Category: Christianity

What is a “Christian” response to Australia’s foreign aid cuts?

Lets face it. I probably wouldn’t have voted for Labor at the next election anyway. Like millions of other Australians, I’m feeling completely disenfranchised by the major parties in Australian politics.

While part of this is because neither side is particularly likeable – and that goes double for the leaders of the parties. Another part of the problem driving my political apathy is that I don’t think it makes a huge difference who is in power in Australia.

Both major parties are essentially centrist. Both parties have pretty sound credentials. And while extremist pundits on either side of the spectrum want to run around saying that the sky is going to fall in if the other party gets/stays in power – it’s simply not true.

We’ve got it pretty good in Australia. Ridiculously good. Our first world conditions are improving. Yesterday’s luxuries are necessities, tomorrows luxuries are becoming necessary quicker than ever before. So complaining about the political scene in Australia where neither major party is out to oppress a minority, or start a war, is pretty much the epitome of a #firstworldproblem.

Because we’re a first world country there are many people – myself included – who think that the decent, and necessary, thing to do is to provide aid to developing countries to help raise the standard of living and save lives across the globe.

This is, if you’re not into altruism, good foreign policy. More stable countries around the globe means less wars, less refugees, less poverty. To channel Toby Ziegler’s “free trade stops wars” argument – we’re better off and more secure when other countries are better off and more secure.

The Labor party has been accused of back-pedalling away from their surplus promise faster than an off balance unicyclist. But at some point, a promise isn’t worth keeping. If the promise shouldn’t have been made in the first place. Sometimes you’ve just got to wear changing circumstances on the chin. Sometimes you’ve got to admit you were wrong – with a flat out mea culpa, a “deficit we had to have” speech, or an explanation that while economic times have changed, and while a surplus was the government’s best intention, certain other social and moral obligations have to be kept… any of these things is a better than the alternative the Australian Labor government has settled on.

How many foreign lives need to be cut short so that Labor gets its $1 surplus? What is it worth to gain that surplus, but forfeit our nation’s soul in the process.

Here’s what’s happening. Labor is cooking the books a little, to allocate $375 million of foreign aid spending to Australia’s refugee program. Ben Thurley, from the Micah Challenge, says this is allowable under Australia’s aid obligations.

He says:

“The Foreign Minister says this isn’t a cut to foreign aid, and in a strict sense he is right. Under Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) rules (pdf), governments are allowed to report the first 12 months of in-country support costs for refugees – the official term for “aid”. The Foreign Minister even points to three donor countries who claim more refugee assistance as aid than Australia is reportedly planning to claim, the US ($895 million in 2010), France ($435 million in 2010) and Sweden ($397 million in 2010).”

While it might not “strictly” be the case, it’s pretty clear what the government’s intentions are – a member of their own back bench is speaking out against taking the politically expedient route to a surplus.

This aid saves lives. It improves the status quo in measurable ways. Here are some stats from World Vision, via the Micah Challenge again:

World Vision has estimated that in the last year alone Australian aid money saved at least 200,000 lives, provided education for more than half a million children and gave disaster assistance to more than 10 million people. It is these outcomes that are threatened by this plan.

Aid works. It’s not enough to throw this burden to Christian charities, and support them with your dollars – the same charities, who have people at the coal face in these countries, are calling for the government to be more generous, not less. Compassion has this useful mythbusting post on the benefits of foreign aid.

TEAR Australia is also speaking out against the proposed changes.

They’re calling people to take action – and providing some tips and easy(ish) ways to do it.

Tim Costello, World Vision CEO, wrote this piece in The Age, summing up the situation nicely in terms of how the Australian public at large should respond…

“They know that funds designated for poor communities beyond our shores should not be plundered to support the government’s own political interests. Australians will rightly view this decision as a sleight of hand, not least because it is driven by a desperate political imperative to reach a budget surplus.”

Both he, and the Micah Challenge, point out that there’s a bit of a mystery in terms of what programs are going to lose funding via this move.

Each of these groups is a Christian aid group. Doing good work in less fortunate countries, in the name of Jesus. And making a difference. You suspect if they could do the job without government aid, they wouldn’t be all that concerned about the cuts. But concerned they are.

The Australian Christian Lobby has also issued a statement – calling for the government to rethink.

“The government certainly has an obligation to fulfil its commitment to asylum- seekers and refugees in Australia but to do this at the expense of poverty-stricken communities overseas is unfair,” he said.

He said it’s the second time this year the government has not followed through on its commitment to foreign aid.

“In May the government announced it would delay increasing aid spending to 0.5 per cent of GNI by 2015,” he said.

“Australia’s current commitment stands at 0.35 per cent of GNI – well short of what is needed to eradicate poverty and help developing nations implement poverty-reducing policies,” he said.”

Should Christians respond to these cuts?

Evangelical Christians have been rightly scared by the “social justice” or “social gospel” movement – a product of the approach to mission adopted by the ecumenical movement in the mid-to-late 20th century. Basically people from a bunch of different Christian traditions got together – and because they couldn’t agree on what the gospel was, decided to focus on what they could agree on – looking after the poor. So they saw gospel work, God’s mission, as work on social transformation, the liberation of the poor and oppressed. That’s a little simplistic – there was also a group who genuinely think looking after the poor is all we’re cared to do, with a mantra that goes something like “preach the gospel always, never with words,” it seems they collapse these verses from Luke 4 into just the bits I’ve bolded:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
¹⁹ to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Evangelicals – and I’m one of them – are right to emphasise that part of the church’s role – the defining part – is to proclaim the good news. That’s how poor people, and all of us, are truly liberated.

But as is the case with most correctives – the pendulum has swung to the point where evangelicals now don’t want to touch anything that looks like social justice. Preferring “just to do gospel work.” I read a tweet just yesterday that basically wrote the whole movement off.

This is silly. How can we claim to love people if we aren’t seen to be loving them. This, again, is where ethos – our character, how we live, has to form part of how we communicate our message. We love people because God loved us. But if we want to be loving people by sharing the gospel, part of that means living in a way that makes it clear that we believe our message. That it shapes and excites us.

Social justice – provided it is performed by Christians, operating as Christians, is gospel work. It underpins proclamation. Social justice without this intent is still good work.

Social justice is there, as an imperative, for the people of God, in both the Old and New Testament.

The Micah Challenge, for example, takes its name from a cracker of a Bible verse – from Micah 6:8.

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.

Which, coupled with a little bit of James 1:27…

“²⁷Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”

Jesus says looking after the poor is a sign that we belong to him… in Matthew 25.

³⁴“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. ³⁵For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, ³⁶I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

³⁷“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? ³⁸When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? ³⁹When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

⁴⁰“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

Looking after the poor is part of how Christians serve our king.

How should Christians respond to these cuts

If the charities who look after the poor around the globe – in the name of Jesus – are saying that foreign aid is necessary for making change, saving lives, and caring for people, and if caring for people is something that we’re called to do, then it follows that we, as Christians, should do what we can to see that aid continue… doesn’t it?

But what should we do? As Christians?

Pray. Definitely.

Give. Absolutely. The charities mentioned above do great work, in different and creative ways. So by all means – give directly to these charities. But they’re saying that’s not enough. The small government libertarian in me wishes this was an issue that could be solved without government intervention. By individuals. And there are plenty of generous individuals out there. But it’s not a level playing field – and libertarianism needs a situation where people are treated as equals, and where opportunities are essentially equal across the board – and that’s not the situation here.

Speak out. This isn’t just about awareness raising. This is about participating in a democracy. As Christians, but also as citizens. This is a political decision. The charities I’ve mentioned above have pretty much unanimously suggested that we respond by contacting our local federal members, and the leaders of each major party – which is as simple as googling their name and sending an email.

I think this is a good idea.

I realise I’m turning into a complete lefty at times – which is weird. I’ve only ever voted conservative. But I like to think that there are certain political issues that transcend a really arbitrary political spectrum that has been imposed on us through lack of choice, and the political reality of a two party system. So much complexity gets lost in that pursuit of political simplicity.

I’m hesitant to push hard and fast political conclusions here – but a truly Christian response is shaped by Jesus – who sacrificially gave himself up for those who follow him, out of love. At great cost. We’re called to imitate him. He calls us to love the poor. If the best way to love the poor, around the world, is to encourage the government to spend money on doing that – then we should. Right? You may think there are better ways to do it – and I’m more than open to suggestions. Perhaps these charities are unanimously wrong.

But I think Tim Costello’s right – the public knows this is a politically expedient move to save a stupidly promised surplus – so I wonder if a bit of public pressure, in the media, is called for. So don’t just send your email to your MP, send it as a letter to the editor of your paper, call a talk back radio station when this topic comes up. And if you’re in a situation where you can send a media release, on behalf of a Christian organisation – do that.

Here’s a brief sample. To finish. It covers the bits I’ll be including in my own emails to local members and party leaders. But this sort of thing works best if people are putting their own thoughts into their own words.

I really like something that a very wise friend of mine said on this front recently – he said it’s a real shame that Christians have a reputation for being conservative when it comes to this sort of political or social issue – it’d be great if we could be seen to be progressive.

Church X calls for government to increase, not slash, foreign aid commitment

Church X is dismayed by recent reports that the Federal Government is looking to slash foreign aid spending by $375 million to fund refugee care and in a bid to deliver a surplus.

Church X recognises that economic times are tough both domestically, and internationally, and suggests that wealthy countries like Australia should see this as an opportunity to generously invest, and increase foreign aid.

Church X spokesperson X said that while foreign aid is a smart investment in global stability, it also saves lives.

“We believe in the sovereignty of nations, but we also believe that God has generously provided our nation with wealth, and that this wealth presents an opportunity for Australia to be generous to fellow humans around the world.”

“We are dismayed that the government is looking to cut aid when it is needed most. Times of economic instability are precisely the times when wealthy countries should be concerned about the poorest of the poor.”

“We believe that all human lives are of equal value, because all humans are made in the image of God, and that if it is in our power to save lives – and if this is something our nation is obliged to do – we should be using the resources God has provided our nation to be generous to others.”

“As Christians we believe the ultimate display of generosity has been offered to all of us, through the death of Jesus, on the cross, in our place. This sort of sacrifice for others is the model we seek to follow, and a model that has led to significant social transformation in the last two thousand years.”

“Australian charities, with workers on the ground in those countries Australia’s aid benefits say that foreign aid is essential for saving lives. Our charities do great work. But it’s not enough.”

“On this basis, Church X is calling on the Federal Government, and our local member NAME, to increase Australia’s commitment to foreign aid to a level that makes Australia the most generous nation in the world, not decrease our aid spend in pursuit of a politically expedient headline, or a victory in a weekly news cycle.”

ENDS

December 19, 2012

Anonymous v Westboro: Unappointed arbiters, justice, and the dangers of repaying evil with evil

In the past, Anonymous, the anonymous group of hacktivists, were reportedly set to lock horns with Westboro Baptist – the hatemongering group who protest at the funerals of dead soldiers and the victims of tragedy, shout slogans outside concerts around the US, and target other churches. They also recently appeared on Russell Brand’s TV talk show.

The problem with being an anonymous group is that you’re pretty easy to imitate, and the group initially denied targeting Westboro – but claimed they were watching, and then hacked their website for the lols.

Now. Anonymous is getting serious.

After Westboro announced they were going to picket the funerals of the victims of the Newtown school shooting (note – not a particularly Christian response to tragedy), Anonymous acted. Circulating contact details for the members of the church around the internet, and posting this ominous video on the Westboro website.

Just be warned – there’s a pretty shocking high pitched noise at the end of the speaking, that might make you jump.

Anonymous – Message To The Westboro Baptist Church from @kyanonymous on Vimeo.

Here’s a snippet of the script – which you can find in full on the Vimeo page.

“Your pseudo-faith is abhorrent, and your leaders, repugnant. Your impact and cause is hazardous to the lives of millions and you fail to see the wrong in promoting the deaths of innocent people. You are self-appointed servants of God who rewrite the words of His sacred scripture to adhere to your prejudice. Your hatred supersedes your faith, and you use faith to promote your hatred.

Since your one-dimensional thought protocol will conform not to any modern logic, we will not debate, argue, or attempt to reason with you. Instead, we have unanimously deemed your organization to be harmful to the population of The United States of America, and have therefore decided to execute an agenda of action which will progressively dismantle your institution of deceitful pretext and extreme bias, and cease when your zealotry runs dry. We recognize you as serious opponents, and do not expect our campaign to terminate in a short period of time. Attrition is our weapon, and we will waste no time, money, effort, and enjoyment, in tearing your resolve into pieces, as with exposing the incongruity of your distorted faith.”

Anonymous may or may not have orchestrated this petition to have Westboro’s tax exempt status withdrawn by declaring them a hate group (perhaps a more useful petition than the bid to build a death star). That petition has passed the threshold required for a response from the White House.

Part of me really wants Anonymous to succeed. I love the idea of hacktivism, especially when it’s directed at such an insidious group who do real harm to people, and to the gospel of Jesus.

It’d be nice to have the power to do something when tragedy strikes. When there’s someone who is clearly in the wrong – be they directly involved, or a parasitic third party.

But another part of me worries about a society where censorship is dictated either by the consensus of the majority, or the activism of a powerful, and hidden, minority.

It presents another dilemma – given that Anonymous is anonymous – and completely not accountable to anybody but themselves – unlike duly elected representatives of the state – this classic dilemma, is expressed in this manner in Latin:

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Or “who watches the watchmen?”

Who watches those who appoint themselves as gatekeepers for society? The moral arbiters? Especially if they’re vindictive, and have something that approaches unlimited power to wreak carnage.

The society anonymous seeks to prevent, at least if it’s really channeling V for Vendetta – which the Guy Fawkes mask they own as their own would suggest, is a totalitarian society driven by tyranny, where opposing views are silenced.

There’s something disturbing and ironic about Anonymous appointing themselves as the totalitarian regime, potentially enabling lynch mobs through the publication of contact details of a widely hated group.

There’s a tension here. Words have consequences, and speech is never really free. There’s a problem when “free speech” means you can say anything to harm anybody without the fear of consequences. But there’s an obvious problem, too, with preventing people from speaking because you disagree with what they’re saying.

I hate what Westboro do. I hate that they stand outside funerals and compound the grief of the grieving. I hate that they claim to do it in the name of Jesus. But I’m not called to hate the individuals who make up Westboro. I’m called to love them. I’m not called to silence them. I’m called to speak truth to them. With love.

There should be consequences for Westboro’s hate speech. And they shouldn’t be allowed to say what they want to say wherever they want to say it (namely, outside funerals). But if they want to preach their abominable gospel from their abominable pulpit, and from their website – then they should be free to do it. We get into dangerous territory if people can silence views they disagree with, rather than simply having equal opportunity to speak against them, and let the market decide.

But the Anonymous campaign goes further than that – it aims to silence the group.

They say:

We will not allow you to corrupt the minds of America with your seeds of hatred. We will not allow you to inspire aggression to the social factions which you deem inferior. We will render you obsolete. We will destroy you. We are coming.

Everyone is equal.

They mean everyone is equal – except Westboro. It’s all very animal farm – and they’re the pigs. Again, a subversion of anti-totalitarian literature…

There’s a little bit of recent form for this – Anonymous also targeted the advertisers who were prepared to continue advertising with 2Day FM after the recent tragic outcome of a prank call. Blaming the network for the unfortunate, and unforeseeable, outcome of the broadcast. YouTube has canned the video – but you can still see it at The Australian (you may need to google it to get behind the paywall).

“We have studied the facts and found you guilty of murder. You have placed yourself in an untenable position. You have placed your advertisers at risk – their databases, their websites, their online advertising.

We are Anonymous and hereby demand you terminate the contracts of Mel Greig and Michael Christian. We will not listen to any more excuses. We will not let you escape your responsibility. You have a funeral to pay for. We are Anonymous. We are legion. We are amongst you. Expect us. This is not a prank call; this is no laughing matter. This is your one and only chance to make amends. You have one week to do so.”

They’re Judge. Jury. Executioner. Pretty totalitarian – the separation of powers is one of the checks and balances modern democracies use to prevent something of the situation we’ve seen in the past.

Westboro’s idiocy, their evil, their hate – it doesn’t dehumanise them. It just makes them stupid, evil, hatemongers.

My inner idealist would just like to see people continue to be able to sustain the distinction between Westboro and the rest of the people in the world who call themselves Christians, without the need to even talk about them when they do stupid stuff. But their hateful message is powerful because people are always on the look out for an other to hate, and a cause to belong to. We have skinheads. Gangs. Anonymous web terrorists.

I can’t help but think that a much better – particularly if you’re a Christian – response to Westboro (and to Anonymous) is to respond with unexpected love, bizarrely – this is just what Russell Brand did. And what Mars Hill did when Westboro came knocking at their church doors.

Doing this properly requires two things of us.

First, we’ve got to believe that there’s a just God waiting at the end of time to punish wrong doings, and judge justly. The sins of Westboro will not go unpunished. No wrongdoing will.

And this takes the need for us to act as judge, jury, and executioner out of our hands. Leaving us to love. Romans 12 says it best:

¹⁷Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. ¹⁸If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. ¹⁹Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. ²⁰On the contrary:

“If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”

²¹Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

That’s the first bit – and already it takes some of the wind out of the sails of the Anonymous campaign (and it’s something Westboro should be taking note of too – but they’re not particularly adept at reading the Bible).

The second factor, perhaps more important. Is to remember that not only are we Anonymous – wanting to run things our way. To decide right and wrong for ourselves, and judge others by our standards. We are Westboro. We are the radio DJs whose poor judgment spiralled out of control. We are sinners. We are subject – by right – of judgment, by a perfect juror, and the execution that comes as a consequence.

Only, if you’re a Christian, Jesus took that judgment for you. Who are you to judge, if this is the case. The (potentially apocryphal) story of the woman at the well is a story worth heeding at this point, from John 8.

³The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group ⁴and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. ⁵In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” ⁶They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.

But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. ⁷When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” ⁸Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.

⁹At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. ¹⁰Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”

¹¹“No one, sir,” she said.

“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”

At this point Anonymous finds themselves in the dangerous position of being the Pharisees – those opposed to Jesus – who miss the spirit of the law, and the true nature of humanity – rather than the righteous. They’re not claiming to be Christians – but they are claiming to be the righteous judges who serve a higher calling than mere mortals.

But what do I claim? What can I claim?

I am Fred Phelps. I am a hater. I am a sinner. My heart is a factory of pride, and my pride always comes at the expense of others. I need Jesus to step in for me. How can I do anything but offer love and grace to other sinners?

That’s the most worrying thing about Anonymous taking control – not only did we not choose them as the moral police, not only do they lack any of the accountability required stand in judgment over other sinners, they seem unprepared to treat those they oppose as humans. With love.

December 18, 2012

Book Review: Outspoken: Conversations on Church Communication

Church Communication is something I’m pretty keen on. So a book on Church Communication, with contributors from churches all around the world, is something I’m also pretty keen on.

Enter Outspoken: Conversations on Church Communication a nice little primer on church communications in the digital age.

What I liked about this book is how digestible the chunks are. Each chapter is an idea. A page or two – basically a blog post. From a different person. Each chapter ends with contact details for that person. It’s very conversational. It’s a nice format – and this is, increasingly, the way this sort of “how to” book is going to work, I think.

I loved that each contributor is passionate about seeing the church communicate its message well, and in a way that removes barriers for people while finding new opportunities. There’s much to like here. And not much to dislike. You should get a copy.

Some chapters resonated more with me than others, each is the product of a time, place, and culture, a little bit removed from the here and now. But it’s possible to mind that gap and get something from just about everybody who contributed.

Here are some of my favourite tips, tidbits, and communication tricks from the book.

“The early church didn’t have the modern technologies we have today. There were no billboards or direct mail campaigns to announce Jesus was coming. The disciples didn’t tweet or blog the Sermon on the Mount or other messages Jesus gave during his ministry. The one thing the early church did have, however, was captivating stories worth telling.” – Introduction, Tim Schraeder

This para is a nice summary of what my Masters project is going to cover next year.

“Church historians have noted that with every major cultural revolution that has taken place in modern times, there’s been an accompanying movement of God’s Spirit as the church has found new ways to reach more people. Our message has never changed but the way we communicate it has found new forms and new mediums throughout the generations.”

Those who caught my “multimedia is word ministry” post a while back will understand why I appreciated this

“Every time you communicate anything in any medium as a church, it is preaching. I’m not suggesting you start tweeting, “God reads knee-mail,” from your church’s account. What I am suggesting is that no matter what you’re saying, it is a sermon being preached.” – Media is Preaching, Jeremy Sexton

This collection of four tips for communication from a chapter by Curtis Simmons called A Failure to Communicate is timeless (the first three are the same sort of tips Cicero might give):

1. What The first step is to fully understand what you are being asked to communicate. Find out the story that is driving the communication. For example, don’t simply announce that Vacation Bible School is next month and assume everyone understands the benefits. Instead, explain the positive impact that it will have on the lives of the children and volunteers. Include testimonials from those involved in prior years.

2. Who Next, consider the audience. Tailor your message to the specific audience that truly needs to hear it. If your church is conducting a class specifically for new parents, then customize the message so it speaks directly to their needs.

3. How When developing your message keep it simple. Don’t use the cryptic language only some Christians may understand. Explain in simple, every day terms how one can come to know and trust in Jesus rather than inviting them to be “washed in the sanctifying blood of the Lamb.” Your message should also be crystal clear. Reduce the effort to get involved with an event or ministry to no more than three or four easy to under- stand steps and direct them to the first step.

4. Where Now that you know the story you need to determine which channels should be used to best reach your intended audience. In some instances an email to a small group is sufficient. In other instances, you may need to spread the word on your website, Twitter, Facebook and in the worship announcements.

There are a couple of really important points in there – I think – the first is to make all your communication about people – both in who communicates it, the content of the communication (stories), and the benefits you spruik (the “what’s in it for your audience” factor), and the second is the emphasis on multichannel communication. There’s a solid theory that suggests a message needs to be heard somewhere between 6-10 times (which means it probably needs to be said more than that) to be communicated effectively.

Simmons has a helpful warning emphasising the corollary of that – everybody else is trying to communicate to the same people multiple times.

“Keep in mind that the members of your congregation are bombarded with hundreds of messages each day. Don’t add to the noise by communicating every idea, event or program to everyone.”

This means being careful and creative with how we get messages to the ears or eyes of our hearers.

Another really helpful point, which I think leads back to ethos being more important than well put together pathos or logos (another part of my project), comes in a chapter by Phil Bowdle called Authenticity > Excellence. He says:

“There’s a word that has generated lots of momentum in the church world in recent years. It’s a word that gets thrown around frequently in conferences, workshops, staff teams and blogs. We’ve become obsessed with it. The word? Excellence.

Excellence has become a mantra behind much of the work we do. We’ve attempted to prove wrong the world’s assumption that if it’s Christian, it’s sub-par. Excellence is a value that has often been overlooked in the church, and it’s as important as ever to keep it at the core of everything we do.

In an effort to demand excellence in all that we do, a more important principle has been overlooked. That principle is authenticity.

I’ll be the first to put my hand up to say that I’ve bought into the excellence idea – because I don’t think being excellent in how we do things stands apart from being real and excellent in who we are – I actually think excellence and authenticity are incredibly related – so long as excellence is aspirational, and room is given for the humanity of the communicator and their audience.

Bowdle makes an interesting point, depending on how you measure excellence, that authentic communication produces better outcomes.

“Interestingly, we generated a much higher response out of the secondary communication strategies we implemented. Things like webcam videos, simple blog posts and in-service testimonies seemed to be more effective than the polished video and print pieces. The difference? The more the authenticity of the person, message or story shined, the more effective the result.”

I would’ve thought that rather than authenticity being better than excellence, authenticity=excellence.

I’d say, given that I have a bent towards judging communication by its character, and its fruits (and hey, so does Cicero), that authentic communication is the most excellent kind – especially if it’s driven by love (ala Paul in 1 Cor 12:31-13:1 – which seems to be one of his fundamental principles for church communication).

If you’ve come across marketing doyen Seth Godin, you’ll recognise the notion of “tribes” – if not, the idea is that the most successful to build something to the point of being successful is to build a tribe. His definition of a tribe: “A tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea,” essentially describes a church. Whether the leader is Jesus or the senior pastor (or both), is a question of one’s ecclesiology. Anyway. Jon Dale applies this model to church communication to suggest we should be working harder at equipping the members of our tribe to talk to other people – which is, I think, the essential secret to doing social media well as a church. He says:

“There are four types of tribal communication:
1. Leader to tribe member.
2. Tribe member to leader.
3. Tribe member to tribe member.
4. Tribe member to outsider.

We spend most of our energy in the church (and business) world on #1. Think about it. We get up on stage on Sunday and do #1. We send out eblasts and do #1. We write books and do #1. Then we upgrade to the latest craze and do a podcast (more of #1). And for kicks we send out a survey and think we’re doing #2 well. But the reality is that #3 and #4 are what change the world.”

Another idea that resonated with me came from Danielle Hartland in Fresh and Light, which basically called for your organisational infrastructure and pathways should be seen, and experienced – rather than heard. And when you’re talking about these important things you should talk about them as they relate to Jesus and in a human way.

“No one is motivated when they feel like a tiny cog in a big machine. Instead of telling people how they fit in your church’s grand plan, tell them how/why things will help them connect to and grow in Jesus.”

This leads nicely back to the importance of the story – and Matt Knisely’s Your Church, the Storyteller, is, I think, the most important chapter for communicating with the post-modern, and post-post-modern world.

“One of the most powerful tools any church has to reach people is a first-person story of a changed life.”

And the best part is, no matter what size church you have, telling stories doesn’t require expensive equipment or complicated multimedia. You really need just one thing: People whose lives are being changed by the gospel message. Ask them for their stories. Ask in emails. Ask them to write their stories down. Ask them in person. Then, tell those stories. Video them if you want. Print them (with permission).

There are a few good practical chapters in the mix, none more important than the chapters on church websites. These make the point that the church website is, if not just for outsiders, the primary tool outsiders are using to investigate you. I’ve argued that the result of this is that your website should be geared to the outsider.

These contributors agree – Jeremy Scheller writes Your Website Needs to Be a Billboard, and suggests the following principles (I’ve summarised them):

1. Keep it simple.
2. Say something about you.
3. Get to the point.
4. Point people to take action.

Paul Steinbrueck in Your Website: your first, and only, impression, says 80% of people who are looking for a church start on the web. And they start with google. So search engine optimisation is really important, as is what people see if they arrive.

He gives seven tips with these points in mind. (Again, I’ve summarised them, buy the book).

1. Optimize your website for search engines.
2. Give your website a nice design.
3. Prominently feature a “New Visitor” section.
4. Include a welcome message.
5. Include pictures or video services.
6. Answer all the questions you would want answered before you visit a church.
7. Publish stories.

The last, and perhaps most important point comes from Scott McClellan – who, in a chapter called Never Trust a Skinny Chef urges people involved in communication to put themselves in the shoes, seat, or ears, of their audience – to make sure it’s hitting the target.

“Read your writing. Watch your films. Listen to your sermons. Browse your website. Navigate the church building using your signage. Subscribe to your email newsletter.”

This is a really useful book, and one I’m sure I’ll be coming back to, both in its initial form – and by continuing the conversation, where necessary, with its contributors. Most of whom are on Twitter.

December 18, 2012

The Christmas Dragon

Also. While we’re on the subject of Christmas. I’m preaching on John’s nativity scene at our Christmas Eve service this year.

But wait. You say. John’s gospel doesn’t have a nativity scene.

Indeed. But Revelation does.

A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. ²She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. ³Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on its heads. ⁴Its tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that it might devour her child the moment he was born. ⁵She gave birth to a son, a male child, who “will rule all the nations with an iron scepter.”

This ain’t no stable story.

I’ve preached on it before – but my last talk wasn’t great. So I’m gutting it. And rewriting it. It’s difficult to turn this pretty weird passage into something evangelistic. But I like the coolness of it, and the timing – given that the Hobbit is coming out on Boxing Day and it is pretty dragony.

I’m going to lean heavily on this bit, and just fly over the weird stuff with a short, sharp, explanation of why Revelation tells the Christian story in a symbolic way.

¹⁰Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say:

“Now have come the salvation and the power
and the kingdom of our God,
and the authority of his Messiah.
For the accuser of our brothers and sisters,
who accuses them before our God day and night,
has been hurled down.
¹¹They triumphed over him
by the blood of the Lamb
and by the word of their testimony;
they did not love their lives so much
as to shrink from death.

Sound enthralling? Come along.

Meet this guy… and the baby who smashes him.

One of the things I’m finding tough is how to articulate that as Christians we do believe in something bigger than ourselves, something supernatural, other than the intangible God and his tangible son, Jesus. That we believe Jesus’ birth, death, and resurrection had some meaning beyond what it achieves for us as individuals, and for humans with the arrival of the crucified king of the world… that there was, and is, an entity who didn’t want this to happen. The dragon. Satan.

I find it pretty easy to talk about Jesus. Because he was a man, in history, who is historically plausible. But Satan? And Satan presented as a dragon? I’d rather deal with that in brush strokes and get back to safe and rational ground as quickly as possible.

I can’t figure out why.

We’re pretty good at buying in to struggles between good and evil in just about every story we consume – the Hobbit is an example – so I can’t figure out why I baulk at presenting the “evil” entity, not just the evil that dwells in each sinful person, when it comes to telling people the gospel.

December 17, 2012

Christmas video from Creek Road – Love Came Down

This is a beautiful little Christmas video featuring a family from Creek Road, put together by our media team.

Lots of things go up at Christmas, but Jesus came down. Love came down.

Check it.

Love Came Down – Christmas Video from Creek Road from Creek Road on Vimeo.

I like it. Lots.

December 17, 2012

A useful reminder for how not to respond to tragedy and sin

Dear Christian with a microphone,

I know. It’s tempting. Very tempting.

Everybody is looking for someone who has something to say. An expert. And it’s tempting to get on your soapbox when bad stuff happens and talk about how it’s judgment for sin, not an example of the cost of sin.

But the two are different.

Even if there’s a correlation between sin and judgment, where the negative consequences of sin (given that sin falls outside of the design for human flourishing so naturally has bad results) are an immediate form of judgment for sin, I’m not sure you can jump from the individual to the corporate – from the judgment the individual experiences after their sin to bad things happening, where people are hurt and some sort of nefarious or malicious intent on God’s part. There’s something very Old Testament about the idea that a nation’s fortunes are tied to their obedience to God’s law – but America isn’t Israel. Nor is Australia.

This is the God who hates sin and injustice so much that he sent his son to experience injustice and start the process of dealing with sin. At the cross. This was still evil, though good happened as a result.

You might want to link sin and judgment and death. And where better than when they’re all happening at once. You might want to point out that the world is broken. But I’m not sure that putting forward a solution, or a proposed cause, other than that all people everywhere have turned away from God and do bad things to each other as a result, is particularly sensitive.

Now is not the time to push your particular special interest. Especially if it looks like point scoring. Even if it’s right. Now is not the time to point score. But to comfort. To love. To empathise. To condemn. To support. To offer hope.

I know there’s a robust theology of God’s sovereignty behind your statements. I know people would be better off if they followed Jesus (that’s pretty much how I responded yesterday).

Sometimes it’s not obvious who to blame – so you might be thinking that a tragedy presents an opportunity to further your only tangentially related cause (or, more cynically, sometimes the people who give you lots of money might be looking for alternative scapegoats). But the blame game is the wrong game.

This is a horrible political road to travel – and it’s worse if you’re trying to play the political game as a Christian.

If that’s you, you’re not going to get people to follow Jesus by cashing in on events like this for your political cause – it doesn’t matter if you’re trying to ban video games (as the ACL did with the Norway shootings), or, as is the case with Mike Huckabee, trying to (re)introduce school prayer. Or, more charitably, to restore or salvage some sort of public role for Christianity in a post-Christian world.

“We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools… Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?

“Maybe we ought to let [God] in on the front end and we wouldn’t have to call him to show up when it’s all said and done at the back end.” – Mike Huckabee

You may have a point. The world might be a better place if people were more like Jesus. That’s pretty much what I said yesterday. But that’s not going to happen if you systematise Christianity. If you legislate it. If you make it compulsory. And it’s certainly not going to happen if you try to make some political mileage towards that goal off the back of a tragedy.

Changes of action follow changes of the head, and the heart.

The head and the heart are only followed by the hands if you’re some sort of totalitarian control freak dictator looking to the kind of emotional response that produces Stockholm Syndrome, or Pavlovian responses to bad experiences.

That is not how the Holy Spirit works, which is essential to the process of making people more like Jesus.

Your theology is wandering off into dangerous territory if you think the answer to bad stuff is to set about systemically introducing Christianity, not having Christianity, through the church, systemically working to making things better by loving and protecting people through the political process. The two are different.

It doesn’t matter if you think that there’s a particularly heinous amount of immorality going down in the world right now (see this 2009 example from Danny Naliah, and just about anything Westboro Baptist say) – that’s a judgment call that requires you to ignore 2,000+ years of post-Jesus human history, and focus on a particularly narrow definition, or manifestation, of sin…

The correct response is not “we” or “they” deserved this, or in any way earned this, as a result of God’s judgment. You might make that theological case in general – the Bible is pretty clear that sin and death aren’t part of how God made the world, and one leads to the other, for all people. But you can’t take that to the specific – and link particular, disconnected, sins, to particular deaths, and you probably shouldn’t be making that case at this time. It looks cheap and unloving. Even if you’re trying to be loving.

It’s not particularly loving to victims of sin and tragedy, and their families, to be trying to score from their misfortune – no matter how well intentioned you are. Or how right your cause may be.

If you do. If you give in to that temptation and jump on that soapbox, you are an idiot who is damaging the gospel and making people think less of Jesus.

UPDATE – Huckabee has clarified his statement a little.

“A specific act of violence is rarely the result of a specific single act of a culture that prompts it. In other words, I would never say that simply taking prayer and Bible reading from our institutions or silencing Christmas carols is the direct cause of a mass murder. That would be ludicrous and simplistic. But the cause and effect we see in the dramatic changes of what our children are capable of is a part of a cultural shift from a God-centered culture to a self-centered culture.”

Christ and Pop Culture has a great post offering a balanced critique of Huckabee’s statement, which links to this Rachel Held Evans post that I liked.

December 16, 2012

Answering the “why” of tragedy and the “who” of stopping it…

This is the first American school massacre since I became a father. I don’t know if that alone made my heart sink further when we woke up to the news of 20 young lives lost this morning, and the six adults, but holding my daughter as I digested the news brought home to me the sort of range of emotions the parents of these children on the other side of the planet must be feeling.

Image Credit: Sydney Morning Herald

I remember writing an essay at uni, back in 2004, about the process the mainstream media moves through when covering a tragic news event like this – from reporting the facts, and just the facts (who, what, when), to reporting first hand accounts (who, how), to “experts” dissecting events and looking for deeper answers to “why” questions. This process has accelerated. Dramatically. Thanks to the internet – such that the facts are available almost immediately, and the democratisation of punditry means that we all have an opinion on the “why” question, and we can all jump on our platforms to not just answer “why bad things happen” but “how this should be fixed.”

The most obvious solutions are pretty obvious. They’re superficial.

We fix shootings by tightening up access to guns. There are secondary solutions – less obvious, and a step or two back on the causal chain – we should fix mental health so that potential perpetrators and sociopaths are identified, and loved – or fixed – or removed from society (and especially from access to guns), before they can lash out.

Some suggest we should stamp out violent video games and change the violent culture that spawns the sorts of people who do this sort of thing. Which seems pretty appealing. Except that this sort of violence predates television, it predates the newspaper, it predates anything that we could meaningfully ban in response.

Sure. Gun control worked in Australia – we haven’t had a shooting massacre since Port Arthur. And it’ll go some way to solving the problem in America. But my Facebook wall is littered with people calling for gun bans, as if that’ll completely solve the problem.

But guns don’t kill people. People kill people.

That’s cliched. With reason. Cliches become cliches because they describe something true – something that needs to be said often.

We can ban all the guns in the world – but people will look for ways to hurt other people. People will respond to generations of hurt – carrying the baggage inflicted by poor family decision making, absent or abusive parents, generational or systemic mistreatment of people, injustice, bullying, all sorts of pain inflicted by others… People will snap. Will make bad decisions. Will take drugs. Will do all sorts of mood altering things that leave them with a low empathy threshold, or a willingness to inflict pain on others for their own pleasure.

The world is broken.

People in our world are broken.

And giving those people less guns – because you recognise the brokenness is a wise response – but it’s not a solution.

The only meaningful way to change human nature is to restore it to what it was meant to be before it broke. It broke when we turned away from the God who made the world. The world broke then too.

People were meant to be children of God. Children of God who didn’t turn on each other out of rage or anger. And yet, as Genesis tells the story, almost as soon as people turned away from God – brother knifed brother – you can bet Cain would’ve shot Able if he were able.

The only way for us to stop killing each other is to start not just recognising that we’re all valuable because we’re made in God’s image – and so, shouldn’t be killed by one another – but to start recognising that we’re all, to steal another cliche, family…

And the only way for that to be true is for all of us to turn to the perfect child of God – who not only models being a child of God perfectly, but enables us to become children of God – where our present lives, and future hope, reflect a view of the world that rules out events like this morning’s events.

This future hope makes the present tragedies a little easier to stomach – not easy – because suffering sucks. Tragedies suck. The emotions we experience, even vicariously, in these situations as parents, and siblings, and children of other people – are real. The emotions the victims and their families experience during, and after, the inflicting of horrible human on human tragedy are real – and we can’t play this down. But how can we explain events like someone turning a couple of semi-automatic weapons on children without looking to shortcomings in human nature? Shortcomings described best by the very first chapters of the Bible… And how do we solve them without looking for solutions – solutions described in all the subsequent chapters of the Bible as God began his rescue mission that culminated with the horrific and tragic death of an innocent – Jesus.

He suffered. For the sake of securing a future – for himself, and for those who are in him – as his people. His children. The whole world is waiting for this future. From Romans 8…

¹⁷Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.

¹⁸I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. ¹⁹For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. ²⁰For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope ²¹that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.

²²We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. ²³Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groaninwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. ²⁴For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? ²⁵But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

We stop tragedies like this by becoming like Jesus – the true child of God. And while this doesn’t properly happen any time while we’re still this side of heaven, the process begins with following him.

“²⁸And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. ²⁹For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. ³⁰And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.”

Following Jesus means beginning the process of reversing the human nature that leads to tragedies like this. It conforms and transforms us.

It seems trite. It seems like little comfort to those grieving the brokenness of our world. It seemed a cold comfort to me as I sat nursing my almost 1 year old, imagining a future where something horrific happened to her… but the more I think about it the more I yearn for, and honestly desire the future described in the closing chapters of the Bible, in the book of Revelation, where events like this don’t, and can’t, happen.

21 ³And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ⁴‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

Here’s the guarantee from Jesus himself, the closing words of the Bible… They’re what provides real hope, and a real solution, in times like these – when the tragedy of broken human nature strikes…

22 ²⁰He who testifies to these things says, “Yes, I am coming soon.”

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

²¹The grace of the Lord Jesus be with God’s people. Amen.

December 15, 2012

A prank call, tragedy, the blame game, and the power of forgiveness

Wow. What a gut punch. The nurse who took a prank call from an Australian radio station, where staff pretended to be the Queen, and Prince Charles, has, it appears, taken her own life.

There seems to be a pretty strong causal link between the call, and this outcome.

So the blame game begins.

Plenty of people have responded by condemning the Australian pair. I read someone suggesting they should be charged with manslaughter. That is, frankly, ridiculous.

Playing the blame game in a tragic situation like this is ridiculous.

Blame is not the appropriate response to tragedy. It just makes tragedy worse.

It’s a tragedy. A mother of two. A wife of one. And surely a friend to many… lost. It’s awful. Indescribably awful. There are no winners in this situation now. None. But there are people who are going to feel this loss, and their grief is going to be preyed upon by a hungry and vicious British press, feeding a bunch of people who want to see blood. Everybody is voicing their shock on social media. Because it’s truly shocking.

But words have consequences. Even unintended consequences. The consequences become bigger as the words are given more importance – and in this case some relatively harmless words have become harmful because they’ve been amplified.

The futility of the blame game

It would be easy to point fingers at just about anybody in this situation, but establishing agency and causation is almost impossible. What follows is an exercise in futility. It’s particularly fruitless, because already, once the chain of events kicked off the way it did, there weren’t any winners, just victims – well, except the one group who wins either way…

The prank callers – sure, if they hadn’t called anybody then this wouldn’t have happened. They’re now under siege from all over the world, and people are saying horrible stuff about their responsibility for events. Give them a break. They couldn’t possibly know this was going to happen when they sat down and sketched out a pretty funny prank concept. But they were doing their job…

So we could blame the radio station – sure, for pushing comedy based programming, but people love prank calls, and this one was mostly harmless – and the callers were expecting to be hung up on immediately. The British press is having a field day dragging out stories about Kyle Sandilands. They sure do love controversy… but then so do their listeners…

So we could blame Australian culture – we listen to, and love, commercial radio comedians, and their audacious prank calls. But we’re a world away from the events in England.

We could blame the hospital – but the administration has been incredibly, and publicly, supportive of the nurses involved. They blame the callers. And blaming the hospital goes mighty close to blaming the victims… the nurses – one of whom has now become, tragically, the biggest victim.

We could blame the royals, for not immediately hosing down the event, and refusing to comment. But they’re under constant scrutiny, and even in this most private of moments are suffering from media attention. And suggesting what might have been – an immediate statement of forgiveness, laughing the whole thing off – would have produced better results is an exercise in the hypothetical. It may have resulted in thousands of copycats. Prince Charles seemed to think it was funny.

We could blame the culture clash – It’s, on the surface, an awful example of two cultures with a lot in common not quite sharing the same sense of humour. The prank was funny. Most of us are incredulous that it worked the way it did. That’s how pranks get laughs. The British weren’t amused. Turns out a common love for irony, not shared by the Americans, doesn’t extend to a common love of taking the proverbial out of their royals.

The British press – they’re the only winners in this situation. They’ve got a controversy to inflame, victims to profile, royals to protect. They turned the prank into a “cruel international hoax,” and blew away any sense of proportion. So, now the story serves to demonstrate the power of a rabid and angry British media. The same British media that protects the royals when it suits them, and publish naked pictures of the same royals, taken with a telephoto lens, while they’re in a private place, on a holiday, when it suits them.

But blaming the press isn’t really all that worthwhile, you can’t blame them without blaming the people who consume their products – the audience dictates what the commercial press prints. So do the advertisers. So do the people who buy the advertisers products.

Essentially. We’re all to blame. And we’re all victims. Victims who have to live in a world where horrible stuff like this happens.

The power of forgiveness

Now, I don’t want to make mileage from this tragic set of circumstances. That’d be ghoulish. This really is awful. And as a guy, behind a keyboard, thousands of kilometres, and a cultural jump away, I’m feeling only a small amount of the grief that those closer in proximity will be feeling at this loss of life. Every time I think about that poor husband, and those poor kids, I want to yell at someone. Blame someone. And I’m pretty detached from the circumstances. The best I can do is pray for that family, and, given the above – pray for our world. The kind of world that creates the environment for this sort of thing…

But imagine a world, for a moment (channeling John Lennon), imagine a world where, say this prank call still happened – because it’s not a perfect imaginary world – imagine it happened, and the mistake was made in receiving it… imagine if the first victims acted in forgiveness immediately. Imagine if they had immediately spoken out to forgive not just the nurse, and the hospital, but the callers. That would have robbed the story of its sting. The press couldn’t be indignant about a story where there’s no victim, the nurse would have nothing to fear. The story would’ve fallen off the middle pages of the paper within days, if not hours.

Imagine if the press was forgiving. Imagine if, given the tragedy, we didn’t just band around the family of the nurse, which is good and right, but around the radio presenters who I can imagine, as humans, are now suffering incredibly deep feelings of remorse and regret, questioning their own agency in proceedings, and blaming themselves…

Imagine if there was a royal who, when persecuted, forgave the masses who perpetuated the persecution. The clamouring crowds, baying for blood. The feeding frenzy of a public who just want to see a spectacle – with no real regard for justice being served. Imagine a king who when misunderstood, who is suddenly the centre of attention, all eyes on him, as he is nailed to a cross – killed for simply being who he is – called out:

“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Imagine a world where more of us, in more circumstances, followed that king. Imagine if, even when tragedy happened, we didn’t look for who to blame, but for who needs love and forgiveness – and we offered it, even if they were doing us wrong.

Imagine if we acknowledged that we were in the wrong – rather than looking to blame others – and we went after forgiveness, from the victims – but also from Jesus, the king, who was put in the above circumstance by us too – the crowd baying for blood 2,000 years ago, the crowd baying for blood (and cheap entertainment via the media) now – we’re part of both of them. We’re to blame. We need forgiveness. We’re participants in this culture that creates victims all over the place.

I guess that’s my biggest prayer, and the point where I can take the most action in response to these circumstances, and this world. I really want people to know Jesus because modelling that kind of forgiveness, and that kind of willingness to turn the other cheek, actually stops tragic events like this happening.

December 8, 2012

How to write a Twitter profile that doesn’t make you seem like a self-serving goose…

I’m expanding my presence on Twitter. Which involves getting more followers. This happened by accident. Deliberate accident.

Lots of expert Twitter types have a policy of following back the people who follow them. And I’ve spent the last couple of days tracking down, and following (like a good stalker), people who do church communications stuff. So when I followed 100 new people, I scored about 25 new followers.

One of the questions I’m trying to figure out when it comes to social media in general, and Twitter in particular, is how you be present on these platforms in a way that points people to Jesus. How do you use these platforms with humility shaped by the cross? This is true for St. Eutychus too, and for Facebook (though I have some thoughts on ways to use Facebook in a gospel-promoting way (linked, for ironic self-promotional purposes)).

Reading through a few thousand Twitter biographies has been an interesting exercise.

Incidentally, one of the reasons I’m doing this is that I’m drinking some of the social media kool-aid (also this Kottke piece) that says Facebook is a weird mish-mash of relationships largely made up by incidental people in your life – former colleagues, school friends, and random acquaintances – which is true, with all the caveats about how I love you very much if you are one of those people… while Twitter is fresh and exciting, and you can follow people you share interests with. So I follow the coffee industry, and its various parts, and personalities, and people keen to see the good news of Jesus presented to as many people as possible, in the best ways possible.

I’ve followed lots of people in the last few days, and there are some pretty useful people saying some pretty useful things out there.

But there are some people who I’ll never follow, because their 160 letter bio – which is what Twitter gives you – is too cringeworthy. I have limits.

I should make a slight qualification at this point – I’m particularly interested in what people choose to feature as “individuals” rather than as “professionals” – professional accounts need to be professional. They’ll have a different set of standards – and a different set of communication priorities. And that’s fine. I’m really interested in what individuals, especially Christian individuals, choose to feature in their bio. Because most of the people I’m following are running what essentially amount to mixed accounts – which deal with their professional interests from a personal perspective, or are in vocational ministry – so professionally Christian – some of these quibbles I’m making in this post will apply more or less directly on a case by case basis.

160 letters isn’t a lot. I’d prefer to err on the side of not using all the characters (you can see my profile here). But here is what my blurb said before I started thinking about this:

Christian. Husband. Father. Blogger. Coffee Blogger. Theological Student. PR Mercenary. Coffee snob. http://thebeanstalker.com | http://st-eutychus.com

Here’s what I’ve changed it to.

A broken human. Bought by God. Following king Jesus. Trying to love people.
Relentlessly curious | Fixated by words | Pursuing coffee perfection

There’s a long and rambling post I’m writing and editing, and writing and editing, about the perils of being a Christian on social media – with its built in tendencies towards default narcism. I’ll post it, somewhat ironically, when I can finally get it to a point where it doesn’t seem to all be about me.

The biography is an interesting, and fixed, part of who you are on Twitter – even if, as Kottke suggests, you are your last six tweets, the bio provides an interpretive framework for how your tweets are read and understood. It’s a big part of your personal brand – in that it shapes how people who don’t know you outside of Twitter perceive you.

So the Twitter bio presents the best, and worst, of this part of social media. This isn’t a post about the content of your feed – but the bio both frames how people perceive you, and provides some indication of what you’re going to post. You can make everything you post about Jesus, and ruin it with a bio that’s all about how great thou art – not how great he is.

Biographies and about pages are the distilled essence of your presence on social media, more than each individual tweet, or post. They’re designed for self-promotion. They’re the billboard that wins you new followers. Your sales pitch. If there’s ever a time to talk about yourself, in a flattering way, it’s the Twitter bio… and maybe this is a cultural thing – maybe my good, old-fashioned, Australian, tall poppy syndrome kicks in here – but if you have to blow your own trumpet, and beat your own drum, it’s not really a tune I’m all that interested in listening to, or a rhythm that gets me tapping my feet along…

It’s hard to be simultaneously “self-promoting,” in line with the expectations of the medium, and self-effacing, in line with the cross-shaped approach to self that Christians are called to adopt.

How do we take up our cross and follow Jesus in this space? How do we imitate Paul, who resolved to know nothing but Christ, getting rid of the eloquence that would focus attention on himself when his Corinthian audience, who couldn’t separate style from substance, forced him to… as he imitates Jesus?

This is one area where I think Mark Driscoll, channeling Luther, does a stellar job. Here’s his bio:

“A nobody trying to tell everybody about Somebody”

What I’ve found is that there are certain common elements to Twitter bios that I’d argue are essentially redundant. And a few elements, when individualised and freshened, that I find really appealing, and I’ll be trying to fit into my bio. I’ll do those first.

5 Elements of a Christian Twitter profile that I like

It starts with Jesus. If Jesus isn’t defining who you are, and one of the things you want people to know about you – then why do I want to read about you?
It humanises. It doesn’t just end with Jesus. That’d be boring – and the sort of pietism that, if reflected in your tweets, is a real turn off (I’m looking at you Piper). I like the idea that Twitter isn’t just about being in a Christian-to-Christian love-in. I like Twitter profiles that show me something of a person’s humanity (I’ll get to some short cut ways of doing this that annoy me below) – and acknowledges human limitations.
It’s humble. This is related to the first two, and it’s a genre subverter. And I love people who pull this off in a bio, it often requires a bit of well thought out self-deprecation. It’s part of the reason I like Driscoll’s bio so much (even if the content of his social media presence can occasionally run counter to that).
It uses humour appropriately. Generally this follows being humble, but it can also be a matter of what you choose to focus on, other than yourself.
It gives some idea what sort of content you’ll be tweeting. This goes two ways – it’s a great tool for you, the tweeter, to give you some sort of editorial policy, but it also means if I follow you on the basis of a common interest you highlight in your bio, I’m not going to be inundated by pictures of your cat.

5 Elements of a Twitter Profile that scare me off

Those are the good. Here are the things that irk me…

It’s all about you. Even if you’re sufficiently self-effacing, if you’re a Christian, and you’re not using this 160 characters to give some account of the hope that you have (even using the label “Christian” is better than nothing), then you’re wasting letters.
It’s all about your idea of your qualities. Calling yourself a “leader” or a “genius,” or a “creative,” or anything better demonstrated than claimed – this stuff always reads, to me, a bit like the lame person who tries to give themselves a nickname to fit in somewhere. Nicknames come when you demonstrate that you fit in, or as part of the process. Leaders lead. They can’t just say “I’m a leader”… Creative people demonstrate creativity.
You waste letters on disclaimers. There’s nothing more boring than reading “ideas my own” or “retweets are not endorsements” in your bio. Boring.
You put faux-interesting expressions of humanity in your bio. It’s not ground breaking to tell people you love coffee, or your family (which is why I cut those bits). Nor, I would argue, is being “into coffee” all that interesting – especially because being “into coffee” is so relative. Do you drink instant four times an hour? (I’m guilty of this one – though I’d argue having a coffee blog means referring to coffee in my profile is indicative of the content I’m going to tweet). It’s another shortcut to interestingness to tell me that you like sports, and you support a particular team – I can’t believe how many people put that in their bio (I’m a Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles fan by the way… and a Man Utd fan). If that’s the tribe you want to claim some sort of allegiance to, then that’s fine.
It’s full of doublespeak/weasel words. I read a bio about optimising such and such through creating synergies and blah blah blah. That’s exactly what I thought. Why would you waste 160 characters on words that either mean nothing, or could be explained in less letters in a way that isn’t just designed to make you look smarter than the other guys.

So. Are these the worst? Or am I missing something? And perhaps more importantly – how do you navigate the minefield that is the narcissism inherent in the system, and the humility inherent in recognising that you’re a broken human following the crucified king? Even posting something like this is fraught with the possibility of being a little self-indulgent, so what’s been helpful?

December 7, 2012

It’s beginning to sound a bit like Christmas…

Argh. Tim Allen is on my TV. He’s not Santa yet – but the transition from Grinch to all round good guy is beginning. It’s almost enough to send me in the opposite direction.

Anyway. Here’s a nice little Christmas tune, from Pentatonix, that five piece a cappella group who did that Gotye cover.

They’ve got a Christmas Carols album out on iTunes. Exciting if you like that sort of stuff. I guess. And certainly better than Tim Allen.

December 7, 2012

Eyetracking and church websites

In my post on church websites the other day I mentioned that principles of page layout, and information architecture, from newspapers were still a good yardstick for web design. And there’s good data for this – because it’s possible to track how people read, or experience, websites using eye tracking.

The basic rule of thumb is that people pay the most attention to the top left of your page, and stay hooked as long as your content is good, and so long as they’re finding what they expect to find, where they expect to find it.

Eye tracking is a pretty cool, and reliable, measure of how people experience your website – and a good way to figure out if it’s doing what it should do, and if people are noticing what you want them to notice. Here’s a nice journal article from a Web Usability Journal that explains it. Here’s an article that provides a slightly more balanced view on its value than you’ll find from people spruiking its merits.

Eye tracking and Text

This is like a Bureau of Meteorology weather map – red and yellow represent places where people’s eyes lingered longest.

Image Credit: Yahoo Eye Tracking article

“Yahoo! eye-tracking studies reveal a general pattern to the way people browse webpages:
People scan the main sections of a page to determine what it’s about and whether they want to stay longer.
They make decisions about the page in as little as three seconds.
If they decide to stay, they pay the most attention to the content in the top part of the screen.
When people do decide to read a page, their eyes sweep horizontally from left to right, often focusing on a roughly triangular area in the upper-left corner of a webpage, or the upper-left corner of the webpage’s main block of content. But this pattern varies depending on a page’s layout and purpose. For example, a person’s eyes will move differently over a photo-heavy slideshow, a text-heavy blog, or a page with a two- or three-column layout.”

Jakob Nielsen is a web usability guru. His company put together a book on eyetracking, and found, like the Yahoo thing above suggests, that users tend to focus on the top half of a page to figure out if they’re going to stick with you – if you’re putting the important stuff at the bottom, you’re missing out.

This is true for pretty text heavy pages too – but why you’d have a text heavy page that isn’t a blog these days is beyond me…

They say readers tend to follow an F shaped pattern, something like this:

They also found that people love information in bulleted lists.

Interestingly, on the scroll/above the fold front – people will scroll if you grab them with the stuff you feature “above the fold”…

“The most basic rule of thumb is that for every site the user should be able to understand what your site is about by the information presented to them above the fold. If they have to scroll to even discover what the site is, its success is unlikely.”

Here’s another study on scrolling and “the fold.”

Eye Tracking and pictures

One of the interesting things Nielsen’s research found is that images can make or break a page – depending on how relevant they appear to the site’s content – so how much they relate to what people are looking for… Their research says:

Some types of pictures are completely ignored. This is typically the case for big feel-good images that are purely decorative.

Other types of pictures are treated as important content and scrutinized. Photos of products and real people (as opposed to stock photos of models) often fall into this category.

Here’s the application of the eye-tracking stuff to the first point…

users ignore stock photos of “generic people”:

Nielsen suggests images work best when they carry information and aren’t generic (these guys say the same thing).

This is why I like the concept of an image slider featuring pictures that include descriptive captions/text within the image and clearly contribute something for your audience.

Another cool thing, this time from a Smashing Magazine list of usability facts, is the finding that people like pictures of people’s faces.

And, perhaps even cooler – we are guided by where people are looking…

eye tracking

There’s a study that demonstrates this…

Eye Tracking and videos

I mentioned that we’re going to be putting a bit of effort into videos as part of the story based nature of our content, it’s worth having a read of this Nielsen post about how boring talking head videos are.

In this case, the blue bits that are overlapping the red stuff indicate the places people aren’t watching… the guy’s face draws the eye for a while, but the viewer’s attention wanders pretty quick smart. This is from a 24 second clip of a four minute video.

Heatmap from an eyetracking study

While some people are paying attention to what the face is doing, a lot of people are trying to figure out how to get away from that head as quickly as possible, checking out the other links and the video controls. There’s a nice little video of how the eye tracking software worked in this instance (or rather, where the viewers were looking) at the Nielsen article.

Nielsen has these useful tips for video:

“… the main guideline for producing website video is to keep it short. Typically, Web videos should be less than a minute long.

A related guideline is to avoid using video if the content doesn’t take advantage of the medium’s dynamic nature. This doesn’t mean incessant use of pans, zooms, and fades to add artificial movement. It does mean that it’s better to use video for things that move or otherwise work better on film than they would as a combination of photos and text.

Finally, recognize that Web users are easily distracted, and keep distracting elements out of the frame of your shots. If there’s a road sign in the video, for example, users will try to read it and will thus miss some of the main content.”

I featured a gallery of church websites in my last website post, some seem to be designed, either intuitively, or deliberately, with this sort of approach to content in mind. Here’s another church website, from Metro Church on the Gold Coast that seems to hit the eye tracking boxes, by not having too much content, and also uses video in a really nice way.

December 2, 2012

What are the essential elements of a church web site?

We’re rethinking our website at church. It’s exciting. We’re looking at changing everything from the Content Management System (CMS), to the content itself – how we distribute it, where we pull content from, and the type of content we’re aiming to produce.

Did I mention it’s exciting.

I’ve spent the last few days thinking about what a church website should do – and looking at a bunch of other churches, and then we had a great meeting this afternoon. And I’m excited.

As is the case in any communication, or marketing, the first step is thinking about who you are communicating to, and in this case – who our website is for. We’ve decided that it’s largely for the newcomer. And when it’s not for the newcomer directly, it’s for helping people who are already part of our church family connect their friends with Jesus, and Creek Road.

We can cut loose a bunch of traditional (and slightly boring) church website information. You won’t find pitches for money, or mentions of our “diaconate,” or the inner workings of our Committee of Management, Session, or Presbytery.

We’ve invested in The City, which is a combined intranet/social network/church database solution/communication tool for people who are part of our church family, and while the website will still be useful for our members – we’re really keen for it to be a useful tool where we can be confident that someone who hasn’t come through the doors of our church, or any church, will get a good feel for who we are, what we believe, and what a Sunday might feel like.

We consider it part of our “Connect” ministry (Creek Road uses a Connect, Grow, Serve ministry pathway which helps us figure out what we do and don’t do, and provides a bit of clarity for people in terms of where we expect people to head when they plug-in, or connect, with our church). This means we ditch a lot of the in house stuff (or move it to The City), we’re going to avoid buzzwords and jargon wherever possible (so always), and we’re not going to talk about giving, or have notices, announcements, or other boring stuff (we will have two blogs that will occasionally cover some of this stuff, more on that later…).

We’re also keen for our kids and youth programs to have their own sites, or sub-sites, which serve much the same purpose for kids, youth, and their parents.

Finally, we’re pretty keen to use the human resources we have to produce resources for churches that don’t have the same number of people working together to produce all sorts of things – from Bible Study books, to kids material, to videos, to song selection for congregational singing – we want to be making our stuff easily accessible for other churches…

Add these things up and we’re starting to make for a pretty complicated landing page, which is potentially so jumbled it’ll make your eyes bleed.

And we don’t want that. Visual clutter and bad information architecture is the enemy of the newcomer.

Having our audience in mind means we’ve got a bit of clarity in terms of what we’ll be including.

I’ve been trying to narrow down a list of the minimum number of elements I think our site should have on the homepage, and I’m pretty committed to the usability theory I read once that suggested if a page is buried more than three clicks into your page design then it’s unlikely people are going to bother.

Here are my thoughts, there’s a gallery of other websites I’ve been looking at in producing this at the bottom of this post.

Though the Internet is an ever-evolving visual feast, I also like thinking of web pages, effective web pages, as Newspaper front pages – the Newspaper has evolved based on how people read things, and what draws the eye – it seems silly to waste all that time and investment just because we can.

So I think the basic structure of a home page should be something like:

Masthead – Logo, Name, Address
Banner Menu – Key pages, the stuff that helps people decide if they want to buy your paper or not.
Lead/Featured Story – Headline, Big photo.
Smaller stories – still important, but at this point you’ve hopefully grabbed the attention of your readers.

We also want something that can be dumbed down for mobile browsing relatively easily. So the less content on the front page the better.

When it comes to the internal pages, we’re wanting a split between video and images and text – and we want the page to be driven by people’s stories, not us blowing our own trumpet.

I mentioned in the opening paragraph that one of the things we’re thinking through is where we’re pulling information and content from, where we’re creating it, and where we’re sending it… here’s a quick snapshot of what that’s about before we get to what I’m thinking page design wise (this isn’t revolutionary stuff).

Content Sources

Video – We’re going to be posting videos to YouTube and Vimeo, which we’ll then embed on our site. Posting them elsewhere means our hosting overheads are lower, but it also puts the videos in a format and context people are more familiar with, and allows our visitors, and members, the freedom to share, or interact with the content on other social networks in a way they’re used to.

Images – Much the same way, we’re thinking about how we use Instagram, and older more boring sites like Flickr, the added benefit of hosting images, well tagged (ie with good metadata etc), off site, is that these platforms usually rank better with search engines than your site (this is something a Digital Consulting team told me once – Google may have changed their approach since then). There are other sound reasons for hosting things on other platforms – multiplying your presence across the web on platforms people already use is a good thing.

Blogs – we’re committing time and energy to a blog content strategy, and we’ll be producing and scheduling the material well in advance. There’s nothing worse than a corporate, or church, website with a stagnant blog, but we’ve got some ready made content with weekly podcast/sermon bits and pieces, book reviews, video material, and other things that we’re already creating, to keep a steady stream of up to date content hitting the interwebs. The plan is to have two blogs – one for our visitors, to get a good sense of what happens at church in byte sized chunks (see what I did there…), and one for people we’re hoping to benefit with our resources, which will outline some philosophy of ministry type stuff for the extra-curious church shopper.

The idea is that the content we’re producing is both:

modular enough and valuable enough to be shared by itself – by our members to their social networks to invite their friends along to church or give them a good understanding of the church they’re part of;
and integrated enough (using links between posts, thematic and series type links, etc) that when you land at one post you’ll be pulled through to others and get a feel for what we’re on about.

Distribution Channels

While the website is, itself, a distribution channel, we want to push content out from it to other places, so that people can share and interact with our posts in those environments – that’s particularly related to how Facebook works.

These channels, at this point, include Facebook, Twitter, the City, and email. The first three are relatively straightforward posting of links with appropriate commentary to those channels. The email stuff includes offering email subscriptions to the blogs, and the functionality for people to send anything they want from our page to their friends, via email, and specially made email invitations for each sermon series.

The Design

Above the Fold

This is the part of the page that people see without scrolling – in newspaper terms the fold was literal, and this was the stuff people saw when they glanced at a pile of newspapers at the newsagent.

This isn’t set in stone – not simply because code is much more flexible than the old school chisel, or even, to keep the metaphor running – the press room – but because this is a work in progress, and we’ll keep working on the website so that it delivers the results we’re looking for – people coming through our doors saying it was helpful. Foot traffic – rather than web traffic.

The other good newspaper principle to apply is the old “inverted news pyramid” – putting the important gear first, and answering the: “Who?” “What?” “Where?” “When?” “Why?” “How?” questions for people as quickly as possible, and as early as possible.

Because the website is a connect tool – or a marketing tool – we also want to answer the big marketing question – the “what’s in it for me” or “where do I fit” question.

Masthead

This will have our logo, which, for us, incorporates our name, and I’d suggest it’ll have our address and service times as some sort of subheading – this is the information people will be searching for on their smartphone, in their car, as they’re running late for the first time they come to church, so it’s nice to frontend it.

Banner Menu
Each of the pages this banner links to needs to carry the story about our church through stories told by people who are part of our church. People like reading about, and thanks to the power of the YouTubes, watching, stories about real, relatable, people. We want our website to feel real and relatable, and to really relate to what goes on on a Sunday (or during the week at our other programs).

1. What we believe – A page about the good news of Jesus, and a little introductory blurb to Creek Road’s application of the gospel – we’re committed to the Bible, we teach it clearly, we want to connect, some basic info about the pathway, and our kids and youth programs etc. This will probably feature our reach the city, reach the world, video.

2. New here? – An invitation to join us at church, and to meet us in the Connect Lounge after the service, a contact form if they have questions or want us to look out for them, and some information about how the website might be useful for them as they investigate Jesus and us. This will probably include a bit of a video tour of a Sunday at Creek Road, with quick sound bites from across the demographics of our church family.

3. Where and When – A page dedicated to service times, and our location (which will also be below the fold on the front page).

4. Kids – a link to our Kids Ministry Page.

5. Youth – a link to our Youth Ministry Page.

6. Podcast/Vodcast – a link to the page which will collect our sermons and the linked Bible study books that go with them in both video and audio format.

7. Contact Us – contact details – including a phone number, links to our presence elsewhere, an enquiry form.

Featured Story

Every hip church on the internet has a slider that features four or five stories. There are good reasons for this. It lets you put a few pictures into one space, and promote a few different things. Pictures are pretty powerful communicators. I’m really keen for this spot to be taken up by pictures of people doing things – things that are obviously related to life at church. A lot of churches put their current teaching series in this slot. I’m not sold on that being obviously important to the new person who may not be a Christian yet – though we know it’s important for them (and hopefully all our sermons are, in some way, related to the good news about Jesus). I’m not sure a gripping ten week teaching series is necessarily what is going to get the majority of non-church, or de-churched, Australians through our doors on a Sunday. And because we’re seeing this as a part of our attempts to connect with people, that is going to be a big factor in what gets featured.

Personally, I can’t understand why you’d use what’s essentially something like a mix between a billboard promoting your church, and the eye-grabbing image on the front page of a newspaper, to do anything other than try to make both the gospel of Jesus and your church appealing to non-Christians.

So many of the churches I looked at (some are below) treated their front page like a noticeboard for members, even a well designed noticeboard, and there’d have to be a pretty convincing ecclesiological rationale for doing that before I’d even start to consider that being the purpose of a public site.

Smaller Stories

In this section, I’m thinking three columns, but that may change, and probably two rows (check out Mars Hill and Hillsong (though it’s further down the bottom of their page), for what I’m picturing…

In the first row I’m thinking:

1. A 100 word (or less) summary/description of Creek Road’s understanding of the gospel, approach to church, and our understanding of how we relate to Brisbane. This needs to be search engine keyword heavy, because it’s one of the only parts of the front page that features text – and each keyword, or key phrase, should be linked to the page that it relates to – so when we summarise the gospel, that part of the description should be linked to the “what we believe” page, etc.

2. An embedded Google Map, with our church, and a photo of the building so people know what it looks like.

3. A link to invite people to church, with an e-card featuring some info on our current sermon series and links to our presence on social media places.

In the second row I’m thinking:

1. The most recent post from our “consumer” blog.

2. The most recent post from our “resources” blog.

3. A spare spot for things like current releases from our video team, or promotions for carols, our Community Connect school holiday program, our iPhone app if we develop one, etc.

I’m pretty excited about this whole process. It’s a lot of fun bringing my communications hat and my ministry hat together into some sort of twin peaked legionnaire’s cap…

Some of these ideas have been pinched from seeing what I think works on these pages, pages which were selected on the basis that either I thought they have something going for them, or the people who go there/work there have something going for them.

So. Over to you – what are the things you look for in a church page, or think should be included? What do you think visitors are looking for?

Have I missed any essentials?

Can you prove to me that your church web page should be some sort of Community Message Board?

Perhaps most importantly – what can we cut that is just cluttering up the place without damaging the function of the site?

November 30, 2012

Personal evangelism, oratory, and the fine art of cross-shaped persuasion

Like it or not, a recent article in the Briefing has fired up an old argument on personal evangelism that Gen Ys like me, think of in some way analogous to the worship wars… it happened in the past, and we’re slightly too post-modern to think there’s only one right answer to the question.

In a nutshell, John Dickson’s excellent book Promoting the Gospel (and other work) suggested that “evangelists” are a special category of person, much like preachers and teachers – and while all Christians are called to be part of the body of Christ, which is called to participate, together, in the Great Commission, and perhaps, the “Mission of God,” we’re not all called to play the specific role of heralds of King Jesus, proclaiming, via words, directly, and persuasively, the case for Jesus. Now, he says we should take whatever opportunities we have to give the reason for the hope that we have – but he wants the emphasis to be more on what we can achieve together, and what we can achieve in the way that we live our lives, and love the people around us, pointing people to Jesus. You can read my review of the book here.

Some people didn’t like that idea. They had an argument. Now, Tony Payne, at the Briefing, has (not intentionally), restarted the argument with his piece on Personal Evangelism.

Like a few others, I can’t really tell the difference between what he say the individual’s role is, and what John Dickson says the individual’s role is, which seems to boil down to using the skills God gives you as gifts for God’s kingdom and for those outside it.

It seems most people accept these two truths, but reach different conclusions:

1. We’re each called to serve God with the different gifts he has given us, as we worship him and take part in his mission (or worship him by taking part in his mission).

2. Some people are better at evangelism, and even human relationships, than others.

It’s this last bit of the logical chain that seems to divide people.

3. If people are better at evangelism than others, we should assume that they are gifted in that area and see part of our role, in the body, as freeing, supporting, and equipping those people to serve with those gifts. So that we’re on mission together.

Other people seem to say this is an area where gifting doesn’t come into play – because we all have to evangelise. But we’re all evangelising in that point 3.

I wonder if it’s easier to make a judgment, like Dickson’s, that not all people are evangelists if you are one, and if part of your job is helping clean up the mess that well-intentioned people make – perhaps, for example, those who stand on street corners and yell at people about sin and judgment (this isn’t really a post about the relative merits of street preaching).

Anyway.

I think Paul was an evangelist. That “evangelist” was a role that distinguished him from other figures in the early church. That he wasn’t the only “evangelist” – and that he wanted people to imitate him, in their lives as they were able, even if they weren’t especially gifted as evangelists – because promoting the gospel is about more than words – by sacrificially offering their gifts to the work of the Gospel. And we’re one body. Working for one mission. Together.

“Personal evangelism” is a bizarre outcome of western individualism being applied to the work of the church. We might live in an age of individualism – but part of the message of the gospel might have to be a counter-cultural indictment of that idea.

But each of us is called to take part in mission and evangelism, with the people we know. I’m going to suggest, in the next 3,000 words, that when it comes to evangelism as persuasion, all Christians are called to evangelise by ethos – being Christ like, and to be prepared to do logos (logic and knowledge about God and the Gospel), and I wonder if “pathos” and a strong mix of logos and ethos is what marks an “evangelist.”

So. Here are some thoughts I have, after thinking about how Paul frames his evangelism and approach to communication, that I think are somewhat relevant to the debate. This will be part of my Masters project next year, so shh… don’t tell anybody…

Oratory, Cicero, Paul, and Evangelism

Aristotle literally wrote the book On Rhetoric. He said there were three elements of successful persuasion:

1. Ethos: Persuasion is achieved by the speaker’s personal character when the speech is so spoken as to make us think him credible.

2. Pathos: Persuasion may come through the hearers, when the speech stirs their emotions.

3. Logos: Persuasion is effected through the speech itself when we have proved a truth or an apparent truth by means of the persuasive arguments suitable to the case in question.

After Aristotle, these elements were bounced around in different shaped triangles depending on which element you thought was more important. There were literal schools of thought, like the Attic School, who thought flashy eloquence, which played with the emotion, were easier and more convincing than dry, boring speeches that were full of logic. And there were other more classical types, like Cicero, who wanted to try to balance out the triangle into something more equilateral.

I’m fairly convinced that Paul, who was a Roman citizen from Tarsus, was educated in rhetoric in Tarsus, which had famous rhetorical schools (see Strabo, the historian, on Tarsus). Cicero was the governor of Tarsus just after he wrote De Oratore – this is a guess, but I reckon there would have been a bit of Cicero on the curriculum of rhetorical training in Tarsus.

Cicero didn’t like the flashy, insubstantial, approach to Rhetoric championed by the Attic school of rhetoric, and he criticised it extensively.

Paul, in his letters to the Corinthians, is engaging with the rhetorical grandchildren of the Attic movement – the Second Sophistic – and he deploys pretty much the same argument against them that Cicero did, championing the triumph of substance, both in content – or logos – and character – or ethos, over style – the ability to speek eloquently (pathos).

Paul speaks against the Corinthian desire to have the flashiest communicators lead their churches –

Here’s an interesting comparison between something Cicero says about approaching a speech with trembling, and what Paul says about his approach in Corinth…

Cicero:

For the better the orator, the more profoundly is he frightened of the difficulty of speaking, and of the doubtful fate of a speech, and of the anticipations of an audience… While as for him who is un-ashamed — as I see is the case with most speakers, — I hold him deserving not merely of reprimand, but of punishment as well. Assuredly, just as I generally perceive it to happen to yourselves, so I very often prove it in my own experience, that I turn pale at the outset of a speech, and quake in every limb and in all my soul

And Paul:

And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. ²For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. ³I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. ⁴My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power,⁵so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.

Paul is subverting the rhetorical expectations of his audience – but I’d say he’s doing it by harking back to an older rhetorical convention. He condemns the Corinthian addiction to eloquent oratory, and its encroachment on the church. But this isn’t to say that Paul wasn’t capable of presenting well when the need arose – Acts portrays him as a pretty accomplished orator, as comfortable preaching to a group of religious philosophers in Athens, quoting their ancient poets back at them during his Areopagus address (Acts 17:28), in court rooms (Acts 24), and before councils (Acts 23:1-9), governors (Acts 24, 25:1-12), and kings (Acts 25:13-26:32) – all places that orators would commonly perform their tasks as entertainers, philosophers, or advocates.

Imitation isn’t just about flattery

Here’s another cool thing before I get to the point (hint – I think a special role of evangelist might potentially be related to the the orator – whose job it is to persuade).

Here’s what Cicero says about choosing who you copy.

“For nothing is easier than to imitate a man*s style of dress, pose or gait. Moreover, if there is a fault, it is not much trouble to appropriate that and to copy it ostentatiously… he did not know how to choose the model whom he would most willingly resemble, and it was positively the faults in his chosen pattern that he elected to copy. But he who is to proceed aright must first be watchful in making his choice, and afterwards extremely careful in striving to attain the most excellent qualities of the model he has approved… “

This is pretty much what the Corinthians were doing in Corinth and in the Second Sophistic movement – 100 years after Cicero wrote this. So he didn’t convince everybody. Here’s how Paul addresses this practice…

³¹So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. ³²Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God, ³³just as I try to please everyone in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage, but that of many, that they may be saved.

11 Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.

This comes a bit after Paul says he is prepared to become all things to all men to win some, in 1 Cor 9, which Dickson really nicely sums up in his book:

“Following the example of Paul and Jesus does not necessarily mean that we do what they did. It means that we live by the same flexible ethos, seeking the good of many so that they may be saved.”

I would suggest that one area where Paul may mean we can do what he did – if our gifts and skill sets allow – is imitating him by being a faithful persuader, or evangelist, for the cause of the gospel. I think Dickson is right to warn that we won’t all have Paul’s training, abilities, or specific calling – so won’t all feel comfortable doing what he does, but, within limits, we can imitate him by using what we have to serve the kingdom of God (cf Romans 12).

The foundational importance of Ethos

Here’s what I’m thinking. It’s not rocket science. But it has the benefit of this oratory stuff backing it up. We’re all called to persuade people of the truth of the gospel, with whatever we have at our disposal – but the most powerfully underrated element of persuasion is not words and knowledge (logos), or fine sounding words that appeal to the emotions (eloquence and pathos), but personal character and living out what you believe (ethos).

I’d say we’re all called to live like Jesus, as an act of evangelism (though also because that’s the goal of the Spirit’s work in us – see Romans 8:29) – but we’re not all called to persuade with pathos (or even logos – beyond knowing the essentials – Christ, and him crucified).

Here’s what Cicero says about the importance of believing your own press (or the press that you’re producing).

“I give you my word that I never tried, by means of a speech, to arouse either indignation or compassion, either ill-will or hatred, in the minds of a tribunal, without being really stirred myself, as I worked upon their minds, by the very feelings to which I was seeking to prompt them.”

But showing your character (and having character to show) is an essential part of Cicero’s approach to persuasion. Though he was prepared to fudge character where necessary.

“Now feelings are won over by a man’s merit, achievements or reputable life, qualifications easier to embellish, if only they are real, than to fabricate where non-existent… Moreover so much is done by good taste and style in speaking, that the speech seems to depict the speaker’s character. For by means of particular types of thought and diction, and the employment besides of a delivery that is unruffled and eloquent of good-nature, the speakers are made to appear upright, well-bred and virtuous men.”

But virtue is important, because bad people can use oratory to bad ends.

“For if we put the full resources of speech at the disposal of those who lack these virtues, we will certainly not make orators of them, but will put weapons into the hands of madmen”

Here’s how Paul shows that he really lives, and believes, his message, when he again defends his lack of eloquence in 2 Corinthians 10-13.

He defends his ministry as a triumph of ethos over the eloquence of the “super apostles” – even though he can out apostle the super apostles. He makes it clear that imitating Christ means being prepared to imitate Christ for others, here are a couple of what I think are the important bits that make this case… in Paul’s reluctant string of boasting in 2 Cor 11:

²³Are they servants of Christ? I am a better one—I am talking like a madman—with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death. ²⁴Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. ²⁵Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; ²⁶on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles,danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers;²⁷in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. ²⁸And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches. ²⁹Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to fall, and I am not indignant?

³⁰If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness.

And 2 Cor 12:

⁹But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. ¹⁰For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

¹¹I have been a fool! You forced me to it, for I ought to have been commended by you. For I was not at all inferior to these super-apostles, even though I am nothing.

What Ethos based gospel persuasion looks like

Paul lives his message. I’d argue this is what he calls all Christians to imitate – demonstrating the strength of the gospel in our weakness. Imitating the crucified Jesus.

But he also knows and speaks his message appropriately to his circumstances. I’m not sure this skill is transferrable to all people everywhere, this certainly isn’t the case from experience. This is where I think the evangelist role might kick in – people who are skilled in speaking and persuading people regardless of their background.

For the Corinthians, whose ethos was broken by their pursuit of status-boosting eloquence, he resolved to know nothing but Christ, and present him plainly.

At the Areopagus (Acts 17), he quoted poets, turned his audience against each other by pointing out the philosophical differences between Stoics and Epicureans, and appeared to stick to the conventions of presenting a new God to the Areopagus for their consideration.

When he was in front of a Jewish council, he turned Pharisee and Sadducee against each other because he knew his audience, and knew how to communicate with them.

When he’s talking to Agrippa in Acts 26, he appears to obey the legal rhetorical conventions while also trying to convert the king (Festus, who’s hanging out, listening – says Paul has “great learning”):

²⁴At this point Festus interrupted Paul’s defense. “You are out of your mind, Paul!” he shouted. “Your great learning is driving you insane.”

²⁵“I am not insane, most excellent Festus,” Paul replied. “What I am saying is true and reasonable. ²⁶The king is familiar with these things, and I can speak freely to him. I am convinced that none of this has escaped his notice, because it was not done in a corner.²⁷King Agrippa, do you believe the prophets? I know you do.”

²⁸Then Agrippa said to Paul, “Do you think that in such a short time you can persuade me to be a Christian?”

²⁹Paul replied, “Short time or long—I pray to God that not only you but all who are listening to me today may become what I am, except for these chains.”

Paul uses legal and religious trials, philosophical speeches, and political engagement to present the gospel of Jesus to his audience.

This is evangelism par excellence. I don’t think Christians fail to be Christians when they don’t speak about Jesus at their school council meetings. But I think an evangelist is failing to use their gifts if they can, but don’t.

It’s interesting that this was also the way the early church saw apologetics – both Tertullian and Justin Martyr wrote to the Roman Empire, basically asking for a fairer go for Christians, and each of them (partly to make the case that Christianity wasn’t dangerous), spelled out the gospel for their readers.

There’s an interesting objection to this view of what’s going on for Paul – the idea that he’s a specially gifted orator, based on Paul’s own words in 2 Corinthians 11:6:

“⁶Even if I am unskilled in speaking, I am not so in knowledge; indeed, in every way we have made this plain to you in all things.”

There are a few cool, and convincing responses to this.

First – the “even if” isn’t really a concession, he’s simply dealing with the criticism that has been made about him – that he writes like a rhetorician, but speaks weakly.

Second – when he says “unskilled in speaking,” the Greek underlying this is transliterally, “idiot” – and it conventionally referred to people who were trained in rhetoric but weren’t professional orators.

Third, and perhaps more important, Paul is placing a high price on knowledge, and plain speaking – Cicero did too. He suggested you couldn’t be a good orator without either.

On plain speaking:

“…let us select as our models those who enjoy unimpaired health, (which is peculiar to the Attic orators,) rather than those whose abundance is vicious, of whom Asia has produced numbers. And in doing this (if at least we can manage even this, for it is a mighty undertaking) let us imitate, if we can, Lysias, and especially his simplicity of style: for in many places he rises to grandeur. But because he wrote speeches for many private causes, and those too for others, and on very trifling subjects, he appears to be somewhat simple, because he has designedly filed himself down to the standard of the inconsiderable causes which he was pleading.”

On knowledge:

“Yet I maintain that such eloquence as Crassus and Antonius attained could never have been realized without a knowledge of every matter.”

Ethos-based persuasion and evangelism

Interestingly, Dickson picks up on this when it comes to how he defines an evangelist.

First, a bit of a word study to show that evangelism and oratory basically went hand in hand (as, did apologetics).

In the ancient world the noun “gospel” (euangelion) and its verb “telling the gospel” (euangelizomai) were media terms. They always referred to the announcement of happy or important events. News of military victories, national achievements, weddings, births and, in one ancient text, the bargain price of anchovies at the marketplace were all called “gospels”. The modern media term “newsflash” probably comes closest in meaning to the ancient word gospel…

The most well-known “gospels” proclaimed in the ancient world were those announcing the emperors’ achievements. The caesars’ ascensions, conquests and political deeds were all the subject of the gospels of the empire. “Gospel” was very much an imperial term in the period of the New Testament.

His definition of “evangelist” follows this definition of the good news…

“The word literally means gospeller, that is, one who announces the gospel. The term seems to have been coined by the first Christians (it appears nowhere else in Greek literature before the New Testament) as a shorthand way of referring to those in the church who took on the task of proclaiming the life, death and resurrection of God’s Messiah (the gospel) to those for whom this message was still news”

And he doesn’t rule out the option of having gospel conversations with the people you’re in relationships with (so I can’t see how it’s possible he rules out personal evangelism).

In reality, most of our opportunities to speak about Christianity will occur in passing, in the to-and-fro of daily conversation. It should not surprise us, then, that the two clearest passages in the Bible calling on all believers to speak up for the Lord urge them simply to “answer” for the faith—to respond to people’s comments, questions or criticisms with a gentle and gracious reply (Colossians 4:5—6 and 1 Peter 3:15). Most Christians are not “evangelists” (in the technical, New Testament sense of the word) and should not be made to feel the pressure to be something they are not. The Scriptures certainly urge us all to be open about our faith whenever opportunity allows, but doing “the work of an evangelist” (2 Timothy 4:5) is something God’s Word asks only of some of us.

But here’s the fourth characteristic he identifies for an evangelist (after desire to proclaim Jesus, ability to relate well to people, and Christian maturity).

“An evangelist will be clear with the gospel. I do not just mean clear about what the gospel is-hopefully, that will be all of us. I am talking about clarity in outlining the gospel. This point arises directly from the word “evangelist” itself. A “gospeller” must be particularly able to explain the message plainly. I am not talking about having a gift of the gab or even being an extrovert-clarity does not always go with these. I am talking specifically about an ability to take the truths of the gospel and make them plain to others (key here will be an ability to talk about Christ without jargon, in the everyday language of those who don’t believe).”

I think there’s a good case to be made that there is a specific role within the body of Christ for people who are skilled as modern day orators and keen to use those skills sacrificially, as a gift for others and in an act of worship to God. And I don’t see why you wouldn’t call that role “evangelist.”

I wonder if the pay off, for those championing every member evangelism, is that orators were built for imitation – both Paul and Cicero say it’s important to pick who you imitate. And imitation, of good models, will boost the quality of gospel engagement with the world across the board. Our corporate ability to know and tell the gospel – our logos and pathos – will improve if we recognise, equip, and imitate the right people, and work at knowing complex truths and speaking them plainly.

But the pressure is off, a little bit, at least for evangelism, for those who are worried about not having the right skills for doing the logos and pathos stuff well. Because without a Christ shaped ethos – and a good corporate ethos within the Church – our words are powerless. Our rhetorical triangle is flat, or a point with no foundation.

If we focus on doing the much harder work on getting our character, or ethos, to imitate Paul, but more importantly – to imitate Jesus, that’s going to communicate the gospel clearer than any words we speak – and the words we speak will be much more powerful if we, and others in the body of Christ, are consistent with the way we live, both individually and corporately.

November 24, 2012

What if this was your last month on earth?

The Mayan Calendar reckons we’ve got a month until something really big happens. Either the world ends with some sort of cataclysmic bang or whimper, or the beginning of a new world order.

Image Credit: Sevenstreets.com: The radio cast of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy performing at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe

I think, frankly, that’s a load of bollocks. I don’t think the world is going to end in a month. I’m not planning to run out of food, or money, and I’m still thinking about the good things I want to do next year, and in the future.

But I also think, frankly, that there are no guarantees that the world won’t end next month, next week, or tomorrow. It’s pretty clear, if you listen to the Greens, some scientists, or the weird guy at the train station, that our ability to live on this planet is finite, and things are going to come to an end sooner or later – some say sooner, some say later.

It’s also pretty clear, if you are a Christian, that we should be living like the end is near. Because it might be. And because that shapes our priorities in a really helpful way. Knowing that tomorrow could be it, means you spend today on what’s important.

So what if we had a month to go? How would you spend your last 30 days on earth? How would you spend the last 30 minutes?

For some people, getting ready means fleeing to a mountain in France. Sadly, the French government is getting in the way. But how do you get ready if you know the earth is a fleeting mist?

What Jesus says

In Matthew 24 Jesus talks a bit about the end of the world as we know it… and what that means for people who think he’s the promised Messiah, from the Old Testament, God’s chosen king (that’s what messiah means), and what it means for the world – if he is the king, he’s king of the world.

He says, just to make it clear that there’s a bit of urgency in deciding who he is:

³⁶“But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.

It could be tomorrow.

⁴²“Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come.⁴³But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. ⁴⁴So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.

He’s speaking mostly to his followers – he says you better make sure you’re not just off partying until your master suddenly returns. Because he’ll smash you, just like he’ll smash his enemies.

A little earlier in Matthew 24, Jesus makes it pretty clear what’s involved in waiting for the end, if you believe he’s who he said he is…

¹³but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved. ¹⁴And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.

Interestingly, he also somewhat figuratively, talks about fleeing to the mountains as legitimate. So there you go. French government… take heed…

“¹⁶then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains”

But it’s the other two bits – the standing firm to the end, and the gospel being preached to all nations, that are the important part of the response to knowing the world could end.

This preaching, in particular, becomes the mission of his followers a couple of pages in the Bible later, in Matthew 28, after Jesus has been killed, and, to prove he is who he says he is, been raised. That’s the evidence he offers for his claim – it’s the truth that Christianity is built on. And Jesus says now that you’ve seen who I am, that I am the king… this is a little passage called the “Great Commission”…

¹⁸Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. ¹⁹Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

So, I hope the answer, if you’re a Christian, is that you’d do lots of this in those last 30 days – excited by the prospect that Jesus is king, and wanting people to know that so they avoid the pain of not being one of his people.

What Paul says (for those who don’t believe Jesus is king)

But what about if you don’t believe Jesus is king, or that aliens are going to blast off from a mountain in France? What do you do in those last days? Paul has one answer, when it comes to whether or not you think the resurrection happened – which is what Jesus’ claim to be king hangs on, he says if you don’t believe – and that’s up to you – then this is what you should do, in 1 Corinthians 15:

“Let us eat and drink,
for tomorrow we die.”

I love how Paul sums up what Christians are hoping for, at the end of the world here – the future for all people, dead and alive, who follow Jesus.

⁵¹Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— ⁵²in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. ⁵³For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. ⁵⁴When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”

⁵⁵“Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?”

⁵⁶The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. ⁵⁷But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

What I think is incredibly cool is that his advice for how to live in the light of this is exactly the same as Jesus’ advice – so much for the idea that “Paul invented Christianity”…

⁵⁸Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.

What’s the work of the Lord – that’d be the stuff Jesus said in the “Great Commission” – the job he, the Lord, gave those who believe he was raised.

I like that we’re meant to live like the world’s going to end next month every month.

November 22, 2012

Russell Brand meets Westboro Baptist

This is weird.

Via 22 Words.

This highlights some of the weird problems with this debate. You’ve got Russell Brand essentially, at one point, equating love with wanting to kiss someone on the mouth (for cheap laughs), and generally suggesting that tolerance and love trumps understanding what sin is – and you’ve got the Westboro Baptist guys who are trying to be loving by proclaiming sin in an incredibly unloving and insensitive way. Why they go to Leviticus, and not to the New Testament, Jesus, and the created order, is beyond me. Especially if they eat prawns.

Christianity’s branding problem out of Russell Brand’s mouth:

“I just feel, from what I’ve read of Jesus, and what I’ve had explained to me, is that his main message was tolerance, and love, and beauty, and acceptance.”

I thought his main message was:

“Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand”

So sadly, the Westboro Baptist guys are closer to the mark – Jesus’ main message was that he is Lord, and that access to God is through him…

November 21, 2012

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