Author: Nathan Campbell

Nathan runs St Eutychus. He loves Jesus. His wife. His daughter. His son. His other daughter. His dog. Coffee. And the Internet. He is the pastor of City South Presbyterian Church, a church in Brisbane, a graduate of Queensland Theological College (M. Div) and the Queensland University of Technology (B. Journ). He spent a significant portion of his pre-ministry-as-a-full-time-job life working in Public Relations, and now loves promoting Jesus in Brisbane and online. He can't believe how great it is that people pay him to talk and think about Jesus. If you'd like to support his writing financially you can do that by giving to his church.

Know your &s

Did you know that the ampersand (&) was originally meant to be an e and t joined together. From the Latin et? Did you know that typographers love the &? Did you know you can judge a font by its &?

If you answered “no” to any of those questions then you need to get your & on. So. Check out these & resources.

You can, using a little bit of CSS, serve up fancy &s to visitors to your webpage. Here’s how (and it’s the source of these graphics).

Here are the &s available on Mac…

& on PC…

You can also, if you’re technologically inclined, install some webfonts. This site has a bunch. Here’s a sample.

Pop a tie on…

Ties are classy. But if you’re not, and you want to either passive aggressively make annoying noises in meetings, or be a scion of fashion, then you should get one of these bubble wrap ties. The bubble wrap is meant to be worn on the inside. But I reckon you could flip it easily.

My Life in Albums: 1998: Discovering JJJ

So my dalliance with crappy pop and boy bands didn’t last all that long. I graduated to crappy Australian guitar angst driven teenage rebellion just a year later. Actually, the move was probably happening earlier than that.

Regurgitator’s Black Bugs, Spiderbait’s Calypso, Massive Attack’s Teardrop, and Custard’s Music is Crap were all on my radar around the same time (1997-98).

But for me, 1998 is the year of The Living End. Heroes to a generation of Australians. Now an incredibly tight live act replete with double bass. Well. They’ve always had a double bass. They haven’t always been that tight live though. Judging by the clips I sorted through on YouTube (the official film clip for this song has had embedding disabled by request).

I think I scored the Living End’s debut album with a CD voucher I won at school, or maybe it was a birthday present. I remember hanging out in my room listening to it while reading Redwall, by Brian Jacques. Those were the days.

Words can’t express just how excited I was to be hanging with the cool kids, musically speaking, when I discovered the Living End. Though my frenemy, Sam Conway (who tried to put out the Olympic Torch with a fire extinguisher) made it clear to me that the cool kids had moved on from the Living End about the time I discovered them. In hindsight there was probably some causation there, not just correlation. Better yet. The Living End could be turned up to 11. Which was especially useful when my family decided to pull up stumps and move to Brisbane.

Other notables from the year included this little number by Grinspoon.

Though, for a while, I had merged Green Day and Grinspoon, in my head, and was adamant that I really liked the band Greenspoon.

And of course, there was the Verve’s Bittersweet Symphony. Performed here with Coldplay, because, well, that’s kind of cool.

My life in albums: 1997: The wander year

Everybody has a musical awakening story, and a musical skeleton in the closet. Despite my relatively awesome beginnings, my life in albums almost went off the rails in my first year of really liking music. My sisters and I used to watch Rage on a Saturday morning. And before I’d really discovered the magic of radio we used to make mix tapes by holding the tape recorder up to the speakers.

One of the songs on high rotation on Rage in that year was Hanson’s Mmmbop. Still a catchy little number. Even if Taylor does look remarkably feminine.

My sisters were hooked. This album was on high rotation in our house. All the time. I know all the words to all the songs. My middle sister bonded with her now husband when they sang some Hanson songs together after church one night, their “recessional”, or whatever the song at the end of the wedding ceremony is, was another Hanson song, and at their wedding reception I used the song Madeleine to draw people’s attention back from their conversations to the original proceedings (that’s my sister’s name). Anonymity lost.

But for me, it was perhaps a darker musical year. One week my attention turned to Video Hits after Rage. I remember it like it was yesterday. This song came on. Some guys were walking into a haunted house. The music started. There was thunder. And then there was boy band magic. And some sort of werewolf.

I got on my pushbike and rode down to my sisters’ netball games on the other side of town. In Maclean, NSW. So not far. The song playing over and over in my head.

Am I original? Yeah.
Am I the only one? Yeah…

I saved up my pocket money ($2 a week plus mowing money in those days). And one day, on a trip to the Gold Coast, I think Pacific Fair. I had a look around Toys’R’Us. And a couple of other shops. And then walked into Big W. And came out a changed man. If not for that moment I would not have been bullied at school for a whole year, for thinking that the Backstreet Boys were cutting edge and awesome. I read the liner notes, and most of them thanked Jesus. So they were Christians too. And back then, at the age of 13, I thought Christian music was pretty cool. In fact, a year later, a Christian band called Aroma opened my eyes to rock (listen to the song Maggot here). And from there… well, you’ll have to wait until 1998’s post.

These were the only videos I could find easily and embed…

If I recall, there was a certain very good friend of mine (I won’t name – but he blogs and I’ve linked to him heaps, and he likes Pixar) who borrowed my CD and also enjoyed it.

Please think twice before posting Christian parody songs on YouTube

This is awful. Don’t these children have parents…

Via Christian Nightmares.

“What you going to do with atheists? All those pagan atheists?
I’m going to set them free. Make them Christians just like me”

I hope they don’t think this song is part of that process.

But it could be worse.

I’m happy for you to believe that the earth is 6,000 years old, and that dinosaurs died in the flood, I like the Bible too. And I think taking it seriously is important. But please. Please. Please. Don’t take a song like this, and turn it into a song like that. Just awful. If people think your cause is ridiculous

Positive Movie Reviews from my cinephile friend Phil

This may be premature. Because there’s only one post so far. But you should totally check out my friend Phil’s new blog where he reviews movies. He knows all about the fillums. So you should read. Interact. Subscribe. Do all those web 2.0 things. Stalk him.

Welcome to Phil’s All-Positive Movie Reviews. If there’s something I don’t like in a movie, you won’t hear about it. I am, by nature, a pessimist, making this blog something of an exercise against character. I had considered starting a blog of reviews in which I rubbish the rubbish as much as I laud the laudable, but then I remembered that I want to work as a screenwriter and I’ll really be shooting myself in the foot if I start picking holes in the work of people I want to work with in the future. So I figure, if I don’t say any negative stuff, no one can be offended.

Back in the olden days of blogging, when I was a wee lad using blogger and posting on Nathan Goes to Townsville my friend Phil and I started a group blog. Just the two of us. It was grand. It stands the test of time. If by “test of time” you mean “still exists” and it resides, now defunct, at this link.

Phil and I co-wrote the OCC, a little Christian soap opera parody about the kind of camps you go to as a hormonal, post-pubescent young-adult man looking for a wife. I’ve posted it before, but you can find the five episodes on YouTube.

But now, Phil lives in Melbourne and I, in Brisbane. And so. I have to get my dosage of Phil via this blog. Which I heartily recommend. Though that’s like the kiss of death for a blog. Most seem to get a “go read this” link from me and then wane into once a year stiltedness.

Explosive Art: There’s something very cool about art with bombs

This is amazing. The creation at 2:06 is just mind blowing. And wall blowing.

The McDouble: Peak burger?

I don’t think I’ve ever had a burger as good as the McDouble. Not even a pounder. Except maybe the Cactus Jacks Build your Own Burger in Townsville. But that’s eight times the price.  And I don’t think we’ll ever see a burger that’s quite so good again. Certainly not priced under $2. It’s an unbeatable mix of value and taste. Some burgers taste better but don’t represent value for money. The only burgers cheaper than the McDouble – the cheeseburger (which is, actually, the same price I think) and the Junior Burger (is that what they’re called still?) pale in comparison. No burger in the past, present, or future, looks like being able to match it. This is my fearless prediction. I’m looking forward to the results if people try to prove me wrong.


Image Credit: Gaarawarrgabs
There’s something about the combination of fat, flavour, and texture in these burgers that makes them the item I sit craving between lunch and dinner each afternoon. Luckily I so rarely act on these cravings. Some would say my definition of rarely is broken at this point.

The tomato sauce and onion combo in the “seasoning” department is genius. The McDonald’s food scientists have outdone themselves in understanding umami, or something ephemeral, and yet delicious, in the cheese to meat patty ratio, and the size is perfect for guilt free burger snacking. Even if there’s some cognitive dissonance involved. We’re talking 19.8 gm of fat  and 384 calories (according to the McDonalds product page). I challenge you to find a better calories/$ ratio anywhere in the world – short of eating pure butter.

Delicious.

The Breakdancing breakdown: do the “Coffee Grinder”

So, hands up if you want to be a breakdancer? No, too busy busting a move all over those polished floorboards hey…

Apparently breakdancing is one of the four components of the hip-hop lifestyle – so says one of my friends when I asked what the difference between rap and hip-hop is. The answer “rap is something you do, hip-hop is a lifestyle”… the other two components (in addition to rap and breakdancing) were, from memory, graffiti and DJing… anyway… if the above shirt (one of my favourites) doesn’t do it for you, perhaps you’ll appreciate this list of breakdancing moves on wikipedia. Seriously. Hundreds of them.

Including:

Coffee Grinder/Helicopter: Go down on one bent leg standing on your toes with your hands on either side of your bent knee. Other leg is lying flat out on the floor beside you. Swing the leg that’s on the ground. To avoid being hit by your swing leg; you pick up your hands and put them back on the floor, then use them to pick the rest of your body up lifting it over your swing leg. Drop your body and repeat.”

Teaching life lessons by the power of embarrassment…

This guy didn’t do so well in an exam. So his mum dressed him up with a cardboard sheet that tells of his bad grades and says “honk if I need an education”… and now this is on YouTube. Way to go lady.

Hipster Bingo: For your next trip to your local Hipsterville

I’m not sure where the hipsters hang out in your part of the world. But in Brisbane they all like to play in West End. So, I’m up for heading down there with a handful of these cards. If you look closely the middle square has an asterisked out rude word. So language warning and all that…

 

The Simpsons intro in Real Life

This is a piece of art.

Come Home To The Simpsons from devilfish on Vimeo.

Return to Sender: Why do people keep trying to sell me cars via email?

There’s an NM Campbell out there somewhere who keeps trying to buy cars – and he’s getting annoyed that car dealers keep not emailing him. And then there’s this NM Campbell. Me. Who can’t figure out why car dealers from the US and the UK keep sending me quotes or newsletters. I got another one on Friday. From Medved Ford Lincoln Mercury. The salesperson in question is a Ms Carolyn Hammack-Clark. See her if you want to buy a car in Castlerock, CO.

Here’s the email I got.

So, here’s my response.

Dearest Carolyn,

It is such a long time since I have heard from you (I can only assume there aren’t too many Carolyn Hammack-Clarks running around). I am sorry we’ve lost touch. Do you remember that time we cavorted around the orchard in our pyjamas. Chasing rabbits. Oh, those were the days.

I live in Australia now, actually, I always have. So I’m not sure why I’m receiving emails from this car dealership and can only assume somebody signed up to your database with the wrong email address. You’d be surprised how often that actually happens.

However, it just so happens I am considering putting together an off-road truck race – and I’d be interested to know what sort of discounts you’d offer if I wanted to buy 16 of these trucks. I also want to convert them into amphibious vehicles.

The race I’d like to organise is on the bottom of the ocean – so they’ll need a pretty long snorkel, or perhaps some type of airhose with a flotation device fitted to the pipe to keep it somewhere where there is airflow so that the drivers can breathe. Did I mention that the drivers will be dwarves? They will be. I’m going to call my race the Snow White Cup. I believe in giving hope to the disadvantaged and downtrodden. And as a tall man I thought doing something for the vertically challenged would be a nice gesture.

Could I purchase these 16 amphibious utes customised in this manner – and with some sort of adjustable operations so that short people can both drive the trucks and see over the dashboard. I assume there’ll be some sort of discount if I’m buying a fleet.

Would you be interested in sponsoring the race? I think it will provide pretty good global exposure – because who doesn’t want to watch 16 dwarves driving trucks on the bottom of the ocean. I know I do.

The Medved Ford Lincoln-Mercury Castle Rock Snow White cup has a nice ring to it. Don’t you think.

Regards,

Nathan

Cookie Monster Cupcakes: These are a pile of awesome

These look amazing. And delicious. And if you make them for me I will love you forever (I’m looking squarely at my wife, but anybody else who wants my affection should also take note).

Here’s how to make them. And a video.

Is it time to do away with “church”?

I was sitting in church this morning wondering why there wasn’t anybody new there. Wondering why it is so hard to get people who aren’t just transfers from another church out the door on a Sunday morning and into the Christian community that goes on in often uncomfortable buildings with a bunch of weird counter-cultural trappings.

I’m wondering if we need a rethink. Not so much in the mechanics of what goes on around the globe on a Sunday morning – I think there’s a pretty Biblical picture of what Christians should do when they gather that most churches are trying to emulate. I’m thinking we need to rethinking our branding.

In the broader non visual identity context, your branding can be defined as “the reaction people have in their head when they think about your product” – it’s like a word association game. And I reckon say the word “church” to most Aussies and you’ll get something like “child abuse cover up”, “money hungry”, or in more positive cases “boring” or “conservative”… I’m guessing an invite to “church” on the weekend is likely to result in a negative response from most people’s friends. And lets face it, nobody wants to invite friends to church these days anyway. Any evangelism I do is more likely to take the form of apologetics with friends who are hostile to Jesus already, or conversations when people find out I’m studying at Bible College. This might be my failing, but I’m pretty sure most people aren’t inviting their friends to church every week. And because I think like a marketer one of my first responses is to question our branding strategy. If people are thinking bad things about church, but still, according to the Gruen Transfer, thinking good things about Jesus, then perhaps we need a change in terminology. It seems like a bandaid solution – but at some point a word just becomes too tainted by negative associations to reclaim.

The whole “marketing Jesus because people still love the idea of him” idea has it problems though. See what happens when people try to make Christianity cool in this article from the Weekend Australian.

“Jesus comes with a large production crew these days. If you doubt it, simply Google churches like Planetshakers, in Melbourne, or Paradise Community Church (Adelaide), or the grand-daddy of them all, Hillsong, which now boasts a global reach to cities like London, New York and Cape Town from its base in Sydney’s Hills district. (And if you don’t know what Google is, good luck understanding this phenomenon; like most of their peers, hip young Christians frame much of their day and establish much of their identity via the internet). Lined up beside each other, it is hard to ignore the similarities between the churches’ websites. From their home pages, each promotes a funky, urban feel with sophisticated graphics, high-quality video clips, stadium-style rock and pop music, and an emphasis on connection not just through Sunday services but an array of smaller social groups and through blogs, Facebook and Twitter.

Harder still is any attempt to locate the churches’ denomination on the traditional spectrum, such as that used by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. As it turns out, all of the churches named above belong to the Assemblies of God tradition, a Pentecostal group which renamed themselves the Australian Christian Churches in 2007. But if their websites are any indication, affiliation with an overarching denomination is far less important these days than cultivating your individual church identity – or brand.”

Now, unlike the Australian I don’t think Megachurches with ridiculously good looking pastor couples, are the answer (but if you want to plant one here’s my guide).

“Another striking finding was that a majority of all denominations agreed it was “OK to pick and choose your religious beliefs”. Among those Gen Yers who do identify as Christians, this openness about specific beliefs – what some critics would call moral relativism – might go some way to explaining the new fluidity around church attendance and the related reluctance to affiliate strictly with any particular church.

In the US, this trend has been tagged the “Love Jesus, Hate Church” syndrome; a disenchantment with old-style churches that lock followers into “us-versus-them” mentalities, both internally, in the form of ancient hierarchies dividing the clergy and laity, and externally, in sometimes bloody rifts with other Christian denominations. In Australia, it manifests among Christian Gen Y-ers as an overwhelming focus on one’s personal connection with Jesus Christ, with attendance at a bricks-and-mortar church seen as only one of many means of honouring that connection. Actual denominations are seen increasingly as irrelevant – if they are recognised at all.”

There’s some truth in this last paragraph, and we’d do well to rethink how we do church in the more conservative and reformed circles I move in. But the start of that quote is problematic. What we can’t do is sell out the truth, and our exclusive claims to truth, in order to be more palatable to the masses. I’ve written previously about a problem I have with only focusing on God’s love in our marketing (the John 3:16 as theme verse thing). That was one of the problems I had with the Jesus All About Life campaign, and it’s a possible problem with any “rebrand” of the Christian message – see the recent hoo-ha about Rob Bell’s decision to sell out hell in the name of a palatable gospel (though read Arthur’s post about how it may not be a good idea to jump in and judge this before Bell’s book actually comes out)

So I reckon the language of church needs to change (and the way we do church, but that’s something I need to think about more, the Total Church model is one idea, this Messy Church concept is something I heard about during the week that also piqued my curiosity). Both of these models clearly have problems. Baby and bathwater problems. But there are some core concepts to them that are good. Ultimately we want people to meet Jesus and have their lives radically transformed. It seems to me that calling what we do “church” may increasingly become a barrier to that. So I vote we change it.

But what to call it? At QTC we’re big on the notion of “family of God” as the basis for our ecclesiology. But that sounds a little bit like a cult. I like the word “community” – but that’s because I’m currently thinking that one connecting point between the church and our culture is creating (or recreating) community for people living in an increasingly individualised society. What do you reckon? Am I barking up the wrong tree? What’s the point of staying attached to a word that etymologically comes from the Greek “House of the Lord” anyway? Gathering, or community, is more biblical.