most high profile group filling the void.
 
This is an edited version of a longer article, originally written for Emmanuel Church Oxford. To read the full article, click here

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Fish Market - Okinawa by libraryman

If the modern, secular liberal state had a Bible, it might be the opinion section of the New York Times. And if it had a high priest, candidates would certainly include Stanley Fish, the distinguished literary theorist, law professor and author of Is There a Text in This Class?

So when the two come together to talk about the place of religion in the secular state, as they did a few weeks ago in an op-ed piece, it makes fascinating reading. The arguments Fish puts forward in the first half of his article are, for my money, about as definitive a statement of the way secularists think about religion as you’re likely to find anywhere. And they are, in places, very problematic.

He begins his piece, Religion and the Liberal State Once Again, uncontroversially:

You are free to believe that salvation comes only through faith in Jesus Christ and to order your behaviour accordingly. You are not free to coerce others, either by physical force or the force of law, to share your faith and behave as you do.

 
Which is nice. Freedom to follow and worship Jesus, freedom from coercion to believe or behave in a certain way: pretty much what Paul was urging Timothy to pray for in 1 Timothy 2:1-4.
 
Then things become, suddenly, much more restrictive:

The key distinction underlying classical liberalism is the distinction between the private and the public. This distinction allows the sphere of political deliberation to be insulated from the intractable oppositions that immediately surface when religious viewpoints are put on the table. Liberalism tells us that religious viewpoints should be confined to the home, the heart, the place of worship and the personal relationship between oneself and one’s God.

 
The leap here is massive. In a flash, we have jumped from ‘you cannot coerce others to believe’, to ‘you cannot bring your religious viewpoints into the public sphere’, without pausing for breath. This is not the place to reflect on how much trouble this assumption has caused, particularly when Western governments have got involved in the Middle East. But it is fascinating that beneath this statement, expressed in the world’s leading newspaper by one of the world’s leading thinkers, is the idea that, for religion not to become coercive, it is necessary that religion not become public. Put the other way round, it is assumed that a non-coercive religion which engages in the public square is impossible.
 
There are so many counterexamples that it is hard to know where to start, but consider the Amish for a moment. It is not clear that the very public nature of many of their faith expressions – dress, housing, technology, trading practices, community formation, schooling, and so on – has ever conflicted with their five hundred year old, Anabaptist tradition of non-coercion. And that makes me wonder: does freedom to worship really require a faith that has no public expression at all, and which is confined to the home, the heart and the church? Or is it perfectly possible to express religious values publicly and peacefully, so long as – and this is crucial – those religious values include non-coercion, non-violence and so on?
 
So let’s say one were to stumble across a group of religious people whose founder, and whose sacred texts, urged love for God, love for one’s neighbour, love for one’s enemies and non-violence, and who consistently, despite the high-profile excesses of a few, adhered to those principles. And let’s say that, at the same time, the heart of those people’s religious beliefs was Iesous Kurios – that Jesus, not Caesar or Obama or Cameron or Merkel, was Lord of the world, and that their announcement of this fact was a very public statement. What then? We would suddenly have what Stanley Fish apparently regards as impossible: a decidedly non-coercive, yet emphatically public, religious belief.
 
Now to be fair to Fish, he may not believe that public religious beliefs are necessarily coercive. He may just be saying that, because they sometimes are, we’re better off without them. But the problem is, virtually any worldview articulated in public could, in the wrong circumstances, lead to coercion. Free market economics has. So has economic redistribution. So has environmentalism. And atheism. And opposition to higher tuition fees. And numerous other beliefs that, for all I know, most New York Times op-ed writers might well share. This doesn’t mean that those beliefs are evil, or (in Fish’s terms) that they should be constrained to the realm of the home, heart and the church. It simply means that coercion and violence are always wrong in a liberal state, and that allowing them under the guise of religion is reprehensible.
 
Now consider one more paragraph:

When the liberal citizen exits the private realm and enters the public square, he or she is supposed to leave religious commitments behind and function as a stripped-down entity, as an abstract-not-full personage, who makes political decisions not as a Jew or a Christian or a Muslim but as what political scientist Michael Sandel calls an “unencumbered self”, a self unencumbered by ethnic, racial, gender, class or religious identities.

 
I find this extraordinary. In the public square, we are not to engage through the self, the real one, with its strong preferences formed by ethnicity, gender, memory, religion, culture, class and so on (how many citizens, let alone politicians, would that disqualify?) Instead, we are to engage through a totally neutral socio-political avatar: unencumbered, genderless, classless, religionless, preferenceless. At one level, I appreciate Fish grouping religion together with ethnicity, gender and class, if only because it shows how ludicrous it is to exclude those things from the public space (unless we are to make people’s gender a “private matter” for “the home, the heart and the church” – and what on earth would that mean?) But at another level, I find myself wondering whether this isn’t simply an attempt to seize any passing sociological argument and dragoon it into service to support an implausible position.
 
In a liberal state, we cannot have people imposing religious laws on an unwilling populace, and we cannot have violence or coercion used to gain religious adherents. But to leap from this to saying that religion (and apparently gender, class and the rest) should always be excluded from any public discourse is … well, somewhat fishy.

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Lemonade Stand by maubrowncow

In 1825 the splendidly named Olinde Rodrigues wrote an essay, which introduced the term avant-garde to the world. We normally associate the avant-garde with art, but Rodrigues had something far bigger in mind...

He proposed a grand plan for social reform involving painters, poets, philosophers and entrepreneurs. The list of people he wanted to involve is fascinating, but one stands out for me. Philosophers I can understand; poets, OK; entrepreneurs… sorry? How do they fit in with social reform?
 
Reading a list like that makes you wonder if we’ve lost something in our vision for business since the 1820s. Maybe we’ve made it too much about doing well and left working for good to charities and political pressure groups. But what if these two were brought back together? Imagine businesses that worked for the good of the community whilst turning a profit. That could be the start of something remarkable: a positive influence on the world that is sustainable, that can grow and develop.
 
Jeff van Duzer of Seattle Pacific University proposes a big vision for business. He suggests that, from a Christian perspective, business is first about serving by providing goods, services and employment. The goods and services serve the community and help it to flourish. And individuals need meaningful and creative jobs to allow them to express their God-given identity.
 
When we take this as our starting point, things start to get interesting. We begin to see why God might be interested in the details of a business plan. We begin to see that you can serve God with an enterprise that generates jobs and that honours workers; you can serve God by bringing to life ideas that enhance life for those around; you can serve God by providing for the poor in a way that is fair and respectful.
 
Which is a nice theory, but how does it work in practice?
 
One of the most famous examples is that of Arthur Guinness. Living in 18th-century Ireland, he was faced with a society in which the only alternative to the undrinkable water was gin. The problems associated with this were widespread. The Guinness solution was entrepreneurial through and through: he developed and marketed a healthier alternative to gin with a significantly lower alcohol content. And, of course, as well as helping society, he ended up creating what is now one of the most popular beverages in the world.
 
But the examples aren’t all historical. Take Don Flow, the owner of car dealerships in the USA. While most car sales involve some negotiating, his dealers work with a fixed price policy. Why? Because he discovered that negotiations tend to discriminate against the poor and less educated. Their weaker bargaining position means that they end up subsidising the better-off customers. By taking an alternative approach, Don ensures that everyone gets treated equally and fairly, whatever their background.
 
The growing social enterprise movement pushes this further as people look for business ideas that explicitly address social issues. Perhaps it could be finding a business case for a shop in a deprived area that others have abandoned. Or dreaming up a new way to provide jobs for the long-term unemployed. Or rethinking the way financial services are provided for the poor. The goal is to address social needs in new and sustainable ways.
 
Some such ideas have ended up creating whole new ways of working. Think of the success of The Big Issue in helping the homeless. Or look at the case of Mohammad Yunus. He found people who were stuck in poverty simply because banks would not lend them small amounts of money. Though they would have jumped at the opportunity of starting small businesses, they had no way of acquiring initial capital except from exploitative loan sharks. A little bit of creative thinking led to him develop credit facilities for those overlooked by the banking system. The resulting ‘micro-finance’ has now revolutionised self-employment opportunities in the developing world.
 
Gradually, we are rediscovering the potential for business to make a difference in communities and individual lives. It may be opening up brand new possibilities, or finding creative solutions to old problems. It may be rethinking old solutions to make them fairer. With a big enough vision, business can be a route for God’s grace into the world around us.
 
(For more on entrepreneurship and faith, have a look at the Ei Forum from Redeemer Presbyterian Church, New York. For more about Social Entrepreneurs a good starting point is Martin Clark’s book The Social Entrepreneur Revolution.)

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Stories of war: they’ve been our heritage in Northern Ireland. They’ve shaped our collective conscience. And these stories needed to be told.

Bombs decimated communities, endless murders made even the word ‘why’ written on the floral tributes seem like a waste of letters.  These dark acts needed to be charted, explored, condemned…
 
But what of the stories of hope? How have they impacted our heritage, our collective conscience? I believe these stories also need to be told.

 
We need to hear these sorts of stories. We need to know that hope has actually always been at work: We’ve maybe just failed in publicising it.
 
I love this quote from Jesus:

“You’re here to be light, bringing out the God colours in the world. God is not a secret to be kept. We’re going public with this, as public as a city on a hill. If I make you light-bearers, you don’t think I’m going to hide you under a bucket, do you? I’m putting you on a light stand. Now that I’ve put you there on a hilltop, on a light stand - shine!” (Matt 5 – The Message)

 
And this, in essence, is the heartbeat of Tell It In Colour.
   
I’d love you to meet Margaret from Poleglass. Margaret is ‘The Good News Lady’ to me. I absolutely love her story. She arrived here in 1987 from England and was convinced that this place wasn’t as bad as had been portrayed to her. So for over 20 years now she has been faithfully cutting out and collating any good news stories she sees in the local papers.  She then compiles little ‘good news’ booklets and sends them to friends around the world. What a legend. What a voice of hope.
 
Stories of hope like ‘The Good News Lady’ can be found on our website www.tellitincolour.com. As well as showcasing these stories online we’ve also hosted a series of storytelling nights in coffee shops and other venues across Belfast where various contributors speak out these stories. A recent exciting development has been the expansion of Tell It In Colour to incorporate artists, photographers and musicians who are keen to communicate hope through each of these creative strands.
 
Our dream is that these hope stories could spark a cultural revolution here; that they would call out the best in communities - not the worst - and inspire people to live out their own stories of hope. Our prayer is that these stories, emanating from hopeful lives, will reach into the darkest corners of our land, colour the very fabric of Northern Irish society and ultimately showcase our colourful Creator God.

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Early warning system - David Sorley

I think of art as...

Discuss.

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I've often heard it said that faith should inform artistic work, but in my experience the way in which this can be done often proves elusive. However, I recently completed a university project which changed my thinking. My topic: Child Soldiers.

A month ago I knew very little about this subject. Then one afternoon I sat down to watch some TV over lunch. After flicking through my options, I ended up watching a documentary on Child Soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo. I am not ashamed to say that God unlocked something in me during that hour and I was in tears by the end of it.

Did you know:
 
- There are approximately 300,000 child soldiers in the world. That’s three for every hair on your head
- It is estimated that there have been over 100,000 child soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo since 1993
- Many of these children are taught to use guns, forced to mutilate or kill civilians, and are regularly abused
 
The stories of these children stayed with me for several days and I knew that God had done something in me – I was just not sure what yet.
 
A week later we were then given a new brief on our course. This was to visualise complex information in a way that would be simple to understand. By this point I knew I wanted to research more into the issues surrounding the use of child soldiers and thought this would be the perfect excuse to do so. I did not intentionally bring my faith into my work; it just happened, in a very natural and normal way.
 
I spent the next few weeks researching. What I read, heard and watched in that time made me angrier, sadder and more crushed than at any point in my life. However, I knew I had to keep reading.
 
My research and development of the project eventually turned into an exhibition; The Child Soldier Cycle. This installation was bigger than anything I had ever attempted before. To complete it was a relief.
 
However, during this process so much fruit had been gained. My passion for the subject had become apparent to my course mates and I even ended up chatting with each one of my tutors about my faith and why I cared so much about this topic. Again, this wasn’t forced. I did not set out on an evangelistic mission; God was just in it.
 
Many people walked through my exhibition following the life of a child soldier. They were led round to five main stations, showing the key stages in the child soldier cycle: instability, conscription, brainwashing, daily life and rescue. These main stages were separated by real stories and quotes from former child soldiers about their harrowing experiences. This again created amazing situations in which to talk about faith and God; situations I had been praying for.

To bring faith into artistic work must not be clichéd. I don’t think what I’ve done is particularly extraordinary. However, I believe that what God can do with it is completely extraordinary.
 
I’m just hoping for more opportunities like this.

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Sunrise Metropolis by tj. blackwell

When Jeremiah tells the people of God to seek the welfare of the city and pray to the Lord on its behalf, ‘for in its welfare you will find your welfare’ (29:7), he inspires them to hold out a vision of wellbeing for the wider society and to bring shalom. Their destiny is woven together with the city’s.

Jeremiah’s instruction takes place in exile. Our witness and work will always be contextual, taking shape in a specific cultural context, time and place. The Christian faith and worldview have the potential to affect every part of life. As the Dutch theologian and politician Abraham Kuyper said:

‘In the total expanse of human life there is not a single square inch of which the Christ, who alone is sovereign, does not declare, “That is mine!”’

 
This calls for a Christian imagination, expressed in every sector of society, in which we witness to an alternative vision.
 
‘Shalom’ is used in the scriptures to refer to God’s creational intention. It includes peace, soundness, wholeness, security and fullness of life, in which our relationships with God, each other and with nonhuman creation are thriving. It is this vision that Jeremiah sets before the exiles.
 
The question of how we move towards a new horizon and experience the welfare Jeremiah had in mind requires a prayerful approach. Furthermore, it requires a long-term vision: Jeremiah inspires the people to settle in for the duration, in view of many generations.
 
It is to this end that I co-ordinate Forum for Change, part of a long-term strategy, facilitated by the Evangelical Alliance, to mobilise the Church in influencing culture. Our Culture Footprint email features stories of Christians who are working in the key ‘change drivers’ in our culture: arts, politics, media, sports, education and business; disciples who live out their faith in a secular context. It is sometimes funny, always interesting and often challenging.
 
Register here to get the Culture Footprint delivered to your inbox.

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Hmmm... No, I can't see them by Stéfan

Einstein famously said that the most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible. Perhaps we can turn that around and ask the question 'Why have we been created with the ability to understand the universe?' Or, more dramatically, 'What is science for?'

Science dominates our culture. It’s woven into every area of our lives. And, of course, this is because it has been wildly successful. Scientific studies have given us a rich and deep understanding of the world around us, from star formation to the structure of ecosystems to the building blocks of matter. The resulting technology continues to change our lives radically. But where does this success come from? Is it simply a by-product of our need to survive? Or do we assume that it’s an unexpected side-effect of the way God made us? Surely, if we believe in a God who does things deliberately, we have to conclude that science works for a reason.
 
In looking for answers, let’s take a step back and explore our relationship with the world around us. The Bible makes the rather startling claim that humans have a special responsibility to the rest of creation. Tom Wright puts it this way:

“God loved the world he made, and wanted to look after it in the best possible way. To that end he placed in his world a looking-after creature, a creature who would demonstrate to the world who he, the creator, really was, and who would go to work to develop the creation and make it flourish and fulfill its purpose.”

 
Rather than being placed in an environment that is simply a convenient place for us to live, mankind has the role of caring for creation; the task of preserving it, helping it to grow and enabling it to glorify God more completely. And where does science come into this?  Perhaps we can picture it this way:
 
Our ability to help creation to ‘develop’, ‘flourish’ and ‘fulfill its purpose’, depends on our ability to develop an understanding of the world around us. Stewardship has to start with listening and learning, with seeing how things work and appreciating their internal logic. This, of course, is precisely what the scientific viewpoint gives us. Science isn’t incidental; in allowing us to understand the world around us, it is intimately related to who we are.
 
So, if we are involved in scientific work, our day-to-day activities can be an expression of mankind’s responsibility for the creation around us. As we make discoveries and creatively interpret what we see around us we have the possibility to ‘voice creation’s praise’ (to borrow a phrase from Jeremy Begbie). Johannes Kepler recognised this way back in the 1500s when he said that ‘through my effort God is being celebrated through astronomy.’
 
Or perhaps we use our knowledge to ensure that we can care effectively and in ways that are sympathetic to the existing order. Or maybe through our studying we are able to see new possibilities and ways to bring out the potential that God has built in to the cosmos.
 
We are surrounded by a world of wonders and potential. So, if science is your thing make it God-glorifying and creation-enhancing; a science of care and flourishing, of praise and celebration.

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What recession? by Old Sarge

I hear there are a few people on the hunt for their next job? Well, Autumn is a great time for moving, so I’ve pulled together some practical tips.

Now job hunting can be a stressful time so lean on the King and be kind to yourself…

1. Identify what you want. Consider role, company, size, their values and internal culture.

2. Write a fantastic CV. There are loads of books out there to help you. Keep it to two pages, ensure the formatting is consistent, include a personal profile, emphasise what you actually did and your achievements. Get someone else to spell-check and read it.

3. Register with the specialist recruitment agencies for your sector. Be super friendly. Check-in with them weekly.

4. Be aware of how you spend your time. Whilst most of us spend 97+% of job hunting online only 7% of actual jobs are found in this way. Plan a varied approach including the more ‘traditional approach’ of looking at newspapers adverts.

5. The most effective way to find a job is through proactive and speculative applications, otherwise known as phoning up companies and asking if they have jobs and through contacts and friends. Yes it’s scary, but 50% of jobs are found this way. Have you drawn up a list of 10 companies you would love to work for and contacted them?

6. Make sure you tailor your CV and applications. Take their job specifications and job descriptions and repeat back to them what they are asking for and how you have demonstrated these skills.

7. If you are going to say you are an excellent communicator, team player and leader (blablabla…) please ensure you say how you have demonstrated these skills i.e. ‘led a team of 10 people on XYZ’ or ‘regularly delivered sales presentations to potential customers’. If you can find more skills unique to you, emphases these.

8. Before the interview do loads of research; their website, news releases, Companies House have financial data, even Google your interviewer and find some common ground.

9. Plan interesting questions to ask them i.e. ‘tell me about the culture of the team’ etc

10. Prepare your route, add an hour, never ever be late.

11. Be friendly to everyone, even the receptionist, it’s highly likely they will have input.

12. You have 5 seconds to make an impression. These stick. They will know in this time if they want to take you on. Unfair? Yes, but it’s the reality of life. Make your walk into the room confident and give a firm handshake. Offer it if they don’t. Smile.

13. Practice answering interviewing with family and friends.

14. Keep your answers relevant to the job. Sell yourself. Be very positive and enthusiastic.

15. Talk about what you actually do and did. Give them the basics then explain further, give details, statistics, figures etc. It’s highly likely they won’t have read your CV until you enter the room; assume they know nothing about you.

16. Close the interview like a sales person. For sales or ‘high calibre’ jobs consider asking them if they have any concerns about you… then you can address them. Ask them if they ‘could see you in the job’. Whatever job you’re going for, tell them you want it.

17. After the interview consider sending them a thank you email.

18. If it’s a no, ask for feedback but just listen, don’t justify your responses.

19. Keep a positive attitude. Keep doing it. If you’re job hunting full time, be happy with 4-5 hours a day and set yourself targets to apply for 2-5 new jobs a week. Keep the hunt a continuous journey despite being at interview stage.

20. Finally (actually firstly too) and most importantly… trust in the Lord and pray continuously for wisdom and favour.

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Surfing - Dorset by Justene

Not far from where I live, on the Dorset coast, there is a little known but world class surfing break. Well maybe that’s a little exaggerated, but there can be no doubt that this is a good wave – twenty footers have been reported when conditions are right. In a different part of the world this break would be much better known, but Dorset doesn’t tend to be thought of as surfing territory – it is not exactly Brazil or Hawaii!

What generates a good wave on this patch of coast is an accident of geology and Atlantic weather patterns. When there is a sustained Atlantic depression off the coast of Florida, and an area of high pressure over the UK, a swell is formed which travels the thousands of miles to Dorset. This swell rising and falling over deep water is suddenly compressed into shallow water as it hits the rock ledges off our coast, and big waves kick up as a result.
 
When this happens our local surfers are out in force, even though it generally only happens in winter when the water is properly cold. For a surfer, the chance to ride a good wave just a few minutes drive from home is too much to miss, even if it means near hypothermia.
 
It is rather an odd feeling, standing on a cliff watching the surfers, to think that this very particular activity is only made possible by a weather system on the other side of the planet. For a few seconds a neoprene clad figure stands on a piece of shaped fibreglass and rides the energy of one of the worlds great oceans.
 
Surfing is very elemental – it is all about the buzz of catching that wind and rock generated energy; of being immersed as closely as can be with the power of the water without being destroyed by it, but in a sense transformed by it. It is tantalizing in its fleetingness – something so big and powerful, something that has travelled half-way around the world, but which only exists for moments before it dies and is lost on the shore.
 
And then there is the perennial hope – the hope of another wave to come. A bigger, better wave. The ultimate wave. A perfect combination of swell and wind and reef, and poise and timing and strength, all coming together in that moment of perfect synchronicity and exhilaration and terrified joy. A wave that will be talked about long after the molecules of hydrogen and oxygen have flowed onto another beach.
 
It is that hope which keeps thousands of neoprene clad figures bobbing around on thousands of beaches the world over. The mighty vastness of the oceans, concentrated down upon a small board on the margins of land and sea.
 
Connecting with God is somewhat like surfing, and it is what all seekers after the spiritual attempt to do. The Buddhist at meditation, the Muslim at prayer, the New Ager at the vegan health store – they’re all just trying to catch the wave. All those people living in hope; hoping that the wave will come, and they will bridge the gulf between the visible and invisible worlds.
 
But here’s the thing about all spiritualities not founded in Jesus Christ: They know there is a wave, but they have no idea how it got there. They don’t understand the spiritual equivalents of Atlantic depressions and Dorset rock shelves.
 
The claim of the gospel is that in Christ we get revelation of the true source of all the energy in the universe. That, as Paul puts it in his letter to the Colossians, “by him all things were created…and in him all things hold together.” Weather systems over the worlds oceans, geological formations, water and fibreglass and neoprene, all – ultimately – originate in him and are held together by him.
 
What this means for followers of Christ is that we should be the most deeply spiritual people on earth, as we have greater revelation about the world than anyone else, both the world visible and invisible. In Christ we can interpret all we see in the physical world in the light of his creating and sustaining work; and as people of the Spirit we also exist in the reality of what is unseen. That liminal world, that moment of wave riding ecstasy of existing in two worlds at once, is the living space of Christ followers.
 
The trouble is, surfers tend to get pulled in different directions – it is easy to either get swamped by water or washed up on the shore. When this happens to a Christian it results in either an ungrounded spirituality that is out of touch with all reality or an earthliness that becomes impervious to the invisible work of the Spirit.
 
Where we need to exist is in the place in between, in that place where we see the spiritual in everything and have our feet on the solid rock that is Jesus Christ. This is the place of true spirituality. In this place we are not surprised if God speaks to us through a tree or a rock or a story in the news. And at the same time we are grounded enough to get on with the normal stuff of life – paying our taxes and raising our kids, and washing dishes, and going for walks and riding waves.
 
I recently heard of a Christian who was unwell and in hospital. Throughout this time he would claim, “I am healed!” despite the fact that he was very obviously sick. This seemed to me to be an example of ungrounded spirituality – a spirituality that ignored the things that God may have been trying to speak to him through the experience of his illness. It also ignored the very grounded reality of the work of doctors, nurses, cleaners, and the many other hospital staff involved in the process of making him well.
 
True spirituality is where the gulf between the visible and invisible is closed. We see this most clearly in the person of Christ Jesus. In him we see one who clothed himself in human flesh and lived the very grounded life of a jobbing builder. He healed sickness and cast out demons and stilled the waves, but also sat on the beach barbequing fish with his friends. He holds all things together, but also knows what it is to be tired and hungry and in pain.
 
As truly spiritual people, people who see God at work in everything, let’s inhabit the space where visible and invisible meet. Let’s be those who know how to surf the wave.

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Walden Media don’t just ‘do’ films. The company not only seeks to create engaging cinema, but also works with teachers, museums and national organisations to impact education, raise literacy levels, and provide thought-provoking entertainment.

Started less than a decade ago, the firm has made an enormous impact on the film industry. ‘Amazing Grace’, ‘Journey to the Centre of the Earth’, ‘Bridge to Terabithia’ and ‘Charlotte’s Web’ are just some of the movies they’ve produced in that time, breaking records along the way with their innovative, culture-transforming education programme. This Christmas the latest movie in the Narnia series is released – Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
 
Co-Founder and President of Walden, Michael Flaherty, has long been an inspiring model for anyone who wants to make a lasting cultural impact for the better. I recently had the opportunity to chat to Michael and find out a little more about the story behind Walden Media…
 
 
Can you briefly explain the vision behind Walden Media?
Walden Media was started to provide quality entertainment for families. We believe that quality entertainment is inherently educational. We have hung our corporate hat on our ability to create entertainment that ‘delights and instructs’, in a sense. We make movies we can take our own children to, without flinching or worrying. We make movies they and we would like to see, movies we’ll walk away with something to consider and reflect upon.
 
The image-obsessed Hollywood isn’t the easiest ‘marketplace’ for a film company with morals - what challenges have you faced in setting up Walden and what’s the reaction from Hollywood been generally?
I think it’s a great misnomer to apply as a blanket, to Hollywood—that it is somehow inherently amoral or immoral. What it is, is a business, a set of corporations, and to that end, maximizing sales comes first. 
 
Now, with that said, I’ll grant that as a parent it often seems as though the appeal is to the lowest common denominator. But for us at Walden it’s been different. We have seen that a compelling story, generally for us adapted from great children’s literature, is welcomed by audiences and successful at the box office. We hope our films cause moviegoers to step up, not down. And the tradition of stories, of storytelling as a means to offer or point to goes back to the time of Christ and His parables.
 
Obviously films like ‘Amazing Grace’ and the Narnia movies have been huge successes - what are your hopes for ‘Voyage of the Dawn Treader’ - out this December?
We hope that it delights and we hope that it edifies. We hope that it is successful and we hope that it makes children and families want to keep reading the Chronicles of Narnia. We hope to engender many discussions about what C.S. Lewis meant when he said that one of Eustace Scrubb’s big problems was that ‘he read the wrong books.’ What then are the right books? Why those? Lewis is asking us to consider how we navigate our own voyage through life. What makes up our moral compass, how does great literature help with the voyage, and in what ways? Who are the people we turn to when we have a crisis of faith or belief? And Lewis’ genius is that he doesn’t preach and he doesn’t tell, he offers, through story and lets children figure it out - because he knows they can.  One of the things I love best about Lewis is his complete faith in the faith of children - to see and to get it. I cringe when I read books that explain the Chronicles. I see them instead as parables; the more you think about them, the more their meaning goes on expanding.
 
I understand you’re hoping that C.S.Lewis’ ‘Screwtape Letters’ could be made into a movie - where are you up to with this?
We are no longer developing it but the project is in good hands with my friend Ralph Winter. It’s a tall order though. ‘From whose perspective would you tell the story?’, is one key question. Screwtape’s? The patient’s? Wormwood’s? And in the present day or during World War II? These are basic, central questions.  Lewis thought of the time during World War II as morally his most productive and fruitful –paradoxically—so what happens if you shift the struggles in Screwtape to our modern-day, even though what Lewis has written is timeless?  I am confident that Ralph will figure it out though.
 
What other films does Walden have in the pipeline? (Any sneaky cheeky exclusives would be welcome here!!!!)
We have an adaptation of American children’s author Beverly Cleary’s RAMONA QUIMBY books coming out in July. It’s called RAMONA AND BEEZUS and it stars Selena Gomez. It’s a riot and it’s very sweet. In the fall we have a documentary about public education in America coming out. It’s directed by Davis Guggenheim, who received an Academy Award for his film AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH. This film is titled WAITING FOR SUPERMAN. It’s a deeply affecting film in my opinion - unsettling, in the best of ways. It’s an unflinching look at education and why and how it might better serve all children, ‘other people’s children’ not just our own.
 
How do you pick the stories that will be made into films?
There isn’t really one set process. We keep our ear to the ground, look and listen, and see what people are reading and what’s happening in the world around us. We listen to what kids have to say, or try to.  But parents, teachers and librarians continue to be our greatest source of ideas.
 
And what about personal plans for yourself or other ideas to impact culture?
We want to tell stories that entertain and are worth telling, and if we can continue to do that, everything else is gravy!
 
What would you like to be remembered for?
Somebody who loved God with all his heart and all his might and adored every minute with his wife and children.  My quixotic dream is to help play some kind of role in helping the United States achieve 100% literacy by the time children turn ten years old.
 
How has your faith helped you in your own journey over the years?
It would be difficult (if not vanity) to attempt to put this into words. It helps me every waking minute of my life, whether I know it or not. Most of all it has helped me understand the realm of the supernatural.  I am particularly fond of the passage in Hebrews that talks about the substance of faith being a hope in the unseen.  I cling to that one quite a bit when I am trying something new.  My faith has also helped me understand that I can’t accomplish anything on my own strength, industry, or initiative.
 
We’re wanting to encourage Christians to play a shaping role in business, education, government, finance, media - every sphere of life. What advice would you give to Christians with a vision to shape culture?
Well, first the question would be why would this encouragement be limited to Christians? This is something everyone can work on, or are we singling ourselves out for the wrong reasons? The idea that stories offer us something without hitting us on the head, that one can see one’s self in a good story, that, in the words of one of the characters in the film and play Shadowlands, ‘We read books to know we’re not alone’. Well that’s a pretty good focus to stay attentive to! Good stories offer us what Tolstoy called ‘windows on divinity.’ In the beginning was the Word…
 
Where do you think the biggest needs are in terms of shaping culture?
In teaching people to be good readers, of life and culture and books. To understand what’s happening to them and to reflect on their own experiences. Art helps us do this. And in the telling and making of stories for children, understanding that children understand how stories work. They don’t need big people to explain them to them. It’s sort of like something Isadora Duncan once said, ‘If I could tell you what I meant I wouldn’t need to dance.’ The story IS the explanation, it’s the exploration, and doesn’t need some heavy handed adult to say THIS is what THIS means. Lewis would hate that. But we do it all the time. Lewis talks about this in a wonderful essay he wrote called ‘On Three Ways of Writing for Children’. It’s one of my favorites. Lewis trusted children - and he wrote for them as equals, in one sense.
 
Doing this (shaping culture) isn’t without its challenges or its critics - how have you handled this?
You don’t set out to shape culture, you set out to tell good stories onscreen or in print and the stories work their magic on us as a people, as a culture, or they do not.
 
What do you think are the biggest challenges coming up in the west in the next 10 years for people who want to positively impact culture?
Not bowing to commercialism at the expense of taste, or soundness or integrity. And learning to listen to those with whom we (think) have least in common.
 
Any plans to develop an office branch or an equivalent of Walden Media in London or the UK?
We would love to have an office in Europe.  How about we compromise and we put one in Galway where my grandparents grew up?!

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"Unemployment" College by Wisconsin Historical Images

Unemployment is different for each individual. As a freelancer I’ve been unemployed many, many times, and I have been in a position to enjoy it - lots of free time for hanging out with friends, researching pet projects, and generally having fun. All unpaid of course!

But when the money starts to drain away, and the days between jobs turn to weeks or even months, it really starts to feel like unemployment. Therefore, here are some of my own recommendations for making the most of unemployment.

Think right
The most important thing I think I could say is that you really need to know your theology. God is Sovereign. That means He’s in charge of EVERYTHING. He’s in charge of your days and your time; when you’re working and when you’re not working. He’s in charge of everything. So trust Him, because He knows what He’s doing. Job 38 really helps me get the right size and perspective on who God is and who I am. Also Psalm 33 is a big one for me: “The eyes of the Lord are on those who fear him, on those who hope in His unfailing love, to deliver them from death, and keep them alive in famine.” When your heart is really trusting God, hoping in Him and knowing that He’s got you safe in His hands, going about making efforts to do all you can do, and letting God take care of the rest, frees you up from the pressure of “I must find a job! What if….” and allows you to ‘trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding’ (Proverbs 3:5).

Pray
What if there was a way, where you just asked God to help you and He would, wouldn’t that make life so much easier, wouldn’t it take away all the stress and worry. Well there is and it’s called prayer. In the past six years of being a freelance film editor I can count on three fingers the number of times where my running around, striving to conjure up work has actually paid off. The rest of the time (99%) I’ve just prayed, trusted God, and work has rolled in. Not always as immediately or as soon as I wanted, but it always has. God provides. He really does.

Invest your time
You are now time rich. You may have more time than you know what to do with, but you are time rich. When you don’t have a job, your job is to serve God. When you do have a job, your job is to serve God. So in reality you’re never unemployed, as you’re still serving God. Try to stay in the routine of a 9-5 life if you can. Obviously you want to be looking for work, rewriting your CV, calling people up – doing all you can do. But in the midst of all that, think about ways to invest your time. Can you meet friends for lunch? (Hopefully they will pay – Thanks Tom!) Can you work for the church for free? Can you invest in learning new skills or refreshing old ones? Can you invest your time listening to sermons, reading the Bible and praying? Personally I find the more time I can spend helping others, being productive and generally keeping busy, the less time I have to worry about money, work, or the countless ‘what ifs…’ that like to crowd around the fringes of my brain.

Defeat fear
When I do worry – it usually happens when I’ve looked at my bank statement (again), tried to figure out how I will pay all the bills, and I’ve got lost in the midst of the real numbers – faith suddenly evaporates, all of my Job 38 thinking has gone out the window and panic sets in. This is normal, but the response is critical. Memorising a verse like Hebrews 13:5-6 really comes in handy: ‘Keep your lives free from the love of money, and be content with what you have, because God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” So we say with confidence. “The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?”’

God has said He’ll never leave me on my own, or turn away from me. He’s always with me. If I look to Him, He will help me. So I know I have every reason to rejoice and no reasons to be afraid. Given who He is, and what He’s done for us, wouldn’t it be foolish not to trust Him?

Remember who you are
As Christians we all know our identity in Christ is who we really are; that God is our Father, that He loves us no matter what because of what Jesus has done, that we can’t earn His love or approval, we’ve already got it unconditionally. So we know God doesn’t think less of us when we’re unemployed. But it’s easy to know that and say it when we do have a job, and then suddenly when we don’t have work our espoused theology and our functional theology start playing chicken on the motorway of our thoughts. Do I really matter to God? Am I really valuable and important? I haven’t been outside today, I’ve not seen another person. All I’ve done is stay inside looking for work on the internet, worrying. Maybe I’m a massive failure. I’m sure God must be disappointed in me. LIES.

Tim Keller once said something that really helped me and I’ve paraphrased it for myself. “Those who are made righteous by being a good film editor will die. But those who are made righteous by Jesus, shall live” (Romans 3:22-28). I’ll never earn God’s love and approval by being good at what I do. Jesus has been good enough. He’s already done for me all that I could never do. I am loved. I am approved. Living this out in your heart is probably the hardest part about being unemployed, but also the most useful lesson to learn.

Listen to God
Be ready to hear from God, for wisdom, direction, for whole new God adventures that you never thought of before. God always has a plan and a purpose. Could becoming unemployed really be the best thing that ever happened to you? Could it give you the freedom (and the time) to evaluate where you are going? What do you want to spend your life doing? What do you love to do? What are you most passionate about? – Go after those things.

Talk to people
I’ve never heard many people talk about being unemployed, but I know a lot of people who have been at one time or another, or are right now. It really helps to be talking to your friends, asking people for advice and being encouraged by their testimony of God’s activity in their lives. God is always doing something. Even if you can’t see what He’s doing, you can trust Him that He’s always doing good. 1 John 1:5 says “God is light: in Him there is no darkness at all.” You can always trust His heart, even if you can’t trace His hand.

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Cleaner by atomicjeep

Do you know the name of your postman? I don’t. I’ve never met the guy. I leave home before he visits, and return from work to find the fruit of his labours already on my doormat. How about your window cleaner? I suppose it’s more likely you might know his name from the little cards he puts through the door every now and then. I live in a ground floor flat. We don’t even use a window cleaner.

Have you ever visited St Blazey, Cornwall? It’s the home of The Eden Project, has a population of about 6,600 people and used to be a prominent mining town for copper and tin. I’ve never been there. I’m not even sure I’d heard of it before today.

In the 1970s, a chap called Alfredo worked as a postman and window cleaner in and around St Blazey. Did you know that? I didn’t think so. I suppose if you don’t know the name of your own postman, and you’ve never visited this miniature west country parish, it’s highly unlikely you’d know about Alfredo… And yet, I bet he has graced your TV screen in the past few weeks without you even knowing.

You see, Alfredo Cooper was born in Chile, and relocated to Cornwall with his family in the 1970s where he worked as a postman and window cleaner.  To be honest, I know very little more about his story than that. I don’t even know if he was a good window cleaner! But I do know this; in January of this year, Alfredo was appointed Chaplain to the President of Chile.

I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you about the thirty three miners who were trapped underground for two months in Chile. I imagine many of you will have watched the emotional footage of the miners emerging, finally rescued after their incredible ordeal. And alongside the Chilean President, offering hope, prayer and spiritual counsel stood Rev Alfredo Cooper.

BBC Radio Five carried an interview with him this week, in which he explained his part in the story:

“I am a chaplain in the presidential palace and so we had to quickly put together an emergency prayer meeting and it was with all our hearts because to imagine these thirty three men a kilometre under the earth not knowing whether they were alive or what was going through their minds… Seventeen days we prayed and then the miracle came when the boring machine glanced off a rock and hit them – hit the cavern they were in – and of course we just erupted in praise. The second service the president called for was a praise meeting so we had a thanksgiving service and then of course we’ve had constant prayer. And this has been one of the interesting factors for folk like us to notice. Many of the miners went down as atheists or unbelievers or semi-believers and they have come up to a man testifying that they were not thirty three but that there were thirty four down there – that Jesus was there with them and that they had a constant sense of his presence and guidance.”

Remarkable.

This is pure conjecture, but ‘conject’ with me for a moment. Do you think during his time in England Aldredo ever questioned the value of what he was doing? Do you reckon he ever longer for greater ‘job satisfaction’, as many of us do? While he washed windows in the west country, do you think he ever dreamed big dreams, which he felt were out of his reach? Dreams of changing culture and doing something extraordinary for God? I can well imagine that as he traipsed up and down the streets of St Blazey, he had not the slightest idea of how God would choose to use him in the future.

But God sees the end from the beginning, and has an astonishing ability to connect un-connectable things. He teaches shepherds how to rule nations, and prisoners to advise kings. Even the Messiah spent decades learning the trade of a carpenter. He teaches and prepares people through even the most mundane experiences. He takes postmen and window cleaners and raises them up to tend to the faith of a nation.

We’ll probably never know the full story of how Alfredo got from a mining town in Cornwall to the presidential palace in Chile. But I think we can learn this from his example: God calls us to work hard wherever we find ourselves. Be faithful. Dream big dreams. Take opportunities when He gives them to you. Don’t discount yourself. Don’t despise the day of small things. And get to know your postman.

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Everything Conference 2011

From the very start, our call as people made in the image of God has been to cultivate, protect, take care of, and bring order to God’s creation. We have been tasked with bringing out the beauty in all God has made, working together for the common good.

The outworking of this call will look different for each of us, as we learn to engage with the specific setting in which we find ourselves.

It begins with understanding that God is interested in all that we do. He does not simply have an agenda for our church life, but for our work, our relationships, and our involvement in our neighbourhoods.

‘The Earth is the Lord’s and everything in it.’ (Psalm 24:1)

I was thrilled to see such a large uptake for our first Everything conference in March 2010. Over 1,000 people gathered in London and Leeds to take up the baton and strive to be salt and light wherever God has placed them.

It is our hope that this conference will continue to grow and prove to be a great encouragement to many to give themselves to work for the common good and develop the best of creation. Consequently, Everything 2011 will be held at the prestigious Queen Elizebeth II Conference Centre in Westminster, opposite Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament on 26 March 2011. Andy Crouch, author of Culture Making has agreed to join us as our keynote speaker. Andy is an extremely engaging writer and speaker, and his book has been formative for many of us as we’ve thought through our call to renew culture.

So save the date, and keep your eyes open for more details. There are no well worn paths ahead…..

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eM by a shadow of my future self

So the science versus God debate is back. And just like last time, it’s left me feeling I must be missing something. Reading the exchange of articles over the last few days, I feel a bit like someone who has walked into a fierce debate over whether Hamlet is a character created by Shakespeare, or whether on the other hand he is merely the son of Gertrude. As I watch the heavyweight academics line up and announce their verdict on the matter, I find myself wondering, with more than a little perplexity, ‘Can’t he be both?’

If Stephen Hawking is to be believed, apparently not. What’s odd about this – and it goes back further than Hawking and Dawkins, Darwin and Paley, to Lucretius and even beyond – is the assumption that science and God are rival ways of accounting for things, so that the more science explains, the less there is for God to do. The idea that physical and personal explanations might be compatible, so that Hamlet can be both Shakespeare’s character and Gertrude’s son, either hasn’t occurred to Hawking, or has been rejected on grounds that he hasn’t explained.

I find that a little bit strange. If I come into work with a black eye and people ask how I got it, it is perfectly reasonable to give a purely physical explanation, and say, ‘because the blood vessels in my ocular area are working overtime to repair damaged tissue.’ But they might feel a bit short-changed with that reply, because physical explanations don’t remove the need for personal explanations. They will probably find a different type of answer (‘because I stared too long at this guy’s girlfriend in the pub last night’) rather more satisfying.

And they certainly won’t think that the former removes the possibility of the latter.

That doesn’t mean that all physical events must have obvious personal explanations. Many do not. What it does mean, though, is that the existence of a physical explanation does not make a personal explanation impossible. So Stephen Hawking’s deduction – that because of M-theory, God does not exist – is something of a non sequitur, the equivalent of announcing the non-existence of Shakespeare from a study of Hamlet’s DNA.

Scientific and theological explanations of the world are perfectly compatible, as many leading religious scientists are repeatedly (and with remarkable patience, given the circumstances) reminding us. Stephen Hawking may or may not be right about M-theory; time will tell. But to conclude from it that God does not exist, as he appears to have done, is a confusion of categories.

God and science are complementary explanations, not rivals. Maybe, just maybe, something as grandly titled as a ‘theory of everything’ might have room for both.

Originally published at The Times Online (28/09/10). Republished with permission from Andrew Wilson.

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Who has taken a close look at a £5 banknote recently? If so, you will already have come face to face with our muse for this article. Since her debut in 2002, Elizabeth Fry has appeared on the reverse side of the English £5 banknotes. She is only the second woman to have been given the accolade of this position, following in the footsteps of Florence Nightingale. When the Bank of England published its decision the BBC asked 'the five pound question: Who is Elizabeth Fry, and is she a slightly obscure choice for this rare honour?' Could she really be seen as holding a candle to the Lady of the lamp? [1]

Elizabeth was born in 1780 and grew up ‘Betsy’ Gurney, living in her family home of Earlham Hall in Norfolk. When Betsy was 17 she heard the Quaker Minister William Savery preach and recorded in her journal ‘today I have felt there is a God’.[2] Betsy’s sister Kitty implored her not to mention her conversion to her younger siblings and outwardly Betsy complied, but her beliefs started to inspire her to focus her energy on helping the needy in her native city of Norwich.[3] A second spur to the direction of this young woman’s life came in the shape of another Quaker Minister, Deborah Darby, who prophesied that Betsy was to be ‘a light to the blind, speech to the dumb and feet to the lame’.[4] At the age of 20 Elizabeth started to don the Quaker cap which was to frame her face in history. This did little to deter the admiration of Joseph Fry, and a year after meeting the couple became engaged. As a new century struck, Mrs. Fry set off to make a new life with her husband in London.

Newgate Prison was a landmark at the heart of eighteenth century London, standing where the Old Bailey now resides. Its walls rose sheer up to the cornice in rusticated blocks of masonry, decorated with the figures of Liberty and Plenty with her cornucopia.[5] Picturesque aesthetics masked a multitude of forgotten prisoners from public sight. In 1813 a French Quaker called Stephen Grellet ventured behind Newgate’s walls. He was horrified by what he witnessed and hurried to his friend Elizabeth Fry’s house to ask her for help. That next morning Elizabeth and Anna Buxton discovered over 300 women confined to four small rooms, straw covering the floor on which the women had to sleep in a space no larger than six foot by two. The overcrowding, poor food and lack of fresh air caused typhus to regularly spread amongst the inhabitants. Nothing more like a ‘tomb for the living’ could have been contrived for human misery.[6] A contemporary observer recorded Elizabeth’s remarkable approach ‘I have come to serve you, if you will allow me’ she said. Elizabeth then went on to express her sympathy for them and offer hope that they might improve their condition. She did not say a word about the crimes they had committed, nor reproach them. She came to comfort and not condemn.[7]

Elizabeth arrived at Newgate during a pivotal moment of crisis, when a stagnated system was in visible decay but the road to change appeared steeped in a fog of ambiguity. By 1813 the Napoleonic wars were causing widespread economic distress and the wretchedly poor, oppressed by the high price of food and rising unemployment increasingly turned to crime and prostitution in order to feed their families. In the face of a violent rise in criminal activity, the government sought to simply lock away or dispense with the perpetrators. The death sentence was given out for over 200 acts, including among the lesser offences the theft of a handkerchief. It has been suggested that in no other European country were there so many offences in the statute book that demanded the death penalty.[8]  It was against this backdrop that Elizabeth, driven by her religious compassion, challenged the official belief that female prisoners were hopeless and beyond redemption. She fought for a school to be started in the prison, and established the ‘Ladies Association for the Improvement of the Female Prisoners in Newgate’, campaigning to provide the women with paid work. In less than a year the woman of Newgate had made over 20,000 articles for sale, hopelessness started to dissipate and the teaching of self-worth gained ground. This transformation did not go unnoticed.

Thomas Fowell Buxton, an MP and Elizabeth’s brother-in-law, had noted that prisons were places where ‘the public eye does not penetrate and therefore public opinion is not excited’.[9] Although Elizabeth shrank from personal publicity she realised the critical importance of bringing her cause into the public’s consciousness. When the King of Prussia visited England she arranged that his first port of call should be Newgate, and so he went followed by all the Sheriffs of the City of London.[10] Elizabeth brought many into the prison, forcing them to confront the extreme contradictions of the Regency period, one of the most segmented in British history. In Newgate the wealthy and elegant immersed in a world of pleasure met with those bound in the brutal depths of poverty. To attend a morning meeting in the prison required a much sought after permit and bundles of observers would watch as Elizabeth in her low, melodious voice read the Bible to the assembled prisoners and explained carefully its message of love and hope for them. An American ambassador stationed in London wrote ‘I have seen the two great sights of London; St Paul’s Cathedral and Mrs Fry reading the Bible to the prisoners of Newgate’. [11]

Elizabeth did not simply turn prison reform into a fashionable cause, but concrete change was guaranteed when mercy started to appear in the statute books of the nation. She was called upon twice to give evidence to parliamentary committees, in 1818 and later in 1835. Addressing the MP’s Elizabeth spoke eloquently on the positive effects of kindness, harsh punishment might deter people from crime in the short run but it could not change the heart.[12] Her argument that prisons were institutions which should see the restoration of lives and should not simply be designed to enact strict retribution shook the cornerstones of established policy. However, in Westminster Elizabeth became accredited for her ‘genius of good’ and her ally Sir Robert Peel eventually introduced new legislation shaped by her pioneering work at Newgate.

A truly remarkable achievement, set as it was during a century when a female’s professional opinion was so rarely courted by those in authority. She spoke on behalf of the voiceless and oppressed to the leaders of political parties, for whom she could not even vote. When among the guests at a dinner party in Mansion House she took unabashed advantage of being seated in between the Prime Minister and Prince Albert to voice her concerns about the amount of power the often brutal gaolers held in prisons. Elizabeth then cross questioned the Secretary of State, the Foreign Secretary and the Colonial Secretary over differing aspects of international prison reform.[13] Hardly the most jovial of guests, but her goodness, dignity and perseverance proved irresistible and change followed in her wake. Maybe like Wilberforce and his fellow abolitionists Elizabeth had prayed for the ability to ‘turn the hearts of the powerful, so they may be prone to feel for, and prompted to help those whose bodies and souls are in slavery’.[14]

Elizabeth’s prison committees were to be replicated all over England, Scotland and Wales. She was an able organiser who knew the value of picking the right people and trusting them to do what was required. As early as 1819 two prison committees had sprung up in Paris due to ‘le bon exemple de Mme Fry’ and in St Petersburg ladies of the Russian Court set up committees to visit female prisoners. Elizabeth would travel across France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark and Germany inspecting prisons, addressing governments and revealing the human faces behind prison bars. Her humanitarian reach even extended to New South Wales and North Norfolk Island in Australia when she brought the cause of females caught under the transportation sentence to Whitehall’s attention. Elizabeth visited over 120 convict ships set to leave London, providing gifts and encouragement to the 12,000 women on board.[15] Not being completely satisfied she also set up night shelters for the homeless and a refuge for prostitutes in London. By 1840 Elizabeth, now in her sixties, had become concerned with the poor conditions in English hospitals and envisioning a new generation of skilled nurses founded a training house in Guy’s Hospital. When Florence Nightingale was a young woman in her twenties she visited Mrs. Fry, her senior inspiration, and explained her desire to serve God through nursing. Elizabeth recommended a school at which she could receive her training and eventually a number of ‘Fry’s nurses’ would travel with Florence Nightingale to the Crimea.[16] Elizabeth died on 12 October 1845 and was buried in Barking. Over a thousand people turned out to show their respect for a woman who had not shown weariness in her well doing.

Having gone into our purses and pockets, do people now know more about this truly inspiring figure? Her presence in every household has done little to make her a modern household name. This may well have sat comfortably with one whose humility was deep seated. However, a lady whose boundless compassion led her to battle the injustices entrenched in the penal system of her day, who won the respect of convicts and Kings but who ministered to the common humanity in both alike, makes her, beyond question, noteworthy. She is a member of the numerous great and good who have been galvanised into action by their Christian faith and who have positively transformed the society in which they were placed. Her statue now stands at the centre of the Old Bailey Court in London and one can only speculate about what she may conclude on all she surveys.[17]

Endnotes:
[1] BBC News, Tuesday the 21st of May, 2002 ‘The Five Pound Question: Who is Elizabeth Fry?’
[2] June Rose, ‘Prison Pioneer- the Story of Elizabeth Fry’ (Quaker Tapestry booklets, 1994) pp.6
[3] Ibid. pp. 8
[4] Kitty Barne, ‘Elizabeth Fry’ (Penguin Books, 1950) pp. 54
[5] Janet Whitney, ‘Elizabeth Fry Quaker Heroine’ (George G Harrap &Co, 1937) pp. 183
[6] Dennis Bardens, ‘Elizabeth Fry, Britain’s Second Lady on the Five-Pound Note’ (Cahanadon Publications, 2004) pp. 38
[7] ‘Active Benevolence’ in ‘The Hangman’, Vol 1, No.4, Boston, Wed. Jan. 22, 1845.
[8] J. B Priestley, ‘The prince of pleasure and his regency 1811 – 20’(Penguin books, 2002) pp. 37-38
[9] Kitty Barne, ‘Elizabeth Fry’ (Penguin Books, 1950) pp 113
[10] Dennis Bardens, ‘Elizabeth Fry, Britain’s Second Lady on the Five-Pound Note’ (Cahanadon Publications, 2004) pp. 91
[11] Ibid. pp. 159
[12] June Rose, ‘Prison Pioneer- the Story of Elizabeth Fry’ (Quaker Tapestry booklets, 1994) pp. 25
[13] June Rose, ‘Elizabeth Fry’ (Tempus, 2007) pp. 253
[14] Daniel Boucher ‘The Abolition of Slavery and Public Christianity’ Equalities Series: Paper 1 (Care,2009) pp. 43
[15] Geoffrey Hanks, ‘Friend of Prisoners’ (REP, 1981) pp. 23
[16] June Rose, ‘Elizabeth Fry’ (Tempus, 2007) pp. 237
[17] Dennis Bardens, ‘Elizabeth Fry, Britain’s Second Lady on the Five-Pound Note’ (Cahanadon Publications, 2004) pp. 93

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Salt, monochrome by andrew.cameron

One summer evening, as I walked home, looking forward to spending supper time with the family, the idyllic scene played out in my mind. We would sit outside in the back yard, enjoying a dinner of roasted chicken with garlic, lemon and herbs. Perhaps some new potatoes, a green salad, a glass of wine…

As I opened the fridge, my daydream was shattered by the putrid stench of rotten meat. I unwrapped the chicken and the smell immediately made me retch. I ran for the bin, appalled at the foul aroma, and sadly resigned to the prospect of a disappointed family, and a meat-free salad!

This trivial example reminded me of a simple, but important principle. Without proper preservation, meat will quickly rot and decay. Society, of course, is no different.

The United Kingdom has the highest level of drug addiction in Europe. The number of couples getting married has reached its lowest point since 1862. Schools send home 2,200 children a day for disruptive behaviour in the classroom. Violent crime by women has reached an all-time high, with on average, 250 women being arrested each day. 58% of 14-17 year olds have viewed pornography, and 40% are sexually active. Over 41,000 women under 18 fall pregnant each year, and 49% of them have abortions. Since abortion was legalised in the UK just over 40 years ago, seven million children have been aborted. Everywhere you look, there are signs of decay.

This epidemic is not isolated to my own country. Many similar statistics, are echoed in other nations. As a result, we have to ask why the church is not making more of a difference. 

Jesus told us to be salt and to be light. These are evocative pictures of how the church is to be in society. Salt preserves; it holds off decay. If the Church were being as salty as it should, we ought not to see such levels of corruption in society. Light penetrates darkness; it brings revelation and helps people to see the truth. The Church should be a beacon of hope, showing up sin for what it is, and bringing revelation through the preaching of the gospel.

It has always been important to us to build excellent churches but our influence should also go far beyond our buildings and our meetings, and have a tangible effect on the society around us.

This means that as individuals, we need to take responsibility for the environments in which God has placed us; our workplaces, our university campuses, our streets and our schools. We need to be a positive influence through our actions, and our proclamation of the gospel. As local churches we need to impact whole communities, through social action projects and care for the poor, providing for the needs of society and being a positive presence in their midst. One of the benefits of working together across nations is that we can also look to make a difference at a broader national and international level as God leads us.

This is not a new innovation, but a core component of what we were made to do in Genesis 1. On the sixth day, God created man and instructed him to ‘fill the earth and subdue it’ (Genesis 1:28).

“Fill the earth”. Clearly this was a command for Adam and Eve to have children. From the beginning it was God’s intention that the whole earth be filled with people who bear His image and represent His handiwork.

Today there are over seven billion people on the planet, so you could be forgiven for thinking we’d filled it enough! But many of those living on the earth today do not know their creator, and God’s image in them has been marred by sin. Jesus has come to restore the image of God in man, so in addition to giving birth to physical children and raising them in a godly manner, we are called to give birth to ‘spiritual children’ through evangelism, conforming people to the likeness of Christ through the gospel.

“Subdue the earth”. The term subdue is a rich and multilayered word which speaks of cultivating, protecting, taking responsibility and bringing order. Adam was placed in a garden and told to cultivate it.

Today our call remains the same. We are to cultivate the environment around us for the glory of God. Even the most beautiful garden, if left untended, will soon become overrun with weeds. God’s creation mandate is this; you are to be gardeners! Pull up the weeds, tend the plants, draw out the beauty of creation. Be salt. Be light.

The implications of this are vast. We have a God-given responsibility that goes beyond simply building churches and winning the lost. We are called to shape the whole of creation. This will require all of us to play a part, using our different backgrounds, talents and passions to bring order to this world.

John Cadbury understood this principle. In the 1820s, alcoholism was rife in England. Water was so polluted that people drank gin in large quantities, and society was plagued by drunkenness, which led to poverty and crime. Cadbury took it upon himself to find a solution, and so established a business, providing cocoa and chocolate as alternatives to alcohol.

For many years the Cadbury family was actively involved in social reform; campaigning against the use of children to clean chimneys, and fighting for the rights of the underprivileged. They set high standards for the care of their workers; paying generous salaries and providing education, healthcare and pension schemes. For half a century they even ran Bible readings and morning prayers.

In the late 1890s John’s sons purchased a large plot of land and built affordable housing with space for gardens and trees, for employees and non-employees alike. By taking responsibility and striving to be salt and light, the Cadbury family had a remarkable and lasting impact upon their society.

We need to live with the same kind of vision. Fill the earth and subdue it. Be salt and light. We dare not focus on one to the exclusion of the other. Instead we must evangelise and transform culture. We must preach the gospel and care for the poor.

As individuals we need to be salt and light in our localities. We need to ask ourselves the question ‘how can I cultivate the area of the world in which God has placed me?’ For some it may be by becoming an outstanding worker for your employer, or as simple as refusing to gossip in the office. For others it may mean visiting an elderly neighbour or being a positive influence amongst other parents and teachers at the local school. One time I started a neighbourhood watch scheme that made the area feel secure to live in and broke down the barriers between the different ethnic communities that lived on the street.

As local churches we need to impact our communities in practical ways so that our neighbourhoods are better places to live. The streets should be safer, neighbours more trusting, children able to play safely in public spaces. Unbelievers should miss your church deeply if it were, for any reason, to close!

We will also need real wisdom to know how to use our resources at a broader regional or national level. We must remember that there are times when the local church should be supporting those championing change rather than leading the way itself. This is not because we have suddenly lost faith in God’s bride, Rather, local church elders may find themselves lacking the complex skill set necessary to campaign for some sorts of structural reform. On other occasions, they will find they need to identify too closely with political parties or have to raise large amounts of money that might swamp the local body. On these occasions we should not be afraid to release the next generation of reformers into their calling, supporting them with prayer and encouragement, as they become the Wilberforces or Shaftsburys of our generation. 

The breadth of the commission to be salt and light is immense. It is all-encompassing, and it requires us all to play our part. The gospel needs to work its way into all areas of society. Salt gets deep down into the cracks, and light can penetrates even the smallest and darkest of places. No part of this world should be beyond the reach of God’s rule. No inch of creation should escape His redeeming touch.

The potential is enormous. I am genuinely excited about all that God will achieve through us as we commit ourselves to being salt and light in the world. It is my hope and dream that as a movement our names will be deemed worthy to be listed alongside the nation changers of ages past, as we strive to bring God’s rule to bear on all of His creation.

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Wimbledon - Logo in flowers by yvettemn

I’m not a big fan of tennis – I’ll watch a Wimbledon final, and the odd game here and there if I get a few moments. But I have to say, I was fascinated by the Isner vs Mahut match of the last three days. Not because of the quality of tennis on display (towards the end it looked a little ragged – understandably! – Though I would still not fancy my chances against them!) but because of the challenge it posed for the Wimbledon staff, commentators – the whole structure of the tournament!

In case you’re not aware, John Isner and Nicolas Mahut just played the longest game of tennis in history. They played for a total of 11 hours and 5 minutes over three days, with Isner finally winning 70-68.

They broke the world records for:
    * Longest Match
    * Longest Set
    * Most Games in a Set
    * Most Games in a Match
    * Most Aces in a Match
    * Most Aces by a Player

The reason it fascinated me was that nobody knew how it was going to end. That’s always true of sport of course. Perhaps more accurately – nobody knew how to end it.

I was amazed to see the players in discussion with an official at the end of day two, arguing over whether they should stop for the night. Commentators were speculating about whether they would just keep going, or have a tiebreaker, or some other option. Personally, I would have gone for rock, paper, scissors – but I guess that’s why I’m not in their job!

A tiebreaker wasn’t really a plausible solution – you can’t just change the rules on the spot and make an unprecedented decision like that! They had to play on until someone caved, and then review the process afterwards.

And no doubt that is what they are now doing – thinking of new rules or provisions to make sure it doesn’t happen again; putting in place guidelines for the maximum length of a match, or how to end a game in extreme circumstances. Isner and Mahut have changed the face of tennis and will be the answer to a million and one quiz questions over the coming years.

If the rules of the tournament are altered because of this, a number of things will be made impossible:
    * It will be impossible to ever beat their new world records
    * It will be impossible to simply play on beyond a pre-fixed number of sets. There will be some prescribed method of curtailing a game, which all tennis players will have to adhere to from now on.
    * It will be impossible to use hyperbole to the same extent anymore. No longer will calling a 5 hour match ‘epic’ seem appropriate by comparison (‘though if hyperbole were banned entirely, commentators would be at a total loss for things to say!)

Through sheer perseverance, hard work, and refusal to give up, these two men are likely to transform the culture of Wimbledon, causing new rules to be written, and parameters to be set. They didn’t preach against the system, lobby for rule changes. In fact they didn’t even set out with an agenda to alter things. By simply doing what they did to the best of their ability, they will affect change in this area.

As Newfrontiers takes up the baton and seeks to renew culture through initiatives like The Everything Conference there will no doubt be many different ways we will have an effect; lobbying, strategic planning, having influence in high positions. But it strikes me that we ought never to underestimate the power of just working hard, slogging it out, and doing whatever it is we are good at with all of our strength. It changes things in unforeseen ways.

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wow-thing by x-ray delta one

If you have been paying attention to the press in recent years you will no doubt have been bombarded by the message that science and faith are in conflict with each other. Some would say that science and faith are incompatible because science is about reason, while faith is about believing in things that don’t exist. But I am a scientist and a Christian, and for me Christianity is the worldview that makes the most sense in the light of everything I know and experience in the world – including the historical evidence for Jesus and his resurrection.

Let me share an insight with you. As I finished reading Richard Dawkins’ ‘The God Delusion’, I was inspired by his last section entitled ‘The mother of all burkas’. If you ignore the obvious anti-religious allusion (you could think of being in a gigantic post-box instead) and focus on Dawkins’ wonderful description of how science opens our eyes to how incredible the world is, this piece of writing can actually be a powerful call to worship the creator who made everything revealed to us by science.

“Our eyes see the world through a narrow slit in the electromagnetic spectrum. Visible light is a chink of brightness in the vast dark spectrum, from radio waves at the long end to gamma rays at the short end. Quite how narrow is hard to appreciate and a challenge to convey. Imagine a gigantic black burka, with a vision slit of approximately the standard width, say about one inch … The one-inch window of visible light is derisorily tiny compared with the miles and miles of black cloth representing the invisible part of the spectrum, from radio waves at the hem of the skirt to gamma rays at the top of the head. What science does for us is widen the window.  It opens up so wide that the imprisoning black garment drops away almost completely, exposing our senses to airy and exhilarating freedom”.[1]

Dawkins then goes on to show how science turns our everyday perception of things upside down. Science opens a window on an invisible world more fantastic that we could ever have imagined. This is the world that I believe God made.

I immediately turned to my daily Bible reading in Luke’s gospel about Jesus’ healing of a dead girl[2]. With my imagination still in the invisible world of science, I saw Jesus as the one who knows that invisible world inside out and – more importantly – spoke it into being.[3] How does Jesus’ awesome power relate to his ability to raise people from the dead? Obviously we won’t be able to understand how that works in scientific terms. We can’t routinely study dead people coming back to life in a lab. A miracle is a one-off event, usually in response to prayer, when God shows us how incredible he is and how much he loves us. But this healing and others like it show me that God is the creator of the universe and has the power to transcend everything, including the knowledge we’ve gained using the tools of science.

The view of the world that I have outlined here is a huge incentive for Christians to do science. We need to understand the world God has made and learn to use all the rich resources that are available to us through science and technology in the most appropriate, fair and sustainable way. And what better way to provoke a sense of awe and worship than to share scientific discoveries about the universe? Lastly, the knowledge that God is sovereign and can transcend everything we know is deeply humbling, and a reminder that he is our ultimate teacher. From where I’m standing, good science and genuine faith are definitely compatible.

References:
[1] The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins, Black Swan, 2006 (paperback, page 406).
[2] Luke chapter 8 verses 49-56
[3] John’s Gospel, chapter 1 verses 1-18

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David explains a bit more of the thinking behind the Everything Conference...

The Everything Conference, interesting title… how did it come about?

What’s the thinking behind the conference & who’s it for?

What kind of people do you want to come?

So what are some of the topics you’ll be looking at on the day?

What’s your thing?

Is this just a one off event?

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the intersection of church and state by Ben McLeod

In Romans 13 Paul tells his readers to ‘submit’ to secular power, and this is usually the starting point for a discussion of this topic. But what does this mean in practice? What are the limits to state power? And what about civil disobedience? These are huge questions and I can’t hope to do them justice here, but nonetheless I hope that I can provide some insight and spark some debate.

Paul begins Romans 13 by saying that ‘Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God’[1].

At first glance this might appear to suggest that, given that God Himself has ‘established’ the state, a Christian’s attitude should be uncritical and subservient. I want to suggest, however, that this view is way off. The tragic example of the German church during WW2, supine in the face of much of the Nazi horror machine, illustrates how way off it can be.

What does Paul say that the state is for? The administration of justice, for one thing. We are told that ‘[the ruler] is God’s servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God’s servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer’[2]. Paul here affirms the secular legal system as a way of redressing wrongs, with personal vengeance forbidden.

Paul also affirms taxation as a way of financing the state’s running costs: ‘this is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing.’[3]

Of course, the Bible is not a guide for statecraft and we should be vary wary of reading it as such, but in this passage Paul, it might be argued, is suggesting that the state’s demands of us should be limited to raising enough tax to fund itself and administering justice (the legal kind). All in all, the maintaining of order.

It would be foolish to ignore the social context of Paul’s letter. Part of Paul’s purpose in writing to the Roman Christians was to calm them down; some believers were making revolutionary noises and Paul wanted to convict them of the ungodliness of violently overthrowing their government. He wanted to impress upon them that their struggle was spiritual, not political.

Similarly, in 2 Corinthians: ‘For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.’[4]. Verses like this can be challenging to Christians working in politics, especially at campaign time, when things can get dirty - it is often very difficult to focus on our ultimate calling as Christians and not to ‘wage war as the world does’ in this sense.

What these passages make clear is that, whilst God does ordain worldly authorities, there is a fundamental distinction between these two kingdoms. Jesus of course told us that ‘[his] kingdom is not of this world’[5] and that we should ‘Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.’[6]

In saying this Jesus was also implying limits to our submission to the state. There are some things that are God’s, which ‘Caesar’ has no claim to. Worship being the main one. When the state demands our worship, then it has taken the place of God and cannot command our obedience in as much as it does that.

In Romans 13 Paul tells us that governments are the servants of God. Even though he has ‘ordained’ them, then, they are subject to his standards and authority. I want to suggest that, as Christians, we have a role in ensuring that our governments are held accountable to their creator. When appropriate, we should speak truth to power. It’s true that Paul doesn’t encourage his brothers and sisters to be politically engaged, but context is again important here: he was not writing to citizens in a representative democracy, but a dictatorship, so engagement was not an option.

(As an aside, I find it interesting that the concept of the state being subject to a higher authority, is mirrored in (secular) legal theory by the concept of the rule of law, popularised by A V Dicey in the 19th Century[7]. The relevant piece of his thinking is the principle that all are equal before the law, including governments. Another parallel is that of 20th Century legal thinkers to assert the innate dignity of all human beings through ‘discovered’ universal human rights, usually without reference to faith[8]. The law therefore presents good opportunities for apologetics.)

But what about civil disobedience? As Mark Driscoll pointed out in his sermon on this topic to Mars Hill early last year[9], awareness of our innate rebelliousness is a good place to start. Since the fall man has been in rebellion against God and disobedience is part of human nature. So we need to be careful.

There are examples in Scripture of God’s people disobeying the powers that be. The first was that of Shifrah and Puah, the midwives who resisted Pharaoh’s order to kill Hebrew babies in Exodus. Jumping ahead to the New Testament we see Peter and John refusing to obey the Sanhedrin’s command not to teach or speak in the name of Jesus: ‘…But Peter and John replied, ‘Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God’s sight to obey you rather than God. For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.’[10]

One chapter later, again ordered to cease and desist by the Sanhedrin (who wielded state authority, granted by Rome) they reply, ‘We must obey God rather than men!’[11]

There are other examples that tell a similar story; that civil disobedience is justified when the secular authorities require us to disobey God. But, as Driscoll points out[12], in our rebelliousness we will naturally look for loopholes, whereas in reality, most of us aren’t hiding Jews under our floorboards so the occasions when we have to say ‘no’ will be very few. Of course, times may change, and of course Christians in other countries will be wondering when to disobey on a regular basis.

So if I were to sum up what I believe Scripture is saying, I would use the phrase ‘critical submission’. ‘Submission’ because God has ordained it, and a ‘critical’ approach which holds the state accountable to God’s standards and reserves the right to disobey in certain circumstances.

Another question might be: ok, but what sort of state should Christians desire?

The starting point here has to be one which does not exceed its God-given authority and allows the gospel to be preached. This much is uncontroversial.

And it is true that even for people who work, or are interested, in politics, the invisible kingdom of God should be our primary focus. And yet some states are clearly ‘better’ than others. To take an extreme example, today’s Germany is clearly a ‘better’ state than that of the one 70 years ago. (A similar point was made by CS Lewis to illustrate general revelation through awareness of good & evil[13].)

If we are to go further I want to reiterate my earlier point about Scripture not being a guide to statecraft. Nonetheless I want to make some suggestions; brief ones, as this is a huge topic in itself. I anticipate that debate will follow!

Just as it’s important to be aware of our own fallen nature, it’s equally important to recognise that the state, despite being ordained by God, is fallen too. In 1 Samuel 8 we see this prophet warning God’s people that the king they were crying out for would oppress them. Luke 4: 5-7 shows us that secular governments are under the influence of Satan. Again, we need to remember that Jesus’ kingdom is ‘not of this world’.

If we have the heart of God and passionately desire justice, it is therefore a mistake to invest too much of our hope for it in the state. Scripture does not give us a mandate for utopian political creeds such as socialism, which are at their core materialist. As one of Dostoevsky’s characters points out in The Brothers Karamazov:

‘socialism is not merely a matter of the labor question… but is first and foremost a problem of atheism, a problem of the contemporary incarnation of atheism, a question of the Tower of Babel which is being built without God not in order to reach Heaven from Earth, but in order to bring Heaven down to Earth’[14].

It is of course true that Scripture is full of God’s heart for the poor and the weak, and for justice, and if we ignore this then our faith is pretty much dead. But to say that this gives us the right to enforce this through the coercive power of the state is to go way beyond what Scripture tells us. God’s justice and ‘social justice’ (in the sense of state-enforced wealth redistribution) are not one and the same. This is clear from passages such as Leviticus 19:15: ‘Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favouritism to the great, but judge your neighbour fairly’ (emphasis mine). The Bible does not set the state up as the means of ministering to the needy: that’s the job of individuals, families, and communities. And if we are advocating a small state then we’d better make sure we are ‘salt and light’ by doing the job well.

Christianity is in one sense an exercise of free will; we initially choose to follow Christ, and we have to choose to make ourselves living sacrifices every day. I want to suggest that this principle of non-coercion and freedom should inform our politics. Liberty is preferable to coercion, but it can only take us so far. It’s what we do with our liberty that counts: ‘Live as free men, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as servants of God.’[15]

Lest we forget, Christ preached forgiveness from sin, not economic equality, and as Karl Barth outlines in his The Epistle to the Romans,[16] we Christians should free ourselves from hope in the state. Instead we should place it in Christ, whose kingdom shall never end.

References:
[1] Romans 13:1-3 NIV
[2] Romans 13:4
[3] Romans 13:6
[4] 2 Corinthians 10: 3-4
[5] John 18:36
[6] Luke 20:25
[7] ‘Introduction to the Study of Law of the Constitution’ (1885)
[8] See, for example, Values for a Godless Age, F. Klug, London, Penguin, 2000
[9] ‘Trial: Submission to authority’, 23/02/2009
[10] Acts 4:19-20
[11] Acts 5:29
[12] See note 9 above
[13] Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis, London, Harper Collins, 1997
[14] The Brothers Karamazov, F. Dostoevsky, London, Penguin, 1958 p.26
[15] 1 Peter 2:16
[16] The Epistle to the Romans, Karl Barth, London, Oxford University Press, 1933, p. 477.

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RISK LA Graffiti Art by anarchosyn

Being creative is a risky business. It leaves you exposed, vulnerable, open to misunderstanding, scorn, ridicule. You cannot be honest in your art without revealing something of yourself; shy away from that and your creative endeavours are flat, lifeless, insipid. To be a Christian in the arts is to have the courage to be honest.

All too often we ring-fence ‘Christian’ art or writing into what is acceptable, what lies within our comfort zones, what we perceive as Christian standards, but these are often just our cultural viewpoints. And yet our faith should free us to fully express who God has made us to be, to have an understanding of the human nature, to be able to communicate in word and pictures in ways that connects and talks to people. We shouldn’t expect Christian artists to box themselves into art forms that are Christian themed. That would be like telling a businessman to only sell products that reflected the glory of God.  No, being a Christian in the arts is about using the gifts God has given you to produce works of outstanding quality. Something that makes people stop and take notice.  It shows the world something through your eyes, and if you are being true to who God has made you, whatever the subject or theme, something of him.

A Christian in the arts is also at the forefront of shaping and transforming culture. Novels, art, poems all help reflect to us who we are, where we have come from, what we think about ourselves. It is one of the most powerful means of communicating that God has given us. And we must enter into that arena with pure motives. If we know deep within ourselves that we have been shaped to write, to paint, to create, we should seek to use that and enter the world of the creative. If we enter this world with motives of winning people to Christ as our primary agenda then we are being false to who we are. Our place is to know ourselves enough to pull out what God has placed there and to enter a world bringing our values, to serve, to affect the people around us both in our art and how we behave. 

Two years ago I started a literary magazine called The View From Here. I started it because I realised who I was, what God had made me to do both as a writer and as a leader. To date we have nearly 20 people on the team from across the world. It is thriving, growing and releasing people into their gifting.  These people are not all Christians. There is no hidden agenda to win people. It is not a Christian magazine. In applying godly leadership though, it is changing the culture, it is affecting the people working on it and in that it grows the kingdom of God. Time and again I hear stories of people that we have affected, stories of people not used to being released into who they are. How powerful is it to release people into their gifting both Christians and non believers? To provide them with an environment to grow, to flourish, to serve and help them become all that God has made them to be? It transforms lives and allows them to be creative. And in being creative people come out of themselves to find out who they truly are. 

So, if we are to engage with the arts then we must throw off our narrow concepts of why we should do this and what it should look like. Let God deal with the why – our role is to be honest about who he has made us and to have the faith that when things are hard, when we are misunderstood, when obstacles come before us, that we draw on that faith and our art is authentic, relevant and culture changing.

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The Green Stick by imanartichoke

I love theatre. I love Jesus. Unfortunately, the kind of theatre I love tends not to love Jesus.

Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, Harold Pinter; representatives of what is often known as the ‘Theatre of the Absurd’, an art-form regularly thought to be esoteric, avant-garde and thoroughly incomprehensible.[1] It is not uncommon to hear their work referred to as meaningless, inaccessible, or downright odd!

Yet, I love it. I love the wittiness, the poignancy, the manipulation of language. I adore the physicality, and the humour of confusion. I am stirred by the combination of rich layers of meaning against a bleak, minimalistic set. It makes me giggle like a child and shiver like an old man, though in truth I am neither.

I have heard it described as a godless and irredeemable genre. Yet, as a graduate of both drama and philosophy, I have found myself fascinated with its potential, and the conundrum it poses: how, as a playwright, might I explore the Absurd for the glory of God?

Defining the genre

‘Absurd’ can mean many things, from ridiculous to incongruous, but as applied to theatre it takes its definition from Albert Camus. In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus writes: ‘A world that can be explained by reasoning, however faulty, is a familiar world. But in a universe that is suddenly deprived of illusions and of light, man feels a stranger. His is an irremediable exile, because he is deprived of memories of a lost homeland as much as he lacks the hope of a promised land to come. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, truly constitutes the feeling of Absurdity.’[2]

Martin Esslin, in his seminal work on the genre, comments that ‘Absurd’ originally means ‘out of harmony’, in a musical context. Hence its dictionary definition: ‘out of harmony with reason or propriety; incongruous, unreasonable, illogical.’[3] One of the key practitioners of the genre, Eugène Ionesco, writes, ‘Absurd is that which is devoid of purpose… cut off from his religious, metaphysical, and transcendental roots, man is lost: all his actions become senseless, absurd, useless.’[4]

Thus Absurd plays are typically marked by a combination of the following features; they may be menacing, apparently devoid of meaning, unstructured, depressing and seemingly incoherent. They are in a sense ‘anti-plays’, breaking many of the traditional elements of theatre-craft.

Esslin summarises, ‘If a good play must have a cleverly constructed story, these have no story or plot to speak of; if a good play is judged by subtlety of characterisation and motivation, these are often without recognisable characters and present the audience with almost mechanical puppets; if a good play has to have a fully explained theme, which is neatly exposed and finally solved, these often have neither a beginning nor an end; if a good play is to hold the mirror up to nature and portray the manners and mannerisms of the age in finely observed sketches, these seem often to be reflections of dreams and nightmares; if a good play relies on witty repartee and pointed dialogue, these often consist of incoherent babblings.’[5]

Each of these points stands at odds to the Christian worldview. Absurdism rejects the idea of a constructed plot; Christianity affirms that there is a meta-narrative to life. Absurdism depicts man as a mechanical puppet, controlled by malicious external forces; Christianity affords man dignity, being made in the image of the Almighty.[6] Absurdism promotes a cyclical view of time, with no beginning and no end, just mere repetitious monotony; Christianity affirms that God created time, works in history, and plans to bring the story to a climax in new creation.[7] Absurdism deals in menace and bleakness; Christianity promotes an optimistic view of life, with hope for those who believe in Christ. Absurdism devalues language through the use of (paradoxically well-crafted) incoherent babbling; Christianity upholds words as both the agent of God’s creation[8] and an apt description for the Son who took on flesh.[9]

In short, the worldviews espoused by Christian theology and Absurd theatre strongly contradict one another. For the Absurdist, we dwell in a bleak wasteland, cut off from all meaning and hope. We are born above a grave, ‘the light gleams an instant, then it’s night once more.’[10] We are simply waiting to die, and in the meantime we have nothing to do but endure our ‘metaphysical anguish’.

By contrast the Christian sees this as a good world, created by a good God. Life and creation have been marred as a result of our sin, but there is hope, for God has intervened in history providing a means for our forgiveness through a perfect sacrifice and a resurrection, guaranteeing that one day all of creation will be made new and death defeated.

The Absurd and the Almighty

So can a Christian promote a biblical worldview through the means of Absurd theatre? The answer, I believe, is yes… and no.

No – because the Absurd worldview is so antithetical to that of the Bible, that the two cannot be correlated without compromise.

Yes – because in depicting a bleak existence, I believe the playwright can entice the viewer to long for something more; a world full of meaning, and life, and vitality, and dignity, and coherence, and narrative, and truth, and hope, and God.

When I watch Absurd theatre, rather than seeing it as a true depiction of the world, and resigning myself to its misery, I see it as a vivid depiction of a life without God. Ionesco got it right; ‘Cut off from his religious, metaphysical, and transcendental roots, man is lost.’[11] Or in the biblical language, we are sheep gone astray[12], dead in our sins[13], alienated[14] and walking in darkness.[15]

The downbeat, monotonous, hopelessness of the Absurd worldview; the clamouring for meaning, the feeling of disappointment and an inability to satiate your deepest needs through the things of the world, points to the simplest yet most profound of Christian truths: man needs God.

There is a great power in the Absurd tradition to provoke questions and yearnings for God. Esslin admits this, writing, ‘In expressing the tragic sense of loss at the disappearance of ultimate certainties the Theatre of the Absurd, by a strange paradox, is also a symptom of what probably comes nearest to being a genuine religious quest in our age: an effort, however timid and tentative, to sing, to laugh, to weep – and to growl – if not in praise of God… at least in search of a dimension of the Ineffable; an effort to make man aware of the ultimate realities of his condition, to instil in him again the lost sense of cosmic wonder and primeval anguish, to shock him out of existence that has become trite, mechanical, complacent, and deprived of the dignity that comes of awareness.’[16]

In other words, there is something about the Absurd that stirs the emotions of the viewer to long for the very things the genre denies; meaning, hope, God. Could we not harness this as an emotive apologetic for man’s need for God?

Donning the Mask and Adopting the Voice

Whilst running the risk of shameless self-promotion, allow me to ground this through the example of one of my plays, The Green Stick.

It is a play strongly earthed in the Absurd tradition, where two men of indeterminable age spend every waking hour of every day repeating the same meaningless actions; digging, reading, exfoliating, urinating, philosophising… The sun rises and falls. They read poetry from books, kept fresh in the fridge. A stick is thrown onto the stage, yet the dog never materialises. They ruminate on life, death and truth, but ultimately find no answers. They are cut off from the world. It has all the hallmarks of Beckett…

… and deliberately so, for in the writing I had taken the decision to don his mask and adopt his voice.

I had set out to evoke the atmosphere of Waiting for Godot, through a similar set, structure, tone, and themes. I deliberately crafted the play in such a way as to make people feel like they were watching Beckett and it thrilled me to hear someone enter the theatre, see the set and whisper ‘it looks like Godot.’ They got it.

As the play progresses, the characters espouse a postmodern, quasi-nihilistic worldview. Igor, the more stubborn of the characters becomes increasingly entrenched in his misery, whilst Luka becomes increasingly liberated, as he realises the shallowness of his philosophy, and begins to question its foundations.

The play ends without providing any explicit solution, but entices the viewer to long for a new, better way of life. It raises questions in their mind; is this really how I see the world? Meaningless and void? Is this the kind of world I want to live in? Is there an alternative? If there were, what would I be willing to give in order to embrace it?

Rather than simply laughing it off and resigning themselves to their fate, the viewer is given the opportunity to reconsider his worldview. By temporarily donning the mask of Absurdism, we can unmask its philosophy. By adopting its voice we can show its words to be hollow and self-refuting.

Absurdism and Scripture

I believe there is a huge potential for expounding biblical truth through Absurd theatre in such a way as to encourage people to long for salvation. A number of passages of Scripture come to mind that have a distinctly absurd tinge to them. Take, for example, the musings of Quoeleth in Ecclesiates. His famous lament, ‘Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless’[17] is at once reminiscent of the tone of Beckett, and looks forward to Jesus who ‘came to give life to the full.’[18] Job’s question, ‘can a man live, though he die?’ expresses both the futility of impending death, and prophetically anticipates the one who will crush death underfoot.[19] The rich man crying out across the chasm to Lazarus evokes a sense of frustration at the inability to communicate, a prevalent theme in the Absurd tradition.[20]

Ionesco may have been closer to the mark than he realised when he wrote that, ‘The value of a play like Beckett’s Endgame… lies in its being nearer to the Book of Job than to the boulevard theatre or the chansonniers. That work has found again, across the gulf of time, across the ephemeral phenomena of history, a less ephemeral archetypal situation, a primordial subject from which all others spring… The youngest, the most recent works of art will be recognised by, and will speak to, all epochs. Yes, it is King Solomon who is the leader of the movement I follow; and Job, that contemporary of Beckett.’[21]

Conclusion

Absurdism in itself portrays a worldview that strongly contradicts that of the Christian faith, but properly harnessed can provide a powerfully evocative apologetic for God; causing the viewer to beg, plead, long and search for a world different to the desolate wasteland depicted before them.

Rather than being a godless and irredeemable genre, in the hands of a proficient and thoughtful writer, I believe the Absurd can cause us to look with sadness at the futility of a life without God, and then upward with longing, dreaming of a better world. And as we do so, we find, to our surprise, the very world we hoped for is promised in the pages of Scripture, and attained for us through Christ.

[1] Absurdism is not necessarily as inaccessible as it may seem. Although it was at its height in the 1940s-60s, its influence can be still seen in many modern art-forms, and it has its roots in many older, traditional theatrical forms. See chapters 7-9 of Martin Esslin’s The Theatre of the Absurd which explore its origins in the commedia dell’arte, clowning, thirteenth century nonsense poetry, and the works of William Shakespeare.
[2] Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p18
[3] Martin Esslin, The Theatre of the Absurd, p23
[4] Eugène Ionesco, ‘Dans les armes de la ville’, Cahiers de la Compagnie Madeleine Renaud-Jean-Louis Barrault, Paris, no.20, October 1957
[5] Esslin, p21-22
[6] Genesis 1:26
[7] Romans 8:19-25
[8] Genesis 1:3
[9] John 1:1-2, 14
[10] Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot.
[11] Eugène Ionesco, ‘Dans les armes de la ville’, Cahiers de la Compagnie Madeleine Renaud-Jean-Lous Barrault, Paris, no.20, October 1957, italics mine
[12] Isaiah 53:6
[13] Ephesians 2:1
[14] Colossians 1:21
[15] John 3:19
[16] Esslin, p400
[17] Ecclesiastes 1:2
[18] John 10:10
[19] Job 14:14, 1 Corinthians 15:25-26
[20] Luke 16:19-31. See for example Happy Days by Samuel Beckett or The Bald Prima Donna by Eugène Ionesco.
[21] Eugène Ionesco, ‘Lorsque j’écris’, Cahiers des Saisons, Paris, no.15, Winter 1959

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IJM Letterpress Identity C/U by Cranky Pressman

It was a dispiriting sight. As I surveyed the room I realised that not only were we three years older, several thousand pounds poorer and a few pounds heavier, we were all very jaded. Our university lecturer, an expert in his field, was bringing our final module to a close with the words…

‘In conclusion, we should all take heart because all our efforts …well, they probably don’t do any harm.’

He certainly didn’t look sure of himself and I didn’t take heart.

I’d chosen to do a degree in International Relations and Development with the hope of being equipped to serve God in my chosen field. Specifically, I wanted to help tackle some of the horrific injustices that are daily committed against the poor: global atrocities like human trafficking, enslavement and abuse. I felt somewhat equipped with knowledge and strategies, but in this lecture it was like any hope of genuine success had been surgically removed.

The development sector, like every other, has lost confidence that there are any abstract rights and wrongs, any objective and universal truths about who and what a person is and what counts as a transgression against them. Real advances in tackling injustice and violence against the poor require authority. Without authority, hope wanes.

‘The battle for justice in the world is not fought where we think it is. The struggle against injustice is not fought on the battlefield of power or truth or even righteousness. There are pitched battles waged on these ramparts, but the war is ultimately won or lost on a more forward front. In the end the battle against oppression stands or falls on the battlefield of hope.’ (Gary Haugen, Good News About Injustice)

As Christians, whether tackling injustice on a global or local front, from a secular or church-based platform, our level of hope will be directly mirrored in our level of love for the vulnerable, our willingness to engage in their cause, our determination to stand for what is right and our longevity of service in doing so.

Below are three reasons, among many more, why we must readdress this issue of hope and refuse to settle for anything less than a hope-filled, joyful approach to justice.

1) Because our commission is compelling

In Isaiah 1:17, God commands us to ‘seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow’. He does this with no sense of naivety or ignorance about the tonnage of power wielded by the strong against the weak, or the scale that oppression will take.

Acts of violent oppression against the poor are not new. Psalm 10 makes it clear that advances against the poor have been carefully strategized and executed since biblical times. Not only this, but the same considerations apply for the oppressor: a weighing up, and a conclusion that he will not be called to account (10:6). Thus, for him, the benefits outweigh the costs. Similar considerations must today be in the minds of some of the individuals behind human trafficking – now the third most profitable criminal industry, after arms and drug trafficking.

The Psalmist is confident that God sees these acts, hears the cries of the victims and is able and willing to break the arm of the wicked and evil man, calling him to account. As the pattern of scripture shows again and again His primary (although not ultimate) way of doing this is through His people.

2) Because our commission is achievable

In every generation God has raised up individuals and groups to meet tides of injustice head on. Behind these individuals are faithful givers, pray-ers and supporters.

In the summer of 2006 I had the privilege of working with one such group. Let me share the story of Elizabeth, a trafficked victim rescued with the help of International Justice Mission (IJM), and explain her journey between Psalm 27 and Psalm 34.

Elizabeth was seventeen when she was tricked into travelling across the border. Expecting to find legitimate work at her destination she instead found herself held captive inside one of Asia’s many brothels. Elizabeth clung to her one source of comfort, her Bible, and, when not forced to be with customers, sat in her room, number 5, and prayed for rescue. In the midst of extreme suffering Elizabeth wrote many verses on her wall, the most prominent being Psalm 27:1-3, and the words sum up the resolve of many of God’s image bearers around the world today:

The Lord is my light and my salvation –
whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold of my life –
of whom shall I be afraid?
When evil men advance against me
to devour my flesh,
When my enemies and my foes attack me,
they will stumble and fall.
Though an army besiege me,
my heart will not fear;
Though war break out against me,
even then I will be confident.

It was around this time that Elizabeth began to form a friendship with a supposed customer, Eugene. Eugene was an undercover investigator for IJM, an international human rights organisation built on the certainty that God is both just and able to use his people to bring rescue and relief. Once a portfolio of evidence had been collated, complete with undercover footage from inside the brothel, investigators worked with local police to secure a raid date. Elizabeth, as well as 28 girls and young women, seven of them minors, were set free that night.

IJM staff describe being with Elizabeth as being in the presence of greatness. Her story has encouraged countless supporters and on a recent visit to see Elizabeth, Sharon Cohn-Wu (Senior Vice President at IJM) asked her if she would mind reading the Psalm aloud. ‘No’ she said, ‘that Psalm was for when I was in the brothel, but God rescued me. I will read you Psalm 34:

I sought the Lord, and he answered me;
he delivered me from all my fears.
Those who look to him are radiant;
their faces are never covered with shame.
This poor man called, and the Lord heard him;
he saved him out of all of his troubles.
The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him,
and he delivers them.’

During my three months at IJM one of the things that struck me as most strange was the amount of laughter in the office, and the deep sense of hope that seemed engrained in the fabric of the organisation.

Whilst I was there, two of the investigators returned from short-term undercover work. They showed me video footage of little girls in a dark brothel being lined up for the picking. The investigator beamed, ‘they’re out now.’ I was obviously so pleased but was also curious as to how stayed so positive, knowing that there were hundreds more brothels in that city. ‘We saw six pimps arrested on one trip; think how many children, over how many years that represents. And soon we’ll go back and we’ll do it all again.’

Psalm 10 ends with the words ‘so that man, who is of the earth, may terrify no more’. The investigators and staff I worked with that summer were convinced that man’s existence, power and ability to do evil is framed and limited. We serve a God whose existence, power and ability to do good is without boundaries, unframed and all-surpassing.

The work of justice is achievable.

3) Because success is guaranteed

Nothing secures hope more than knowing the way the story ends. At present, our job is to rewind the final picture, bringing the future total establishment of the kingdom into the present. But our resolve, and our levels of hope, are grounded in the fact that Jesus is going to return, ultimately, and bring justice to the earth.

At the beginning of the film Ocean’s Eleven, a casino mogul describes the previous attempts to rob casinos in Las Vegas. In only one of the attempted robberies did the man even make it past the front door. The camera focuses in on this guy, carrying bundles of cash and elated that he’s escaped the scene of the crime uncaught. If we were to press pause and stop the movie there, it could look as if the robbers, the murderers, the oppressors and the traffickers get away with it.

But before he has even left the car park, as anyone who has seen Ocean’s Eleven (or attempted to rob a casino!) knows, he is immediately gunned down by casino security, and dies in a heap on the floor. If we stop the story in the wrong place, it can look like injustice triumphs. But when we wind the tape forward to the end, it becomes obvious that no injustice is allowed to go unrighted. When we fix our eyes on the certainty of an ever-increasing kingdom of justice and peace, one in which wrongs are righted, death destroyed and pain undone, it grounds our fight for justice in a victory that is finally certain. It means our success is guaranteed.

We have a difficult, but compelling and thoroughly achievable, commission. The guarantee of Christ’s kingdom is that it will be filled with ever-increasing peace and justice. And one day, He will return to right all wrongs and undo all injustice. This gives us hope – the sort of hope that gives powerful foundations for pursuing justice on the earth, so that man may terrify no more.

(For more information on the work of IJM in the UK please visit www.ijmuk.org, and for their work in the USA visit www.ijm.org)

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Churchill statue & Big Ben by wallyg

‘But what difference can I make?’ you may well ask. In all the years I’ve been involved in politics, this is one of the most common questions I come across. Below is my guide to getting involved, with several different options requiring various levels of commitment. In all of these areas of work within politics, it is essential to view them as equally valuable ‘callings’ or vocations. To categorise them into levels of importance is to say that some are better than others. As Christians we are called to be salt and light to the world, and to work at whatever we do in life with all our heart to bring glory to God. Have an open mind and think outside of the box and God may surprise you by the way he is able to use you.

This list is not exhaustive. However, it is designed to get you thinking.

Join a Political Party
If you can identify which side of the political spectrum you lean towards, why not join a political party? Once a card-carrying member of a political party, the level of engagement that you opt for depends on you.  It is perfectly possible just to join the party and have a nominal input.  As a paid up member you will be supporting the party’s activity financially.

If you are not sure which party is for you, take your time to read about their beliefs and goals.  Also read their manifestos, although specific policy will change from one election to another.

It is also possible to be a member of the Christian Socialist Movement, the Conservative Christian Fellowship or the Liberal Democrat Christian Forum without being a member of the Party.  However, once you join a party the opportunities for further involvement open up…

Local Party Activist
An ideal first step is to get involved in the local branch of your party.  Depending upon where you live, there will be differing levels of local party activity.  Local parties or associations are made up of party members of all ages and from all walks of life. There are differing levels of involvement ranging from joining the party and providing financial support through to holding office within a local party or association and being responsible for the party’s activities in your area.  Most local parties or associations have regular social events and are great ways to meet other people with similar political views. It is also a really good way to get stuck into your local community.

Elected representative
Town, City, District, County, Borough, Constituency, Region… whichever level of local, regional or national government you might have the opportunity to become involved in, they all offer means of changing the area in which you live for the better. 

Candidates for elections generally represent a specific party.  Having got involved in your local party, the opportunity to stand as a local candidate may then follow.  In areas where your preferred party has control of the local authority, there is opportunity to significantly impact the way in which your local area is run.  Furthermore, being part of an effective local opposition party is also essential; it is not just national politicians who need holding to account. 

Similarly, there are opportunities to stand for election to the various regional and national assemblies – the Scottish Parliament, Welsh and Northern Ireland Assemblies, the House of Commons and the European Parliament. However, it is worth noting that most people start their political career at a local level. Experience counts and hard work in local politics tends to be a key step on the road to election to any position, local or national.

Working for an MP
The structure and composition of a Member of Parliament’s office varies greatly. Some run the majority of their work from the constituency, others run everything from the House of Commons, and there are those who do a mixture of both! However, they all have staff of some description; Personal Assistant, Secretary, Caseworker, Constituency Assistant, Researcher, Political Assistant, Chief of Staff, Policy Advisor…the list is endless! Working in a constituency office, or in Westminster itself is often billed as a role for a new graduate with an interest in politics, providing a perfect introduction to the workings of Parliamentary politics, and a great stepping-stone to a career in a whole host of fields. Often graduates spend only one or two years working for an MP. Some may feel a specific calling to politics for just a few years, others realise the value of political experience in the pursuit of their dream career. Yet, there are also those who believe they are called to work for an MP on a more long-term basis. There are many Christians working in Parliament, based in the offices of MPs who believe their role in politics is in serving politicians, both Christian and non-Christian. Furthermore, there are those who believe they have been placed in Parliament to support all Christians in politics, those who feel called to Parliament to pray, and those who work as staff of the Houses of Parliament and serve the many hundreds of people working within the Palace of Westminster, and see this as their vocation. God is also calling Christians to serve him in all political institutions, the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the European Parliament. 

Working for a Political Party
There are a wide variety of employed positions within the different political parties. Whilst not all Christians working for the Party in London, Edinburgh, Cardiff or Brussels may feel that they are doing so as a result of a direct calling from God, if you believe that God uses you wherever he places you, then having Christians working in these fields is incredibly important. Whether working to support the IT network at Conservative Campaign Headquarters, working for the Labour Press Office, in the Liberal Democrat Policy Unit, or within a human resources department, all positions are vital to the working of the Party itself, and provide a valuable means to be a Christian to others working for the Party.

Think Tank
A Think Tank is an organisation or group of experts researching and advising on issues of society, science, technology, industry, or business. They seek to influence policy formation by providing research and developing ideas that could be translated into legislation, or which can be used to challenge the thinking around certain legislative areas within government. Some Think Tanks have a Christian remit. They are seeking to influence the political climate in a way that is specifically based upon Biblical principles. However, there are also those with no Christian basis. Whatever the basis of the organisation, working in this field provides yet another opportunity to bring Christian values into a further arena within politics.

www.w4mp.org - website advertising a wide range of political jobs
www.christiansinpolitics.org.uk
www.christiansinparliament.org.uk
www.susa.info

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Am I not a man by seriykotik1970

I recently spoke to an actor who, in a moment of candid honesty, admitted ‘I have never felt at home in a church before, because people have never understood my job.’

How many of us feel our careers are devalued or misunderstood? How many see our jobs as secondary to mission and struggle to have a vision for how Jesus can use us in our sphere of influence?

It is tempting to see a divide between church and our work. But I am increasingly convinced that we need to be people who shape culture, and if this is to happen, we dare not devalue our jobs! We need to see our workplaces as mission fields and ask the question ‘what does Jesus want to do in my workplace?’

A businessman, soon after coming to faith, told me he was dissatisfied with the recruitment industry in which he worked. He was put off by the cut-throat attitude that cared more about profits than the welfare of their clients. In January he established his own recruitment agency, with the vision of seeing the whole industry changed, based on the principles of fairness, honesty and customer care. Within eight months their reputation had spread and he had relocated from his mother’s kitchen to an office in a prime location.

I am thrilled by examples like this; men and women who have a vision for their employment, and see it as a key part of the Church’s mission. Shaping culture is not just about planting churches and leading individuals to Christ, as vital as that is. It’s about promoting the common good; benefitting everybody by creating better environments in which to live and work.

There is great potential for affecting change through positive influence. If we promote beauty, truth and goodness, everyone benefits. Christians are too often known for campaigning against the negative aspects of secular culture. I’m for creating rather than complaining. We need to seek opportunities to promote positive culture; helping Christian artists to exhibit their work and businessmen to operate ethically. What’s more, if Christians are seen to be having a positive effect, we will gain credibility and a platform to speak on many issues.

Josiah Wedgwood is a prime example. In 1787, this well-known and influential businessman created a range of hatpins and brooches for fashionable women. They bore an emblem of an African slave in chains and the provocative slogan ‘Am I not a man and a brother?’ Within three years, thousands had been distributed. Wedgwood’s contribution to the world of fashion became a significant factor in raising public awareness for the Society for the Abolition of Slavery.

I am passionate about equipping Christians to make a difference in whatever area they find themselves. Psalm 24:1tells us that ‘The Earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it.’ Everything. Not just the so called ‘sacred’ elements of culture, but our work, study and leisure as well. Everything belongs to God and as His people we are called to get involved and have a positive influence on society. As we commit ourselves to impacting culture by being faithful in whatever area God has placed us, I am excited about the many possibilities that will emerge.

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Homer Xray by SOCIALisBETTER

• Homer: Hey Flanders! Heading for church? Well, I thought I could save you a little time.
• Ned Flanders: Ooh, found a new short cut?
• Homer: Rather, I was working on a flax tax proposal and I accidentally proved there’s no God.
• Ned Flanders [looking at the proof]: Would you see about tha… Oh-oh, well, maybe he made a mista… No, it’s airtight. [Taking a lighter from his pocket, burns the proof] Can’t let this little doozy get out.
From ‘HOMЯ’, The Simpsons, Season 12

“It’s easy being a fundamentalist, too. Mostly you don’t have to think at all … The rational atheist has science at his disposal, and the thing about good science is that it can be proved … For Christian apologists it is essential that Jesus rose again … If a sceptic demands proof, then in the end the faithful have little choice but to hide behind the door marked ‘mystery’”,
John Humphreys, BBC presenter of the Today Programme and Mastermind (agnostic) [1]

“The elephant [religion] is crashing about in the room, trampling people to death, and politely ignoring it is no longer an option.”
A. C. Grayling, Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London, among other distinguished academic appointments (atheist) [2]

If you’re anything like me, you had two strong reactions to how Ned Flanders responded to Homer Simpson’s accidental proof: laughter and unease. I find Homer Simpson hilarious and I think there’s something of Ned Flanders in most of us. But from where does the unease arise? The second and third quotations above illustrate how the notion of the Christian mind has increasingly been coming under attack.

An inconvenient question lurks in the shadows of these attacks: ‘Doesn’t Christian faith automatically relegate you to an intellectual slum?’ [3] We are all affected: whether you are a sales manager or a teacher, a nurse or a refuse collector, an academic or an administrator, you use your mind regularly. Yet many songs, films and TV shows (sometimes subtly, sometimes obviously) broadcast to all of us the kind of doubts implicit in the above inconvenient question.

This impacts different Christians in different ways. Perhaps you live in two worlds, privatising the use of your mind and keeping distinctively Christian thought processes out of your professional life. Perhaps, if you are a church leader, your equipping of Christians in education, academia and other workplaces is limited just to fostering disciplines of integrity, prayer and witness. Perhaps, for others, before really feeling able to engage with the Bible or praise God, you feel the need to leave your brain at the door. After all, why not do the Ned Flanders thing? If a question that comes up in Scripture, or a potential proof against God raised by a friend, is too difficult to address, just burn it, yes?

No. I am passionate about the Christian mind. It is my deep conviction that, as Christians, we simply must play a significant role in our nation’s intellectual life, be it academia, wider education, politics, business, the arts or elsewhere. As Christians, there are excellent historical, theological, philosophical and other reasons to say that the mind - in all its rational, moral, psychological fullness - is authentically our territory.

In my seminar at the Everything Conference, we will cover:
• The power and reality of the contemporary challenge to the Christian mind, including where the atheists and agnostics have a point.
• How the gospel story provides a rich basis for a mindful Christian worldview.
• How to develop a curious, fully alive, always learning mindset and apply it in practice, in the whole of your life.

I look forward to meeting some of you!

Footnotes
1. In God We Doubt, Hodder & Stoughton, 2008, pp, 3 and 14.
2. ‘Where are we in history?’, p. 14, an essay in To Set Prometheus Free, Oberon Books, 2009.
3. Dallas Willard, Personal Religion, Public Reality?, Hodder & Stoughton, 2009, p. 3.

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Revolution by chris.corwin

For over 200 years Western society has been governed by the division of labour. It is this specialisation that has allowed the incredible industrial and technological advances which have shaped our culture. From the production of cheap motorcars to the development of digital technology, specialisation has kept the wave of progress surging forward.

This materialistic reality has shaped not only the goods we produce and own, and the jobs that we do, but also our very way of thinking. Consider your instinctive reaction to the terms – who is superior; the ‘specialist’ or the ‘generalist’? When we are ill we go to the general practitioner at first, but quickly turn to a specialist if we need more than a simple prescription. We want our children to be taught by specialists in their subjects. If we need help with our tax returns we find a specialist to help us.

Specialisation has also shaped our thinking in the way that much of life tends to be compartmentalised. We live in boxes, and travel to work in boxes. At work we sit in a box, looking at a box, and then once home we turn on the box. Inevitably this results in a frame of mind that views work as belonging to one compartment, and leisure to another, and spirituality to another. Increasingly we live atomised lives, where the different things we do are not organically connected, and in which we are isolated from other people. The sense of emotional disconnect that many people feel is hardly surprising in this efficient, specialised, but ultimately dissatisfying world we have created.

While the picture I have painted might seem to be just life as life is, it is certainly not what is expected within a biblical worldview. From the perspective of the Bible’s authors, God is actively involved in everything in creation, and his people are dynamically united with him, and one another. In 1 Chronicles 29:11-12 we read David’s prayer before the people as he made preparations for building a temple:

Yours, O LORD, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, O LORD, and you are exalted as head above all. Both riches and honour come from you, and you rule over all. In your hand are power and might, and in your hand it is to make great and to give strength to all.

David’s prayer is a recognition of the connectedness of all human experience. Ultimately it is the Lord who owns and controls all things – he really is the king. And in the end it is the decision of the King, rather than our specialisation that determines what happens in our lives. What this meant for David was that whether he was planning a building project, leading his troops in war, or composing a psalm of praise, the whole thing, everything, was about the Lord.

Turning to the New Testament we see that a favourite apostolic description of believers is that they are in Christ. Joined into Christ, we are also joined into one another. This organic, bodily union must give shape to everything we do. It means that though we may specialise in our place of work, we can never become compartmentalised beings. It means that whether we are travelling to work, cooking a meal, washing the car, sitting at our desk, caring for our children, or anything else, we are doing it in Christ, and in connection with the rest of his people.

My prayer is that the Everything Conference would help us think more about these issues and see their implications for us. Whether your thing is art, or business, or politics, the main thing is that we should be biblically shaped – that our worldview should be conditioned more by the reality of our connection to Jesus than our cultural preconceptions. If the church of Jesus Christ would grasp this it would unleash a revolution far more powerful than the industrial one.

Let’s start a revolution of everything!

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\"Closed\" by Jasoon http://www.flickr.com/photos/jasoon/10837680/

Would anyone in your community notice if your church ceased to exist? So runs the question from the Evangelical Alliance’s new 'Square Mile' initiative.

This excellent initiative is but one amongst many coming from Christians who believe that there is more to life than simple pious faith.  We are confronted with concepts such as ‘community mission’, ‘integral mission’ and ‘integrated theology’.

But what are we to make of the Square Mile question?  Maybe we need some definitions before we can answer the question.

What is ‘your community’?  What is ‘your church’?

Maybe we are in danger of falling into the same trap as the lawyer who questioned Jesus with his famous question ‘who is my neighbour’? Even putting that aside -  should ‘your community’ refer to a defined geographical area or is there another way of understanding community?

Does it have to do with our immediate circle of friends or family?  Maybe it just extends to our neighbours and work colleagues or maybe it can be seen as an all inclusive term covering the whole of our national life or even international life.

Also, are we supposed to think in terms of ‘gathered church’ or should we be thinking more in terms of a ‘sent church’ comprising many individuals in many diverse situations?

I do not ask these questions in order just to be difficult, as the answers that we give will be crucial in shaping the activities we get involved in.

The church, gathered or sent, can relate to its surrounding community in differing ways.  We hear stories of transformation, influence, responsibility and opportunity, all of which will necessarily be worked out in different ways depending upon which community we are referring to.

As with any human activity, we need to establish specific targets or goals in order to ensure that we achieve them.  What will our communities look like with our involvement?

David Muir, Director of Public Policy, at the EA suggests that “safe, prosperous and peaceful communities are what we are looking for”

Malcolm Duncan, Leader of Faith Works, wants to see “communities become safer places”

Charles Finney, in his 23rd Lecture on Revival (note to self: I really must read the other 22) says that the gospel “releases a mighty impulse toward social reform” and that the Church’s neglect of social reform grieved the Holy Spirit and hindered revival.  He also suggested that “the great business of the Church is to reform the world….The Church of Christ was originally organised to be a body of reformers.  The very profession of Christianity implies the profession and virtually an oath to do all that can be done for the universal reformation of the world.”

Tom Wright in The Challenge of Jesus tells us that “our task, as image – bearing, God – loving, Christ – shaped, Spirit – filled Christians, following Christ and shaping our world, is to announce redemption to the world that has discovered its fallenness; to announce healing to the world that has discovered its brokenness; to proclaim love and trust to the world that knows only exploitation, fear and suspicion.”

Reading these quotes, together with many others, it would be easy to assume that as soon as someone is born again, they become effective in changing the world around them.  Sometimes this is the case, but more often there is a need to train and equip people to see how personal salvation can bring about social transformation or as Tom Wright suggests, community redemption.

Something to think about before coming to the Everything Conference:
What would ‘transformation’ or indeed ‘redemption’ look like in your community?

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Long tunnel with a man inside

There is no doubt that the Bible addresses the issue of art. Jesus was a skilled craftsman. He was also a master story-teller.

In the Old Testament we hear about the elaborate craftsmanship and artistry employed in the construction of the Tabernacle and Temple. The Bible itself is a literary work consisting of various separate art forms: prose, poetry, narrative, rhetoric and so on. Ultimately we can conceive of God as the master-artist. It is in this fact that we can grapple with the notion of a specific Christian aesthetic.

But we might well begin by asking the question whether it is even right to conceive of a particular Christian aesthetic. Some if not most branches of evangelicalism have not really considered the theme of aesthetics. Take the buildings we use as meeting places for example. Surely the emphasis has not been on creating buildings that are beautiful, pieces of art in their own right. Perhaps it is because our theology tells us that these buildings are just ‘rain shelters’ in which the church can meet, we haven’t given much thought to how these buildings look, feel and act.

We have rarely thought how the Bible would have us approach the issue of aesthetic quality. My own experience is that I have never been properly taught how as a Christian I ought to approach any creative act I might engage in, whether that be producing a meal, a piece of rhetoric, decorating my home or putting together the church magazine. I cannot recall hearing by way of application in a sermon how something I create should be ‘beautiful’ or should accomplish it’s task well, or how it should reflect my Christian world-view. Perhaps the closest thing to this is being told that I should do everything to praise of God. But what does this mean?

I want to suggest some ways in which we should approach our aesthetic task as Christians. What will be peculiar about a Christian aesthetic?

Beauty
‘Beauty’ it is said ‘is in the eye of the beholder.’ Is beauty quite so subjective as this? Or does the Bible allow us more objectivity? Does the Bible help us know what is truly beautiful? This is the place we need to begin since aesthetics might be defined as the enquiry in to the nature of beauty. But can we say that anything is beautiful, and other things are not?

To begin with we should say that the Bible tells us that God himself is beautiful. David write in Psalm 27:4

“One thing I have asked of the LORD, that I will seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple.” Hundreds of other passages praise God in aesthetic terms: ‘O Lord my God you are very great; you are clothed with splendour and majesty.’ (Psalm 104:1); ‘Sing to the LORD and praise him for the splendour of his holiness’ (2 Chron 20:21).

An ultimate, originating ‘divine beauty’ might then be said to exist. Augustine said ‘The beautiful things of this world kept me far from you [God] and yet, if they had not been in you, they would have had no being at all.’ (i) In other words Augustine recognised that beautiful things only existed in the world because God himself is beautiful. Beauty finds it’s origin in God. ‘Just as God is primordial being, the ontological ground of all that is, and just as he is the foundation of ethics, the axiological ground of all values, so is he the foundation of aesthetics, the ground of all beauty.’

The Bible notes that some things are clearly beautiful. Primarily, the creation that God made ‘was good’. We understand by this that part of this inherent ‘goodness’ was that it was beautiful. The objectively beautiful God had made a creation that was objectively beautiful. And God has given men and women the ability to make items that the Bible declares to be objectively beautiful. We read that Solomon ‘adorned the house [the Temple] with precious stones for beauty’ (2 Chron 3:6 Amplified Bible). The stones did not perform any other practical function. They were there for the sake of beauty. The same chapter in 2 Chronicles goes on to describe the lavish beauty of the Temple. Carved cherubim; fine gold; a veil of blue and purple and crimson fabrics; and two towers in the Most Holy Place that served no utilitarian function whatsoever. This was to be a work of beauty for the sake of beauty. It was meant to be beautiful because God is beautiful.

So we can say that God himself is beautiful. He is the source of beauty. And things created by man which are beautiful reflect the divine beauty and indeed have their origin in him.

Genuine creativity
In the beginning, the first verse of Genesis tell us, God created the heavens and the earth. Our world was not an accidental or unwanted by product of the gods; rather it was a deliberate, planned and executed piece of creativity. What is more the refrain in Genesis 1 comes again and again: ‘and it was good.’ The creation that God had made was a perfect creation.

As the pinnacle of the creation God created mankind. This ‘man’ (who was created ‘male and female’) was made in the image of God. Whatever that exactly entails, it must surely include the ability to create something new, as God can. Adam was given the task of working the ground of Eden. He was given the responsibility of re-fashioning a world that had already been made perfectly. This is some task. Dorothy L. Sayers wrote ‘The idea of art as creation is, I believe, the one important contribution that Christianity has made to aesthetics.’ (iii) She goes on to ask to what extent we can consider mankind as being like God in the creative task, and answers that the fundamental difference is that whereas humans are limited to creating out of that which already exists, God is able to create out of nothing. Nonetheless, are still able to create something and in doing so we image God. Sayers makes the point that a distinctively Christian aesthetic requires the production of pieces of art that are new. We should not settle for simply copying that which already exists. This is not a hallmark of a genuine Christian aesthetic since it fails to accomplish that act of ‘working’ the creation. We should remember that art is always a kind of work: A work of art emerges only when an artist takes chisel in hand and chips away at stone, heats up a furnace and pours bronze, picks up a lump of clay and turns a pot, takes up a brush or knife and spreads paint around, selects from the verbal stock of his language specific sequence of words… The fundamental fact about the artist is that he or she is a worker in stone, in bronze, in clay, in paint, in words, in sounds and instruments, in states of affairs. On some bit of the concrete materials of our stage he imposes order. (iv)

Copying is not creating something new. So a Christian aesthetic requires that there will be newness about that which we create. Spiegel warns that a lack of creativity might break out in various forms of artificiality: popular kitsch (tshirt designs, car stickers, coffee mugs); hackneyed formulas in music (like the key change towards the Westlife song) and ‘maudlin dramas that oversimplify the complexities of real life moral problems and dilemmas (e.g. “Yes, Jane, your pregnancy out of wedlock is a serious problem, but if you just trust the Lord…”).... Perhaps the best (or worst) example of this is the widespread use of musical accompaniment tapes. (v)

Reflecting the Christian world-view
Schaeffer says that the saddest artist to witness is the one who is a born-again Christian ‘who does not understand what the total Christian world view should be and therefore produces art which embodies a non-Christian world view.’ (vi)

Across an artist’s entire body of work we should expect to see a Biblical world-view reflected. It is inappropriate for the entirety of a Christian artists work to heavily reflect, for example, that there is no meaning to life, since there is meaning to life. It is inappropriate for a Christian artist’s work to largely reflect that all is despair, since it is not. It is not a Christian aesthetic if the body of work tells us that there is no hope of redemption, since that is the Christian’s hope.

It is important that we stress the need to contemplate the artists entire body of work in this respect. Schaeffer makes the helpful distinction between a ‘major’ and ‘minor’ theme in art. The major themes that will be reflected in the Christian’s art will be those of hope, redemption, salvation, creation, forgiveness, restoration, joy and so on. However, a Christian is not removed or immune from the suffering and brokenness of the world, and as such her art, if it is to be credible, should also reflect this ‘minor theme’ of feelings of hopelessness and despair, the sense of lostness and depravity. Our Lord Jesus suffered for us in our broken world. God suffered and died! A Christian aesthetic will reflect on the themes of brokenness. It is when we have experienced darkness that we can appreciate light.

Technical excellence
When God created the universe, not only did he make that which was perfect, but we understand that the act of creating was a perfect act. His creating was technically perfect. He controlled his instrument – his word – to perfection. He didn’t make any mistakes. So another aspect of Christian aesthetics will be a striving for technical excellence, since this reflects the work of God. A painter will work hard to control his brush. A pianist will endeavour to master the scales. A dramatist will seek to perfect her ability to utilise dramatic tension. Striving for excellence is also an act of love for our neighbour since no one likes to hear a violin played badly for a prolonged period of time. A parent may put up with it in the house for a period of time in the understanding that the son or daughter will eventually improve!

Moral integrity
God is altogether good. In his work of creating he acted with complete integrity. And so we must aim for integrity in our works of creativity as we seek to image God in the creative task. We are people called to live lives of moral obedience to Jesus, and this obedience certainly extends to our art.

Our art must not, for example, seek to sell a lie (Phil 4:8). We must not use art to make an attack on another person. We will not use art to perpetuate injustice. Christian art will not be pornographic. Christian art will not demean the Lord Jesus in any way. Our art must not aim to provoke others to sin. We are called to prefer the needs of others to our own, and so our purpose in creating art should not be to serve ourselves but to serve others. We will not worship our art, since that is idolatry.

Trinitarian reflection
The God of the Bible exists as Trinity. He is in himself a community of persons existing in perfect harmony. He is Father, Son and Spirit, yet he is One.

Surely this must impact upon our distinctive Christian aesthetic. Our art should reflect the theme of different parts working together in harmony. The way in which the painter brings together differing colours to produce a single painting on canvas. The manner in which a choir fashion a rich variety of voices into one voice.

While (following Schaeffer) we might sparingly use elements of disharmony to reflect the reality of brokenness in our world, we will seek to emphasise themes of harmony and unity.

i Augustine, Confessions X, 27 (New York: Viking Penguin, 1961), 232.
ii James S. Spiegel, Aesthetics and Worship (available online).
iii Dorothy L Sayers, Towards a Christian Aesthetic
iv Nicholas Wolterstorff, Art in Action (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980), p. 91.
v Spiegel, Aesthetics, p. 48
vi Francis A. Schaeffer, Art and the Bible (IVP: Downers Grove), p. 69.

Article reproduced with kind permission from Ian Goodson

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Hannah More as painted by H.W. Pickersgill

In her day she sold more books than her contemporary Jane Austen; she was described by the great Samuel Johnson as the most skilled female writer of her generation; she produced plays, wrote poetry and interacted with the society-influencers of her day all the while courageously challenging the ideas of those she met; she played a key role in the abolition of the slave trade, donated large sums of money to worthy causes and gave her life to reforming moral values in this nation.

Her name is Hannah More, and she’s one of my heroes. What William Wilberforce was among men, More was among women.

At just 29 years old she arrived in a London that had given itself over to decadence and indulgence. Annual gin consumption had risen as high as three gallons per person; addictive gambling was commonplace, sexual promiscuity the norm, and church attendance dwindling. She believed the numbing of moral values was a natural consequence of the visible decline of religion, and so she gave her life to bringing about a moral revolution. And she succeeded.

Those ‘stiff upper lip’ values of character, integrity and morality that are often characterised in re-enactments of Austen’s famous novels today are owed in part to Hannah More and her passion for transforming society. She won the fight for the minds and opinions of her generation, she made ‘goodness’ fashionable and Britain was forever different for the part she played in it.

Over the next 100 years, there will be a clean sweep of humanity, and none of us will be here to see what our nation looks like then. Given that we’ll spend the best part of 70,000 hours in our places of work over our life-times, if we’re at all motivated by More’s example, that’s the place we’ll most likely bring about change and leave our worlds better off for our involvement within it.

There’s bad news though. This isn’t exactly an easy task. There’s no silver bullet nor quick-fix solution. And our battles will look very different. The fight for justice in politics is different from the battle for cleaner streets in your community, and the challenge of changing the media’s obsession with sex will look very different from bringing about strong family values in education.

Nonetheless, this seminar aims to provide opportunities for networking with like-minded people, offer practical help on taking steps forward in the workplace, and bring broad brush-strokes that help paint the picture of what could be accomplished over a life-time.

“If there ever was a period in which the demand for elevating the tone of Christianity, principles and conduct was more imperative than another, that period is the present.”
Hannah More, ‘Thought on the Importance of Manners of the Great to General Society’ (T Cadell, 1799)

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