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.
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.
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.
Mark Driscoll on Video Games: Not sinful, but stupid
Mark Driscoll doesn’t like nerds or geeks (neither do Westboro Baptist). He regularly bags out bloggers, now he’s having a dig at people who play video games. Watch from about 1:47 in this video… or just read this post on the Mars Hill blog.
“Video games are not sinful, they’re just stupid. And they’re stupid in this way: Young, particularly men, and now women are joining it, they want to get on a team, be part of a kingdom, conquer a foe, and win a great, epic battle. So they do it with their thumbs and it doesn’t even count. Nobody’s really liberated. The Taliban is not really conquered. Women are not really freed from oppression. Generations are not really changed. It’s all fake. It doesn’t count.”
No. It doesn’t count. Only the particularly deluded think games = real life. But games are entertainment, and like all culture and art, they are an avenue to connect with other people. You know. The type of thing you often encourage your followers to do when they’re engaging with culture.
In the first video, and the text in that first blog entry, Driscoll strawmans anybody who plays games – because we’re all motivated by wanting to fight a battle. That isn’t real. And doesn’t count. It’s just an odd little rant coming from a guy who at this point seems to be letting his prejudices against the nerdy types of people who sit in their mum’s basements and bag him out on their blogs cloud his judgment. It seems a little bit like he’s missing the whole fiction/non-fiction divide again a little (as he did with Twilight and Avatar).
Here’s what he said in an earlier post on the Resurgence blog about his approach to culture:
“What I’ve found over the years is that whenever I speak about something culturally related from a Christian perspective, a debate rages. This has been the case since the earliest days of my ministry. This is because I consider myself a missionary in culture. When we started our church we did so in what was among the least churched cities in the nation, seeking to reach the least churched demographic—young, educated, single, urban men. The truth is, these kinds of young men are generally missing from the American church. One thing these men of all races are doing is listening to rap music.”
Now, I want to know what the difference is, in his mind, between games and music – so far as looking to engage in the subculture in a missional way. I don’t get it. If it’s about escapism – then why is he ok with watching movies and television. And he is ok with watching movies and television. I assume he’s also ok with reading novels.
Games are interactive stories. They are movies that the gamer takes part in, novels that the gamer helps write, entertainment that is active rather than passive, and increasingly they are art (though Roger Ebert doesn’t think so) and social commentary. Like music. Like movies. They’re culture. They’re not stupid, or sinful. But, like anything, the way people use them can be. And like anything, there are always a bunch of Christians looking to Christianise (or, to use one of Driscoll’s Rs, Redeem) this stream of culture. Though this one is satire:
Here’s a post linking to a good essay on the subject of games as art that I put up a while ago, here’s the one that Call of Duty image was originally featured in, here’s a couple of posts about Christian games: post 1, post 2…
Now, excuse me while I go to shoot some Mexican bandits on Red Dead Redemption.
My Life in Albums: The Early Years
I was born BCB. That is Before Colin Buchanan. So I was raised on a diet of ABC for kids music. This meant Don Spencer, Peter Combe, and those CDs that came out numbered. They had the timetables songs and stuff like the song about the boys who put the powder on the noses of the ladies of the harem of the court of King Caractacus.
Here are some YouTube trips down memory lane…
Apparently Peter Combe now plays pub gigs for people who grew up listening to his music.
Then there was Don Spencer, now Russell Crowe’s father-in-law.
Oh, and who could forget Joe Dolce’s On Top of Spaghetti
And Ross Higgin’s Monster Mash.
I did eventually grow up. And, perhaps more important were my trips to mum and dad’s CD shelf. I grew up with Paul Simon. I’d play Graceland whenever I could, and I have pretty early memories of the lyrics to Simon and Garfunkel’s The Boxer running around in my head. And Dire Straits Brothers in Arms album was another favourite.
But, perhaps the longest lasting musical memory, is the Motorcycle Song, by Arlo Guthrie (from his Best Of).
My Life in Albums: Introduction
I was cleaning up my iTunes yesterday, getting rid of duplicates and rubbish that I downloaded back in the heady days of Napster. Monty Python sketches are better on YouTube anyway. Especially performed by 419 scammers who have been scambaited.
Like this one.
Anyway. I digress. I was feeling a little nostalgic as I deleted dross and re-listened to some tunes I hadn’t listened to for a long time. So I undertook a little exercise. I tried to match an album to every year of my life. It wasn’t necessarily limited to an album released that year. It was more about finding an album that defines my memory of a year. It wasn’t even necessarily an album I owned. In one many cases in the early years I picked albums belonging to my parents (some I have since either pinched from them or purchased) It was fun. Sometimes I couldn’t split a couple of options. Here’s my list. I’m going to turn these into a bit of a series of posts. Because I can. Feel free to join in – comment with your musical memories.
The early years
- ABC for Kids, numbered albums
- Peter Combe, Toffee Apple (I think, I might be guessing here)
- Don Spencer, Feathers, Fur or Fins
- Dire Straits, Brothers in Arms
- Paul Simon, Graceland
- The Proclaimers, Sunshine on Leith
- Arlo Guthrie, The Best Of
- Tommy Emmanuel, The Journey Continues
- Jennie Flack’s Mugwumps and Snookles (though the more I look at her discography the more I think we had some sort of bootleg hybrid of her tapes, and Bullfrogs and Butterflies
Year by year
- 1997 – Backstreet’s Back – The Backstreet Boys, Hanson – Middle of Nowhere
- 1998 – The Living End – Self Titled
- 1999 – Powderfinger – Internationalist, The Whitlams – Eternal Nightcap
- 2000 – The Smashing Pumpkins – Siamese Dream, Custard – The Best of
- 2001 – Dandy Warhols – Thirteen Tales from Urban Bohemia
- 2002 – Muse – Showbiz, Weezer – The Blue Album, Radiohead – OK Computer
- 2003 – Muse – Absolution, Placebo – Sleeping with Ghosts
- 2004 – Radiohead – Hail to the Thief, Eskimo Joe – a song is a city
- 2005 – The Killers – Hot Fuss, Death Cab for Cutie – Plans
- 2006 – Gomez – How we operate
- 2007 – Gotye – Like Drawing Blood, The Panics – Cruel Guards, Spoon – Ga Ga Ga Ga
- 2008 – Athlete – Beyond the Neighbourhood, Architecture in Helsinki – Places Like This
- 2009 – Mumford and Sons – Sigh No More
- 2010 – Whitley – Go Forth, Find Mammon
What would happen if Billy Joel approached music production like Radiohead
It might sound a little bit like this…
All the tracks from disk one of the Essential Billy Joel, played at once. I managed about a minute.
The changing face of Internet News
Sad, but true.
There’s a rude word that I redacted – you can see the original here if that floats your boat.
I’d add that if you’re a really popular news site, particularly in Australia, your front page is likely to feature salacious yarns about celebrities and their private lives, and a smattering of cleavage (or news reports from “fashion shows”). The SMH homepage currently features the word sex 11 times. News.com.au seven times. theage.com.au eight times. Brisbanetimes.com.au nine times. Crazy.
Chicken Egg? Or egg chicken? That is the question
I like this egg chicken by a guy named Kyle Bean – he called it “What Came First“… for obvious reasons.
For some reason I like the making of picture almost as much as the chicken itself.
I like these vegebodies too. Check them out.
Charlie Sheen’s Tweets New Yorker Style
First it was Kanye’s outrageous and outlandish claims, brought to the world via Twitter, that received the New Yorker treatment. Not it’s Charlie’s turn.
Via Buzzfeed (some rudity at the link).
Shirt of the Day: Dance like Thom Yorke
Have you seen the film clip for the new Radiohead song Lotus Flower. No? Oh well. Watch it below, then check out this awesome shirt.
David Cook’s top 10 tips for preaching
David Cook is the outgoing (and departing) principal at SMBC (Sydney Missionary and Bible College). He’s here today at QTC (Queensland Theological College) sharing his top ten tips for preaching (and other stuff).
Tip one: Learn to shake hands and greet somebody. By the name they give. If they give a surname go with Mr or Mrs. Use names. Don’t just say “hello”… the sound of one’s name is the “sweetest sound in the whole world”…
But that isn’t about preaching.
- Have a clear big question – avoids the knowledge dump. Why should I listen to you? Because you have a good answer to a good question. Great questions are answered by the passage and are marketable. You need to show how the text answers that question and why that answer is important to the listener. Every time I get up I answer a question. Opening with “last week we looked at” isn’t really helpful. It is an intro to a knowledge dump. Why do I need to hear this? That’s the question we should open with.
- Stress the indicative before you stress the imperative – Liberalism imposes the imperative – it tells you what you should do. And often it’s wrong. The “distinctive difference” between liberalism and Biblical Christianity is that the latter begins with the triumphant indicative – on the basis of what God has done, this is what you do. We need both the indicative and the imperative or we either lean towards license of liberalism. The Bible uses the indicative first. Romans, up to chapter 6, is indicative, indicative, indicative. The first imperative is ch 6:11. The Qu’ran opens with the imperative. This is the distinctive difference between Christianity and every other religion. This is our point of difference. The triumphant indicative. The Catholics have blended the two in an untrustworthy manner. Get the indicative first. Followed by the imperative. Not just what I’ve got to do, but why… knowledge of the verbal moods in Greek is absolutely vital. Be able to identify the imperative verbs. Taste of God through the gospel of God’s grace before you move to our response.
- Make the heart of your sermon explanation, not illustration/application – the text has the power. Not your illustration. Better the textual and dull preacher than the interesting but not textual. Better to be both. Don’t rush to illustration before you’ve preceded it with explanation.
- Work on your angle – tell me something I don’t know. Don’t just bounce superficially off the text. You must work off the angle of the text, and tell me something I don’t know. What’s the point otherwise? What is my angle here? How can I preach on something you know backwards that gives you a new slant on something? Anticipate the questions people are asking about the text.
- The art of preaching is the art of summary – Learn to summarise. You are not saying everything the passage says. You are saying less than the whole. You are making a judgment about what not to say and what to say. The other cardinal rule is that the summary does not interpret. We aren’t interested in what you think – just tell us what is says. Get to the author’s mind – not your take.
- Cultivate a close reading of the text – show respect to the text. Avoid humourous populism. Don’t go for the laugh. Get people watching the text. Closely. Use the original languages to check for puns, rudeness, wordplay – figure out what’s going on in the text. And communicate it. Bring passages to life by picking up the little details when they drive your text. Observe. It is there. It is there for a reason.
- Don’t be negative – why put barriers in the way. Don’t attack the other guys. Don’t be negative. Be winsome and persuasive. Know what you’re talking about – what is good about x that makes people so loyal to it. Think about the way you sound, and whether you’re looking angry or smiling. Don’t attack, provide a positive alternative. Use simple words and propositions. Repeat them again and again and again. Read good books about persuasion. Don’t confront. Just talk in a winsome way. “The Gentle Art of Persuasion” is a good book. How to win friends and influence people is another one.What is my point? What am I trying to achieve. It is a foolish advocate who insults the person who is there to try the case.
- Work hard at the sermons you pay least attention to – the occasional sermons (funerals, weddings, Christmas, Easter, children’s talks etc). These are the sermons that people who aren’t members of the congregation come to. Why do you go easy on the occasional sermons while working hard on the inside sermons. Don’t just preach a stock ball sermon for funerals and weddings. Every person is unique. Prepare a fresh sermon for each person. Don’t let people die alone, that’s not your job as the pastor of your flock. The elderly and disabled are victims of the church planting movement. We’ve discriminated against the people who need us the most. Work really hard at using the children’s talk as a free hit – a chance to summarise your talk in a new way for a new audience to clarify your thinking, teach the children, and engage the adults.
- Be Clear – You’re not writing an essay. Don’t preach your footnotes. You are writing a sermon. In a sermon you will illustrate. Repeat. Emphasise. You are turning ears into eyes. You are striving to be clear. Don’t just say one thing. Say it again. And again. And again.
- Preach Christ. Preach Grace. Preach Faith. Preach encouragingly.
The relationship between the Big Question, the Big Idea and the Big Answer
Big Question -> Big Idea -> Big answer
Use the subject and the compliment – what is he talking about? What is he saying about that?
Turn the big idea into a big question.
The easiest answer for a preacher to give is to the “how” question – but “why” is much more important if you don’t want to breed superficiality. How to questions are good, but shallow.
John 3:16 case study
The subject looks like God (use the first and the last words) – but almost every passage is about God – so lets go with Eternal Life.
The Big Idea: Eternal life comes through Jesus, God’s gift of love.
Big questions: How can I have eternal life? Is death the end? What will happen when you die?
Format of a sermon
State the truth of the passage -> explain the passage -> illustrate the passage -> apply the passage.
If you illustrate first it’ll be without power. Explain first.
The Pyramid
At the bottom level you are summarising with verse references.
At the next level you are looking at the movements in the passage. Which determine the structure of the sermon.
Next. The dominant picture (from On teaching and preaching with creativity – “the human brain is a picture gallery, not a debating hall”).
Subject and compliment.
The Big Idea.
The tip is the Big Question.
Five Keys to Clarity
- Isolate the dominant thoughts of the text.
- Structure your material. Don’t hide your structure. Build your sermon around structure. You’re communicating. Don’t be scared of communicating. Use stuff like alliteration and things people will remember.
- Don’t use too many quotes. Who cares what John Stott or Don Carson say. This is not an essay. If they’ve said it, it’s probably not original to them – so just say it. Don’t always quote people. Only quote if you can memorise the quote and if the person who said something is particularly relevant or significant to the quote. Ideas are there to be used. Sometimes you can add weight to a quote. But too much quoting is bad.
- Be dialogical. Dialogical preaching is very, very important. Have a dialogue. Anticipate questions, and answer them. “Do I hear some of you say” “But Billy, you say…” do it in the form of a conversation.
- If you are going to be clear. Watch your vocabulary and grammar. The plural of you is you. Saying youse is not ok. Really. In any context. You don’t want your kids hearing people saying “youse”… sweat the details. Work hard on your grammar and your vocab. Play by the house rules. Dress for the host. Use their version of the Bible.
Tetris: The Boardgame
I love Tetris. I don’t love boardgames (when I went on camps as a young, single, Christian male I used free time to talk to girls not to hit the cardboard square). But perhaps I’ll change my mind. Because this actually looks kind of fun. A bit like Connect 4. But with greater degrees of difficulty…
Via pocket-lint.
Question for bloggers (and blog readers)
At what point in the process of meeting new people do you drop the “I have a blog” or “I’m a blogger” bombshell? Obviously we all blog for attention. Right.
I’m a little self-conscious these days because sometimes people talk to me about my blog(s), in front of people I’ve just met, or people who don’t know I blog, and those people respond in one of a few ways, none good, some will say “why didn’t you tell me you had a blog” or “I can’t believe you have a blog. You nerdo loser”… or then I just feel the need to go into sales pitch mode about why people should read my blog, or some sort of justification about why I blog, or that falsely humble “oh that old thing…” Although, like in the parable of the sower (awesome analogy for blogging) there are some people who become regular readers, who even comment some times, and I like that.
And if I just casually mention my blog(s), in conversation (usually in the form of “did you see on my blog” to somebody I know reads it, or “you should see this awesome thing I found and posted on my blog” to somebody I want to read it) in front of somebody who knows I have a blog and falls into that latter category (the “you nerdo loser” one) then they mock more.
Bloggers: how do you navigate those heady waters? Non-bloggers: how much do you want bloggers talking about their blogs in the real world? We all want people to read what we write right? And we all want to read interesting stuff online right? Why can’t we all just get along.
Bonsai Comic Book
Ben asked. So here I am. Delivering. Ever his servant. If you want to know what Ben’s ideal blog would look like read this post. If you want to be on Ben’s ideal blog (well, I’m at least halfway there) stay on this ‘ere blog and let me be your guide to wonders of the internet. Wonders like this comic book. That you plant. In the ground. And get a tree.
I’m not sure if it’s a tree suitable for bonsaing. Bonsai-ing? Turning into a bonsai. But it is a tree. So that’s a start.
UPDATE: I read the page this comes from again – and it turns out it grows herbs. Not trees. So no bonsai for Ben. I’ll keep trying.
Hollywood is a remix, and how that changes my thinking on preaching
This year Hollywood studios aren’t being very adventurous with the type of movies they make. They, like all other forms of art, are relying on the remix.
“With that in mind, let’s look ahead to what’s on the menu for this year: four adaptations of comic books. One prequel to an adaptation of a comic book. One sequel to a sequel to a movie based on a toy. One sequel to a sequel to a sequel to a movie based on an amusement-park ride. One prequel to a remake. Two sequels to cartoons. One sequel to a comedy. An adaptation of a children’s book. An adaptation of a Saturday-morning cartoon. One sequel with a 4 in the title. Two sequels with a 5 in the title. One sequel that, if it were inclined to use numbers, would have to have a 7 1/2 in the title.”
Which, if you think about it, should provide some encouragement to preachers who just want to point people to Jesus every week. We seem to enjoy the same stories. Retold. But with bigger explosions. Next time I preach I’m taking some dynamite to church.
“But for now, let’s just admit it: Hollywood has become an institution that is more interested in launching the next rubberized action figure than in making the next interesting movie.
Which is why my church will one day need to offer these plastic Jesus toys to raise revenue. Because there’s lots we can appropriate from Hollywood.