Hey guess what. We can all walk around with our heads held high.
news.com.au is asking the question Has Guy made God cool Again?
I hang onto a lot of my clothes because I’m sure they’ll come back into fashion sooner or later, and now I’m glad I stayed connected with God because he’s cool again too. (Please excuse me, my cynicism is showing.)
I’m still trying to get over this virus that’s been attacking my body over the past week, while at the same time arranging a morning tea for 25 or so pastors and church leaders.
Tomorrow morning they’ll arrive at my place of work, The Bible Society of Western Australia, to experience a presentation of the Gospel of Mark. It’ll be presented by a guy named Noel Christian. You could say that Noel ‘recites’ the gospel but then you’d miss the essence of what he does.
His script is purely and simply the book of Mark, but Noel brings it to life in a very exciting way. He uses the King James Version, which normally would cause me to wonder about the presentation’s validity for today’s audience, but he manages to create a dramatic masterpiece. He holds people on the edge of their seats.
When he has presented it to secular audiences they have been amazed and made comments like, “Jesus is a more interesting guy than I realised” and even ” I didn’t know that the Bible was a spiritual book till now”.
Noel has been working within churches but I’m hoping to find more and more secular venues for him to perform. The idea of getting pastors etc. involved is to try to use local churches to facilitate this.
I know it’s long, but here’s a story that Noel quotes:
Once upon a time …
Early in 2002, Noel Christian was invited to present a number of short works in pubs for the wa fringe as part of the Festival Of Perth. At the time, he was well known in the secular world as a story-teller, oral poet and performer, and among Christian communities as a Biblical Storyteller. His sacred work had not, however, crossed the secular divide. On this occasion, he offered to present three secular pieces and an extract from The Gospel of Mark. The Festival had no objection, and so late one evening in January he delivered the opening chapters of Mark to about a hundred hardened drinkers, bohemians and artists in an inner city pub. This is what happened:
Three people shouted and yelled throughout the performance. Their language was intemperate and their attitude was aggressive.
Ten to fifteen people tried to hush them.
One person shouted them down because she wanted to listen.
A number of people smoked their cigarettes and sipped their drinks politely but were not interested in the performance.
Eighty people neither smoked nor drank, but sat breathless with fascination as they listened.
Three people came up afterward and said that the Bible was always worth hearing.
Five people came up afterward, each privately, and asked for assistance with prayer, spiritual guidance, and an insight into healing.
The gathering that night included artists, public servants, pagans, prostitutes, drug dealers, office workers, goths, poets, rock musicians, bikers, school teachers, building workers, the management team of WA Gay and Lesbian Pride, a Government Minister, and members of the Hotelier’s Association.
Hey, I know it’s short notice, but if you’re in the Perth area and want to be part of the morning tea, let me know. If you can’t make it but want to find out more, call me at The Bible Society in WA on (08) 9221 3488.
All over the world people just like us
Are calling Your name, living in Your love
All over the world people just like us
Are following Jesus
We sang this song during our Sunday service and I couldn’t help thinking, “Wouldn’t it be great if it wasn’t only people just like us that were following Jesus?”
Sure we have people from many walks of life in our churches, our fellowship has a very wide range of members, but there are still huge gaps among our churches in general. I’d love to see a wider mix of nationalities. I’d love to see broken people coming to know Jesus and having their lives transformed. I’d love to see more desperately poor people meeting Jesus. I’d love to see the sorts of people that Jesus mixed with while on earth meeting him today. Where are the prostitutes and tax collectors?
I love fellowshipping with people just like me but I’d love it even more if we were more effective in fellowshipping with people who are nothing at all like us, even if it is more uncomfortable at times.
I’ve got to admit that I don’t understand the big thing about a lot of current “Praise & Worship” music available today. I don’t have lots of CDs from the latest ‘hot church’ and really can’t get into a lot of what they’re serving up. Don’t get me wrong – there are a lot of such songs that I enjoy singing along to ‘at church’ (and others that I don’t) but it’s not really my style.
I used to wonder if this made me less spiritual because everyone else was into it.
Of course, not everyone else is into it, just the vast majority of the Christian population. Then again, going by album sales, the vast majority of the general population is into stuff like Craig David, Britney Spears, a variety of homogenous boy bands and lots of skinny young girls that all sound the same. I don’t see the attraction but that’s what ‘pop’ music is all about. Pop music is specifically designed to be attractive to the greatest amount of people possible. With that in mind I guess it’s OK that much of the current P&W music is the way it is because it is reaching and touching many people. I’m obviously just not one of them.
I want to listen to music that grabs me musically and challenges me lyrically in a way that this music doesn’t. If it does for you – great – but I find a lot of it bland and formula driven. (Just my personal taste.)
Over the last few days I’ve been re-listening to my collection of CDs by The Call – a moderately successful 80s and early 90s band. You might remember some of their songs like The Walls Came Down or Let the Day Begin. They never classed themselves as a ‘Christian’ band but their music causes me to stop and think. It causes me to re-evaluate my relationship with God and to feel deeply about stuff.
I’ll have to share some of their lyrics with you sometime but here’s a snippet from an article run in Contemporary Christian Music Magazine some years ago.
Though the Call is marginally connected with Christian music, Been’s not given to aligning himself with it. In fact, he says he never even heard of the Cornerstone Festival before The Call’s slot on the fest’s Encore stage in July.
“I’m not even aware of that world, really,” Been explains. “I found the Christian market to be a whole different culture, and I didn’t care for it very much. It hasn’t been very exciting or interesting or innovative, although I love Over the Rhine, Bruce Cockburn and Mark Heard. I just find it sad that we make distinctions with music – to me it’s depressing that there’s even black music and white music.
“I [wish] Christian musicians wrote more about their life experiences instead of trying to be so ‘on the nose’ with spiritual language. It doesn’t give people room to be who they are at the stage they’re at in life. I like to write with the feel of parables, not in strict language. I’m attracted to people who tell me a story, and then I see what it stirs up in my own life. But putting Psalms to music? Taking 30 lines from the Bible for a song? That’s why I like religious books, for instance, rather than books on religion.”
Unfortunately, at least one recent development has further soured Been to Christian music. “Of the 10 major Christian market radio stations, six have refused to play the Best of The Call because of my involvement in The Last Temptation of Christ,” says Been, who played the role of John the Baptist in the film. “I never thought the movie was blasphemous. We were trying to do something important. Of course, if I publicly denounce and regret my involvement in it….
“It just doesn’t feel good, these rules and regulations and laws. There’s a whole lot of language you have to be hip to. I’m always asked, ‘Have you accepted the Lord?’ ‘Are you saved?’ All these codes and passwords. Well, you know, there was a different question asked many years ago in Ireland or Scotland, and it’s more to the point: ‘Do you believe in the blood?’ My answer? ‘Yes. I believe in the blood.’ I’m not quite sure what that other stuff means, but hopefully we won’t go ‘I got it! I got it!’ during our lives because once you say that, you’ve just proven that you haven’t got it.”
I hope you get a chance to hear some of their music sometime. (Unless of course you’d rather listen to P & W.)
Have you tried any of those Boost Juice places?
There’s one at the local shopping centre and I might be tempted to try one of their concoctions if I could ever get near the counter. Wherever I’ve seen these shops there is always a queue. What’s going on?
I guess people know that what they’re peddling is good for them. On their website they say, “At Boost we make a passionate commitment to enrich people’s bodies with nutritious smoothies, juices and healthy food.”
With drinks starting at $3.80 for a small cup, people are obviously keen on getting into stuff that’s good for them.
So what’s my point? I just wonder why people aren’t queuing up like that to find out more about Jesus. (Please excuse the comparison to fruit juice.) Surely if people realised how wonderful Jesus is they’d want to get in touch with him. In crass marketing terms, we know the product is good; so why can’t we get more people interested? I know there are spiritual forces at work here but there should still be people beating down our doors.
Let’s make “a passionate commitment to enrich people’s lives with Jesus.”