Ground Force Evangelism

I have an admission to make - I read gardening magazines. Ever since I got my own garden I've been reading about all the things I can fill it up with. I actually spend more time reading the magazines than out in the garden!

Every couple of months in those magazines, someone will write a letter about Ground Force (the tv programme where they make over a garden in two days). Something along these lines:

Dear Sirs,

As a gardener of many years I find it a travesty of justice that Ground Force continues to be shown on our television screens. This programme does not encourage REAL gardeners. It is impossible to make a garden in a weekend, a real garden takes many years to cultivate and the proliferation of decking and blue paint into our garden centres is a creeping menace that must be halted. Please join me in my campaign to have this disastrous programme taken from the airwaves.

Gardening on TV has been a feature of the TV landscape for many, many years. I remember my mum making time to watch gardeners world every week from the time I was young (She doesn't watch it much now because "Monty Don is always on about carrots"). But that programme was ok for those traditional gardeners - It told you the latin names of all the plants, it was a programme for people who grow Dahlias for shows, for people who know about pruning and mulching and for people who measure their garden in acres rather than feet.

Ground Force is different, it gives people with no gardening knowledge the idea that with a little bit of work and some imagination, they can have somewhere nice outside their back door for having barbeques in. That's how it started for me, and now I'm hooked, so much so that I know latin names for things and I know how to prune things and I go looking for rare and unusual plants at garden centres. And I'm not the only one. Gardening is big business now, and has become really popular over the past few years. I think tv played a big part in that, lowering the point of entry so that it became an interest for the masses rather than an obsession for a few.

I think that Christianity suffers from the same kind of image problem now that gardening suffered 15 years ago. And if that can change for people's attitudes to the square of green stuff they look after then that kind of change can come about for their spiritual life too.

On the whole, Christians in the media are portrayed as elderly traditionalists, singing along in songs of praise, or odd obsessives; street preachers and american tv evangelists. There are of course a few 'vicar of dibley'ish exceptions.

We need a Ground Force for Christianity. I don't know what it will look like, but it just needs to show that it's possible to be young and normal and be interested in God. It needs to be able to show people that it's easy to do something with that unkempt bit of spirituality they've been neglecting for a while, and that a little bit of thought in that area can enhance their lives no end.

That's what evangelism is, it's taking people from where they are and helping them to think about what they could be. It doesn't involve massive amounts of theology, just taking the time to show people the big picture. Just like people watch Ground Force and then they imagine themselves sat outside on their own patio with a cocktail in their hand surrounded by flowers and smiling faces of friends, I'm sure there is some way of getting people to imagine themselves being on good terms with God, being a little more together, being a bit more loving, patient, kind ... all those fruits of God's spirit.


And I know it'll be working when people start writing to "Christianity" magazine about how it's not REAL Christianity - there's no proper theology, you can't build a faith in a weekend - real faith takes years of bible study and struggle and learning creeds and prayers and hymns.

Of course you can build a faith in a weekend, you can build it in a second. It's looking after it that takes the rest of your life. But it gets you hooked - and the results are worth it.

Trinity

Often I've heard Christians saying things like "If only Jesus was here, it would be ok." and "I just want to be with Jesus." There's nothing wrong with those sentiments of course, there is a longing for an encounter with the tangible Jesus, but I think we often forget that God is revealed in more than one person, and one of those persons is with us.

When Jesus went away, he sent us his Holy Spirit - and that Spirit is a full member of the trinity of God. I sometimes think we don't give her the respect she deserves. We argue about what the Holy Spirit can and can't do - who are we to decide that? We have the Holy Spirit living with us and in us, and we don't pay her enough attention to make any difference to our lives! We are waiting for a bigger and better God to come along before we change - it doesn't get any better than the Holy Spirit in us, she is God.

(I'm not being deliberately provocative using 'She' for the Holy Spirit, I think God is bigger than the male/female segregations we know of (otherwise Jesus' death could not have saved me) and the idea that God is always 'he' and never has aspects of 'she' describes a God that is distant from women. There are lots of things feminists do with the image of God that I don't like, but the idea that the Holy Spirit has feminine qualities is one that I think is a realistic concept and (possibly) doesn't go against biblical revelation of who God is. I am open to being corrected though.)

Thesis Done

Last tuesday was the deadline for my thesis so obviously I worked all weekend and monday and got very little sleep while working on trying to finish it off. I did get it finished, wrote the right number of words and managed to get it bound and handed in with one hour to spare.

However, I'm not convinced that I did a brilliant job. I think it was far too shallow in places, where I should have been aiming for something more profound. Nevertheless, it is done and I can't change it now. If anyone would like to read it, let me know in the comments here or send me an email (lou at silkworm dot org dot uk).

Here's a tiny extract of it, about creative prayer:

Creative Prayer
Alternative worship is good at prayer. Or rather, it is good at creating spaces in which people can pray and creative ways of illustrating and embodying prayer. One example, taken from a Sanctus 1 service was a prayer for peace in the world. We wrote our individual prayers for peace on coloured paper, taking time to think through the issues and pray seriously and quietly. We then followed instructions to turn the paper into origami cranes – a UN symbol of peace. Our creations were hung from the ceiling and our birds joined a flock of similar winged peace prayers. In this way, our prayers were both individual and corporate, while being creative and thoughtful.

This exercise could have provoked many responses. My own was to think how peace does not just appear from nowhere. Peace takes time and effort. It requires peacemakers, guidelines and love and making peace will involve some wrong turns and some creative thinking. It would have been entirely possible to undertake that exercise without really praying or engaging the brain or senses – but the same is true of most worship. It is possible to attend but not truly partake.

Limitations of Contemplation
Pete Ward’s book Liquid Church shares a dream of how a networked, community focused, creative and culturally relevant church might look. It is a good dream but I feel that where it is strong on a revaluation of ecclesiastical structure for a contemporary age, and good in a call for greater creativity, it is weak in the creative applications of this dream towards worship. Ward sets out some examples of worship that might work well in this new fluid church, these are all examples of what he calls ‘decentred worship’. Some of the examples are what we would recognise as alternative worship – a labyrinth at St Paul’s Cathedral with prayer stations and activities for reflection and a greenbelt service where various activities were available for people to partake in and they were free to choose whether to wander round the room and take part or sit quietly and pray. His other examples were of Greek Orthodox worship and pre-reformation worship, where again, worshippers took part in a number of activities as the service went on.

These are all valuable spiritual exercises, and it is good to be able to worship in freedom without being told exactly how and when that worship will happen. However, for a movement that is calling for more creativity in worship, to promote only one creative method for people to be involved in worship seems like a backward step. All of the examples portrayed in Liquid Church are varieties of how to pray individually and in silence in a corporate setting. If individual prayer, no matter how creative, is all there is to alternative worship then worship will truly be paralysed as a result.

Alternative worship has really explored many different and interesting ways to provide much needed space for individual prayer. Thankfully, there are also alternative ways of praying corporately – in a centred way. There are also alternative ways of praying for one another and there are many creative ideas that enhance other aspects of worship too.