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.
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