Category: Christianity

How to get good media coverage for your ministry: Be alarmingly loving, for the purpose of being alarmingly loving

As I continue to think through the place of PR in Christian ministry I keep trying to find a balance between Matthew 6:1-4:

” 1 “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.
2 “So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 3 But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”

And 1 Peter 2:12…

“12 Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.”

… John 13:34-35…

” 34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

… Philippians 2:1-4, 12-15

“1 Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2 then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. 3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, 4 not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others… 12 Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, 13 for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.
14 Do everything without grumbling or arguing, 15 so that you may become blameless and pure, “children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.” Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky “

I’m wary of prooftexting to justify a particular behaviour – but it seems to me that there’s a balance in the New Testament, which in some sense follows the model of “mission” I think operates in the Old, where the way Christians live, and particularly, the way they love others, is the basis of our testimony, or at least our being noticed as different, and getting a hearing for the gospel.

I think the tension in Matthew 6 is there, but as I think I’ve said elsewhere, what seems to be the focus in that passage is when you’re doing loving things just to be noticed. Just when the spotlight is on. Just for the goodwill. And just for your own reputation. It seems to me that if we’re doing loving things that are consistent with our character, and more importantly, consistent with the gospel, and consistent with considering others better than ourselves, then some sort of interaction with the media may be part of participating in the modern “public sphere.”

Part of my understanding of both the media, and the internet, is that it has in a sense supplanted the marketplace of Acts 17, where Paul took his preaching of the gospel. And participating in the media, or the marketplace, means having a story, and good public relations means this story should be something that is closely tied to the gospel.

There’s nothing more closely tied to the gospel than selfless sacrifice for the sake of others in response to the love of Jesus. It’s also very hard to criticise that sort of behaviour. This is a pretty long preamble to draw your attention to this incredible story published in the SMH’s weekend magazine, and reproduced online.

This is the kind of story that gets noticed.

 

It’s a fair bet that if Jesus Christ were around today, he’d be doing what the Owens are doing in Mount Druitt. They feed the poor and house the homeless. They lead the lost and counsel the conflicted.

Experts at unconditional love

They’re experts at unconditional love: alcoholic mums, runaway kids, petty thieves, everyone’s welcome at the Owens’ home, a four-bedroom brick house that for the past five years has been equal parts street kitchen and safe house, as well as a home for their daughters Kshama, 8, and Kiera, 7.

“The most we’ve had here is 13 people,” Jon says, showing me around the cramped, single-storey home, the floors of which are strewn with sheets and sleeping bags. “They crash on the couches, on the floor. It’s busy, but it’s fun, too, especially at dinner time.”

To make space, Kiera sleeps in Jon and Lisa’s room. Kshama is in an adjoining space, which is really just her parents’ walk-in wardrobe. Jaz, an 18-year-old girl whom the Owens unofficially adopted last year, recently got her own room, so she could study for the HSC.

Wow.

“I grew up in a family where following God was just another part of the Aussie dream, where you have a house in the suburbs, make enough money to relax, mow your lawn and cook your roast on Sunday.” As part of the theology course, however, Jon studied a section of the Bible called The Prophets, with one book, Amos, striking a chord. “At one point God says, ‘Take away from Me the noise of your songs; I will not even listen to the sound of your harps.’ I remember thinking, ‘That’s all I do; I go to church and sing songs.’ ”…

His father had always stressed career and professional success. “But Jesus was not about material wealth,” Jon says. “The guy was all about intentional downward mobility! And I realised that what I really wanted was to do something significant in this world, not just piss around at the edges.”These days, however, they live without all that, without fancy food or flash cars or overseas holidays. They relax by watching TV, by listening to Leonard Cohen – Jon is also partial to Sarah Blasko – by cooking or going to the park with their kids. (Monday is “family day”, when Kshama and Kiera get their undivided attention. “Monday is sacred,” Jon says. “That and eating together as a family.”)

Jon allows himself one cigarette on the back porch at night. Neither of them drinks, because they don’t want to support an industry they believe causes so much damage. And yet they are ridiculously, implausibly happy. “Life’s good,” Jon likes to say.

“We’re driven by our faith,” Lisa explains. “I believe that as I respond to people I’m responding to Jesus, because I believe that Jesus is in all of us.”

The full story is heaps bigger. I’m not sure I completely agree with some of the stuff they say, or do. But it’s pretty radical. Noticable. And incredibly hard to criticise.

January 24, 2012

Thank God for the Salvos’ advertising campaign

Love this ad. Brilliant gospel focused campaign from a much loved Christian brand.

January 18, 2012

Video games as pro-God propaganda

Two pieces have piqued my interest today. Unrelated, but related. The first, from Overthinking It, questions whether video games, by their nature, inspire belief in a creator.

Now, I’ve given up on taking part in apologetics debates online, and mostly on the need to convince people of God’s existence using science and philosophy. It’s not that I don’t find the arguments convincing, it’s just that I think that the gospel is more than fancy logic, and people aren’t going to be argued into believing it (though such arguments might be part of conversion).

Anyway. This is interesting because it considers Christian apologetics from the perspective of a video gamer, who seems to be more interested in philosophy than religion.

Here’s a longish extract.

““It was incredible,” you say. “I mean, if anything had been just a little different – if those question blocks hadn’t been exactly where they were, or if there hadn’t been those Piranha Plants and that Propeller Cap inside but, let’s say, a Fire Flower instead, I’d never have been able to get those star coins! Everything was arranged so perfectly, so precisely. It really makes you think it was all put there on purpose, you know? Like it was designed.”

Luigi, ever the skeptic, replies: “But if things weren’t the way that they are, they’d just be some other way instead. Maybe in that case you’d be raving about how unlikely that was. Or you wouldn’t have known there was any star coin there at all and you would have just kept on going.”

The argument Mario and Luigi are having here is what’s known in philosophy as the Anthropic Principle. In one certain formulation, the Anthropic Principle puts forth the idea that the laws of the universe and the particular circumstances of our place in it seem so precisely modeled to bring about the necessary conditions for intelligent life – so fine-tuned that if any one element had been just a little different it would be impossible for human beings to exist – that it indicates a Creator who intentionally made things this way in order to bring us about in the way that we are. Basically, it’s an argument for the existence of God. That’s what Mario is proposing and it’s often referred to as the Strong Anthropic Principle. Luigi’s point is that the appearance of design is no proof of design, because if things were different enough that we couldn’t exist to observe them, we wouldn’t be around to notice. So we don’t exist “on purpose,” but since the universe happens to be the way that it is, it just happens to be possible that we exist too.”

The article goes in pretty interesting directions after that. It’s worth reading.

The second article was from a Christian gamer, writing at Christ and Pop Culture, reflecting on the Skyrim experience, and the treatment of “theology” present in the latest, greatest, RPG.

“As I was exploring Skyrim, I was attacked by a band of cultists dedicated to the god “Boethiah.” Upon defeating them, I learned of the location of their cult and out of curiousity, decided to go investigate it. When I found the priestess of Boethiah, I learned that the cultists had been luring innocent people to their shrine and killing them in worship of their god.

There was no option to report the cult to the governing authorities, so I decided it was time to bring some vigilante justice to these murderers. I carefully planned out each of my attacks and took out each of the 6 cultists who were stationed near the shrine. Just as I took down the last one and was beginning to feel as though I had done something good to protect the innocent citizens of Skyrim, my screen blurred and I heard a voice from the heavens shouting, ”WHY HAVE YOU KILLED MY SERVANTS!”

It was disturbing to say the least. In a moment, a god, who in my mind only existed as a cultural artifact, came to life. I couldn’t have a detached relationship to Boethia because in the world of Skyrim, he actually exists and I found myself face to face with him.”

Fun stuff. But ignore all this, because video games are stupid (at least according to some).

January 5, 2012

Ba Broom Tiff: Priests go hammer and tongs with broom sticks

That heading sounds like the punch line to some sort of joke. But this story is true, though not really in the spirit of Christmas. Some Orthodox and Armenian priests were cleaning the Temple of the Nativity in Bethlehem. One thing led to another. And they started hitting each other with broomsticks.

Higher quality video footage would lend itself to a Star Wars remix – the guys are already in robes.

Gary has his take on the matters at hand here. Via BoingBoing.

December 29, 2011

How the Reformation went viral

The 95 Theses were the beginning of a social media campaign which went viral. This is an interesting take on the Reformation – but hear it out.


Image Credit: Art.com (you can buy this as a print)

Does social media cause change?

The Reformation, like the revolution in a famous Malcolm Gladwell piece, may or may not have been fuelled by social media. Or Luther’s equivalent. Propaganda 1.0.

Here’s Gladwell’s summary of the argument he doesn’t agree with.

“The world, we are told, is in the midst of a revolution. The new tools of social media have reinvented social activism. With Facebook and Twitter and the like, the traditional relationship between political authority and popular will has been upended, making it easier for the powerless to collaborate, coördinate, and give voice to their concerns.”

Gladwell thinks it is high risk activism that brings change – rather than “social media” – but this is a bit of a category error. He thinks people are trying to argue that social media is the basis of activism rather than a channel for communication, and he’s dismissive of “one-click” activism (as am I – especially in the form of awareness raising).

“Boycotts and sit-ins and nonviolent confrontations—which were the weapons of choice for the civil-rights movement—are high-risk strategies. They leave little room for conflict and error. The moment even one protester deviates from the script and responds to provocation, the moral legitimacy of the entire protest is compromised. Enthusiasts for social media would no doubt have us believe that King’s task in Birmingham would have been made infinitely easier had he been able to communicate with his followers through Facebook, and contented himself with tweets from a Birmingham jail. But networks are messy: think of the ceaseless pattern of correction and revision, amendment and debate, that characterizes Wikipedia. If Martin Luther King, Jr., had tried to do a wiki-boycott in Montgomery, he would have been steamrollered by the white power structure. And of what use would a digital communication tool be in a town where ninety-eight per cent of the black community could be reached every Sunday morning at church? The things that King needed in Birmingham—discipline and strategy—were things that online social media cannot provide.”

Activism, be it Martin Luther King’s rallies, or Martin Luther’s nailing of 95 theses to the Wittenburg Door as a highly symbolic and evocative PR stunt, requires both a medium and a message. Further, this package requires channels and connections by which it is transmitted. Which is where social media comes in now, and where the virality of the reformation and its use of social media gets interesting. This is where Gladwell’s piece is perhaps too dismissive of the technology.

The Reformation went viral

The Reformation was another grassroots protest movement, which according to this fascinating history published in the Economist, which is wonderfully rendered and somewhat persuasive, was aided by the social media of its time.

“It is a familiar-sounding tale: after decades of simmering discontent a new form of media gives opponents of an authoritarian regime a way to express their views, register their solidarity and co-ordinate their actions. The protesters’ message spreads virally through social networks, making it impossible to suppress and highlighting the extent of public support for revolution. The combination of improved publishing technology and social networks is a catalyst for social change where previous efforts had failed.

That’s what happened in the Arab spring. It’s also what happened during the Reformation, nearly 500 years ago, when Martin Luther and his allies took the new media of their day—pamphlets, ballads and woodcuts—and circulated them through social networks to promote their message of religious reform.”

Luther understood something of the way to spread his message via the media of his day. The response to his initial PR stunt was a bit of a “tipping point” to borrow another Gladwellian phrase.

“The unintentional but rapid spread of the “95 Theses” alerted Luther to the way in which media passed from one person to another could quickly reach a wide audience. “They are printed and circulated far beyond my expectation,” he wrote in March 1518 to a publisher in Nuremberg who had published a German translation of the theses. But writing in scholarly Latin and then translating it into German was not the best way to address the wider public. Luther wrote that he “should have spoken far differently and more distinctly had I known what was going to happen.” For the publication later that month of his “Sermon on Indulgences and Grace”, he switched to German, avoiding regional vocabulary to ensure that his words were intelligible from the Rhineland to Saxony. The pamphlet, an instant hit, is regarded by many as the true starting point of the Reformation.”

Luther’s message went viral, between 6 and 7 million pamphlets were circulating in German speaking nations…

“Unlike larger books, which took weeks or months to produce, a pamphlet could be printed in a day or two. Copies of the initial edition, which cost about the same as a chicken, would first spread throughout the town where it was printed. Luther’s sympathisers recommended it to their friends. Booksellers promoted it and itinerant colporteurs hawked it. Travelling merchants, traders and preachers would then carry copies to other towns, and if they sparked sufficient interest, local printers would quickly produce their own editions, in batches of 1,000 or so, in the hope of cashing in on the buzz. A popular pamphlet would thus spread quickly without its author’s involvement.

As with “Likes” and retweets today, the number of reprints serves as an indicator of a given item’s popularity. Luther’s pamphlets were the most sought after; a contemporary remarked that they “were not so much sold as seized”. His first pamphlet written in German, the “Sermon on Indulgences and Grace”, was reprinted 14 times in 1518 alone, in print runs of at least 1,000 copies each time. Of the 6,000 different pamphlets that were published in German-speaking lands between 1520 and 1526, some 1,700 were editions of a few dozen works by Luther. In all, some 6m-7m pamphlets were printed in the first decade of the Reformation, more than a quarter of them Luther’s.”

December 27, 2011

50 Apps for your Christmas iPad

Did you get an iPad for Christmas? I’ve had my iPad for a while now, and I’ve started to sort out the dross from the gold. Here are my favourites from a range of categories to get you going.

It really is a sensational device.

Reading Stuff

1. Reeder – best RSS reader, hands down.
2. GoodReader – great for PDF reading and annotating – terrific for essay writing.
3. Instapaper – curate your own longform articles from around the web to build your own magazine.
4. Zite – is an automated magazine service that finds articles based on your interests.
5. Flipboard – turns your social media channels (including google reader) into a magazine.
6. Kindle – Get Amazon’s range of e-books on your iPad.
7. Stumbleupon – click your way around interesting links in areas you’re interested in.
8. Google Currents – See what’s hot in Google.
9. Pinterest – another app for finding fun stuff on the interwebs. Populated mostly by crafty mums.

Photo Stuff

1. Instagram – I’d rather shoot photos with my iPhone camera, but the iPad app is great for checking out the social photostream (you can follow me, my username is nmcampbell, my feed is mainly photos of coffee and my daughter).
2. Phoster – makes cool posters.
3. Diptic – Stitch photos together in artistic ways.
4. Process – apply filters to your photos (not quite the same as Instagram) with the tap of a button.
5. Poly – Uses the power of maths to make polygon styled pictures. Kind of fun.
6. Photoshop Express – a nice lightweight photo editor from Adobe.
7. Grid Lens – is kind of fun, makes an instant diptic style collage (as in you take a bunch of shots at once, or with a slight delay. Clever.
8. Snapseed – I just bought this, and haven’t had a chance to play with it much yet.
9. ColorSplash – edit black and white photos with a splash of colour.

Social

1. Facebook
2. Twitter
3. Path – a journal type thing where you can keep track of your movements, meals, and meetings, in a social way.
4. Beanhunter – find and review cafes everywhere.
5. Foursquare – let people know where you are and if you like it.
6. UrbanSpoon – find a restaurant and review it.
7. Stamped – review anything. Places. Books. Movies.

Utilities

1. Dropbox
2. Evernote
3. Bump – share files between iOS devices with a physical shake or “bump”…
4. Bluetooth Photo Share – great for giving gran some photos on her iPad.
5. Blogsy – nice multi-featured blogging software.
6. Google App
7. Remote – control your apple gear

Games

1. Angry Birds – But you already know this…
2. Stick Wars – Tower defence with stick figures.
3. Fruit Ninja – Slice and dice flying fruit.
4. Words with Friends
5. Scrabble – for the traditionalists
5. The Sims – I just downloaded this.
6. Wolfenstein 3D – A dose of nostalgia
7. NBA Jam – another dash of nostalgia. Great port from the SNES.

Music

1. Shazam – hear a new song, Shazam will tell you what it is.
2. Garageband – mix and mash your own music.
3. I am T-Pain – Autotune everything
4. Songify – speak music

Bible/College stuff

1. ESV
2. YouVersion – multiple translations at the tap of a finger
3. Logos – get your Logos library on the go
4. Vyrso – the book reader from Logos
5. Complete Class Organiser – Take notes, keep track of your timetable, and record lectures in one app
6. Greek Reader’s Lexicon – nice Greek app by Sam Freney
7. QuickCite – scan book barcodes get bibliography details by email.

That’s a bunch of apps – have I missed any?

December 26, 2011

Merry Christmas

What does Christmas have in common with a seven-headed dragon?

Ever wondered why the birth of baby Jesus so long ago is still a big deal? Here’s a nativity scene that doesn’t get preached on all that much in Christmas services, from Revelation chapter 12. It’s what’s going down in a figurative sense in the person of Jesus.

1 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. 2 She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. 3 Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on its heads. 4 Its 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. 5 She gave birth to a son, a male child, who “will rule all the nations with an iron scepter.” And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne. 6 The woman fled into the wilderness to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days.

7 Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. 8 But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. 9 The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.

10 Then 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.
11 They 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.
12 Therefore rejoice, you heavens
and you who dwell in them!
But woe to the earth and the sea,
because the devil has gone down to you!
He is filled with fury,
because he knows that his time is short.”

Jesus wins. Why this passage isn’t at the top of the Christmas pile is beyond me. I reckon a Christmas lights diorama of this passage installed at your church would win all sorts of prizes.

December 25, 2011

The Third Eagle responds to Colbert…

Again on the Denver airport mural…

December 18, 2011

Nine Christmas Videos to get you in the mood

Are you a Grinch? Snap out of it.

Calvin’s snowmen get a realistic 3D run…

Troy and Abed rap about infiltrating Christmas…

This is good when the kid starts singing… (just noticed that Findo posted this today too)

Some New Zealand kids tell the Christmas story…

A Christmas medley…

Canada is a small town. My Canadian friends from college are from pretty much the same place as this guy… it looks cold.

This whole street synchronised their Christmas lights.

Some dubstep Christmas lights…

Jimmy Kimmel’s funny Christmas parenting challenge (picking up where his Halloween challenge left off)…

December 18, 2011

Holy posthumous hagiography Batman: Reflections on the “Christian” response to the death of Christopher Hitchens

Seriously internet. Get a grip.

Christopher Hitchens died today. He was a brilliant and acerbic polemicist who played pretty free and easy with exactly what historically orthodox, Bible based Christianity looks like in his most popular work God Is Not Good, but he was by all accounts a charming, debonair, raconteur type who meant what he said, and said what he thought, in a manner that belied his significant gifts. By all accounts, including his own, his battle with cancer was difficult, but he conducted himself with the poise, gravitas, and wit that endeared him to readers around the world.

But he was committed to remaining an atheist to the end. Committed to maintaining his rage against God (incidentally the title of the book his brother Peter wrote when explaining why he returned to faith). Now, Hitchens had plenty of Christian influence in his life – his brother, his travelling debate compadre Douglas Wilson, and Francis Collins, the head of the human genome project, and founder of Biologos, who took a personal interest in his treatment for the nasty cancer which ended his life too soon. Hitchens also clearly understood the gospel he was rejecting – his pointed criticisms of Christian liberalism make it clear that he knew what the Christian faith entailed. And that he rejected it deliberately, defiantly, and with some style and wit.

Here’s his definition of Christianity:

“I would say that if you don’t believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ and Messiah, and that he rose again from the dead and by his sacrifice our sins are forgiven, you’re really not in any meaningful sense a Christian.”

He was in enough debates with enough Christians that he had a fair idea of what it was he was arguing against (even if he chose to misrepresent it for the sake of some polemical point scoring).

So why. Pray tell. Are we Christians so committed to articulating a hope that Hitchens magically renounced his skepticism at the very last? Certainly it is our hope. But should we not take the man at his word. His last words, incidentally, took the form of a requiem for the atheist dream, throwing down the gauntlet to challenge Nietzsche, one of the grandfathers of the modern atheist movement, and particularly his somewhat facile maxim that whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Hitchens was wrong to dismiss that saying – because the cancer killed him in the end. And the only thing that doesn’t kill a human, at least in the Biblical account of humanity, is faith in Christ, by which we have a much more hopeful outlook than either Hitchens or Nietzshe…

“Before I was diagnosed with esophageal cancer a year and a half ago, I rather jauntily told the readers of my memoirs that when faced with extinction I wanted to be fully conscious and awake, in order to “do” death in the active and not the passive sense. And I do, still, try to nurture that little flame of curiosity and defiance: willing to play out the string to the end and wishing to be spared nothing that properly belongs to a life span. However, one thing that grave illness does is to make you examine familiar principles and seemingly reliable sayings. And there’s one that I find I am not saying with quite the same conviction as I once used to: In particular, I have slightly stopped issuing the announcement that “Whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.”

The Christian attempt to respond to the death of an interlocutor by extending grace to them, and naming them as potentially one of the saints, is nobly intended, but was odd when Steve Jobs died. And is downright insane when it comes to Hitchens. I’m not saying God couldn’t have come knocking on Hitchens’ door, but there is simply no indication that he changed his mind at the last (and he precluded such with a particularly pointed statement just months ago). Despite what Doug Wilson’s much lauded eulogy on Christianity Today might suggest. So while I hope Hitchens found the peace that faith in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus brings – I’m not going to chuck him a halo and a white robe just in case. But I’m not sure why the Christian blogosphere embraces the hagiographic eulogy in these times. The most gracious way to let an atheist go out is to let them go out acknowledging that they were defiant to the end (Matt Stone says something similar but with more brevity), that they, unlike many others – considered the questions of eternity, and their own mortality, and in the words of Hitchens, looked death in the face bravely (but stupidly), these were his last published words.

“So far, I have decided to take whatever my disease can throw at me, and to stay combative even while taking the measure of my inevitable decline. I repeat, this is no more than what a healthy person has to do in slower motion. It is our common fate. In either case, though, one can dispense with facile maxims that don’t live up to their apparent billing.”

December 16, 2011

SandBible.com does Christmas

Some very talented friends of mine are working through the gospel stories. In sand. I posted the Easter one last Easter. This Christmas one is equally sensational – and a really accessible and engaging presentation of the good news of Christmas.

We used it at our Carols night at Scots on Sunday and it worked. Get the full versions for a small price (it takes days of work to put these together) from sandbible.com.

December 13, 2011

Forging disciples and Japanese sword making

Sword making fascinates me. Proper sword making. Not those novelty blades you buy at cheap markets and in trinket shops. It’s so tactile. There’s something romantic about a forge and the hammering of red hot metal. But its archaic at the same time. And pointless (pun intended). Nobody runs around with swords any more. Except ninjas.

Korehira Watanabe makes Japanese swords. He’s trying to recreate a legendary blade by feel, without instructions.

Handmade Portraits: The Sword Maker from Etsy on Vimeo.

From the Etsy Blog:

Korehira Watanabe is one of the last remaining Japanese swordsmiths. He has spent 40 years honing his craft in an attempt to recreate Koto, a type of sword that dates back to the Heian and Kamakura periods (794-1333 AD). No documents remain to provide context for Watanabe’s quest, but he believes he has come close to creating a replica of this mythical samurai sword.

He’s motivated by handing down a tradition. And he says this cool thing about his disciple.

“I want my disciple to surpass me as a swordmaker. It is my duty to build up a disciple who is better than me. Otherwise the tradition will wear thin with time.”

That’s a nice difference between being in business for yourself, and being in business because you love what you do, or because you feel vocationally called to preserve a tradition or truth.

Here’s a previous post about a Taiwanese swordsmith.

December 11, 2011

When the juxtaposition of “Schoolies” and “viral” is a good thing…

So. Schoolies week, for international readers and old people (lets face it – both of you are a minority in terms of the readership here) is a week where young school leavers traditionally do stupid stuff with alcohol. Scripture Union do a pretty awesome job of running camps for people who want to remember the week. I went. Back when I was a schoolie. Some people reading this were on the camp with me.

Anyways. This year SU Schoolies has gone viral with one of their nightly entertainment products (they have a variety show each night) – a parody of Party Rock Anthem – getting abundant media coverage (see Sunrise and ACA) and over 200,000 hits so far.

It’s a bit bizarre – my Facebook feed is filled with it. Which is to be expected given several of my Facebook friends were involved with the camp, are involved with SU, or made the video… but equally bizarre is that former colleagues and people I know who work in local government are posting it too. That’s the anatomy of a viral success.

So congrats to SU and the guys behind the video. They are, I think, the most famous YouTubers I know.

December 9, 2011

Those Mormon ads, and how to kill a high profile media campaign…

I just saw the first Mormon ad to feature high profile league player, and grand final winner with the mighty Manly Warringah Sea Eagles, Will Hopoate. Sharp. They’re a great ad for Manly. And, like all the ads in this campaign, are visually appealing and tightly produced.

There was a higher profile League star than Hopoate – Dizzy Izzy Folau. Israel has been out of the spotlight in the last year because he made a big money switch to AFL. To a team that doesn’t exist yet.

Luckily the Mormons didn’t feature Israel in their ads. Because he recently turned his back on the cult, publicly, during this campaign.

And here’s what he had to say… and that, friends, is how to harpoon a campaign.

“I had a personal experience with the holy spirit touching my heart,” Folau told AAP.

“I’ve never felt that before while I was involved in the Mormon church – until I came to the AOG church and accepted Christ.

“It’s been an amazing experience for me personally and I know a lot of people on the outside have been saying stuff about why we left.

“And some people (are) assuming that we left because of money, and all that sort of stuff.

“I know for myself that it wasn’t.

“But I guess at the moment, the people on the outside don’t really know the main reason why we left.”

The 22-year-old instigated the change himself after researching the history of Mormonism, and said the move was easy to make.

Folau’s friends have been understanding and supportive for the most part, but he admits it has been hard on a few of them.

God will play a large role in Folau’s life as he attempts to secure a berth in the Giants’ side for their season opener against Sydney.

December 4, 2011

Why your Youth Group needs to work on loving one another…

This is such a bizarre Christian propaganda movie…

December 1, 2011