iGod

"Don't panic!"

Recently the family and I decided to go to Bressingham Steam Museum. Well, actually when I say “we” it was my wife and I and the rest of the family had to comply. However the small voices of mutinous dissension were minimised at the back of the car, largely thanks to their iPods and Nintendo DS.

Bressingham is a great place to visit not least for Father’s Day. But beyond the working steam engines there is something you are not expecting – a Dad’s Army museum.

Having grown up on a staple diet of Dad’s Army comedy I can’t begin to tell you the fond memories it brought back. The kids, of course, had little respect for walking around the hallowed replica sets of Jones the Butcher or Captain Mainwaring’s office, but we forgive them.

Throughout the exhibition there was plenty of wartime memorabilia, but one of the posters particularly caught my eye. It read, “Morale: How to play your part.”

Today it is hard to, perhaps, understand the nation’s mood back then in such dark and desperate times. Anything we may feel today as a nation is pathetic in comparison such as, dare I say, Andy Murray losing Wimbledon. No, really.

Even though we are not at threat from the skies or the seas, there are other things that bring us together.

Take the steep rising costs of fuel, energy and food, along with cuts to local government services. They are undoubtedly starting to take their toll on most households. And life isn’t set to get any easier in the short term either. All these things can start to affect the nation’s mood, but as Corporal Jones would say. “Don’t panic!” It’s time to pull together.

When I looked at the wartime poster more closely I was surprised at what I read.

Firstly, it calls us to “Forget about yourself and help your neighbour.” Secondly, “Be a rumour stopper. Face the facts, don’t exaggerate. Faith, confidence and cheerfulness are as contagious as fear, depression and grumbling.”

But then the poster goes onto to say something really quite boldy, “The secret of steadiness and inner strength is to listen to God and do what he says. God speaks to the heart of every man and woman who is prepared to listen and obey. His voice can be heard wherever you are - in the home, in the factory, in the air-raid shelter, in the first-aid post.”

Now, be honest, you weren’t expecting that, were you?

But it is the last paragraph that really got me: “A British general who has fought two world wars said this: Telephone wires might be cut, wireless stations destroyed, but no bombardment can stop messages from God coming through if we are willing to receive them. To listen to God and obey him is the highest form of national service for everybody everywhere.”

Quite something, eh? When our spirits take a bashing God encourages us to turn to Him to be lifted up.  Morale in the dictionary is defined as being positive, confident, disciplined and willing to do tasks. Not to dissimilar to what it is to be a Christian.

St Paul the apostle writes to the first century Church that we are to be full of deep joy and hope. Also, we can receive a peace that ultimately only comes through his son Jesus Christ. It takes someone who is bigger than the situation to help us get perspective.

Whether our ongoing worries are about money, our job or whatever, we have a loving God that can help lift morale, so why don’t you try praying?

Meantime, if you do have any financial worries you might like to know that we have a team of trained Money Coaches available who are able to offer practical advice and support. Speak to our church office today (details on the Churches Services page). We’re happy to be of national service.

ASD

BBC trailer for Nativity starring Garrow's Law actor Andrew Buchan

Here is the trailer for the four-part BBC one drama of the Nativity which starts next week.

Writer, and executive producer Tony Jordan him of Eastenders,Hustle and Life on Mars fame was asked if adapting the nativity story has changed his perspective of it:

"When I first started the project I am not sure I had an opinion about whether the Nativity was true or not. I guess that I just thought it was a lovely Christmassy story with baby Jesus in a manger and I liked it, but I had never thought about it more than that.

For the first couple of months I was talking to historians and scientists who did everything they could to convince me that the story never happened.

They claimed that it was a story patched together from bits of other stories and was concocted by the people who wrote the gospels to make Jesus the Messiah. They invented the census because the Messiah was supposed to be born in the City of David. So they concocted this fictitious census to get him there and that was their take on it.

So after the first couple of months I believed that the story never happened. But then the more research that I did and the more people of faith that I spoke to, I realised that this was a story that wasn't written down at the time, it was passed by word of mouth for a hundred years before anyone thought to write it down. So details and some of the timings get lost by the three hundred thousandth time you tell the story.

To me all the things that the historians held up to say 'this doesn't work' – for example, the dates don't match with the consensus that was held by Quirinius – become irrelevant. This was just a story that was told by those shepherds that were in the stable to some other shepherds and then they told some other shepherds who told someone else and they told someone else and that went on for a hundred years until someone wrote it down.

How on earth can you expect that story to be spread by word of mouth for a hundred years and for the last person who hears it to have all the dates and facts right?

So by the end of the process I am now in a position where I actually think it is true and I think that it happened more or less as I have portrayed it."

Four half-hour episodes tell the traditional tale starting next Monday on BBC One in the evenings.

ASD

 

RE: Rev

 I had a friend ask me recently if I had seen the new BBC2 sitcom Rev.

I have since watched it and found myself squirming. Not because I don't expect to see vicars portrayed on TV this way. What's new?

It's just until very recently I used to sit on that very churchyard seat eating my Tesco sandwich talking, sometimes talking to the odd disturbed alcoholic and homeless person, being just five minutes away from my old office. The church is St Leornard's, off Shoreditch High Street in London. What's more, like our eponymous hero, I too, now come from Suffolk. Spooky, eh?  Do-de-do-de!

However, as my wife will tell you, I resemble little else in the sitcom. I am certainly a lot taller than Tom Hollander's Reverend Smallbone.

Meanwhile, I am looking forward to seeing the BBC make a sitcom about the liberal Muslim cleric who has to tackle an Islamic extremist in his mosque and wants to start a jihad in the community. Or the young girl that wants to marry outside of her faith.

And while we are at it, what about a comedy on a militant atheist professor who runs a science department at a top university who everyone secretly thinks is a little bit obsessive? Could be a Bafta in there for somebody. Who knows? 

ASD

X Factor - pantomime

I woke up to find the UK not unexpectedly twittering about X Factor. The Twitter Trends Map showed the that 'Jedward' and X Factor have become national talking points.

Last night's judges' decision saw John and Edward and Lucie Jones go into 'Deadlock', which meant the public got to choose who would stayed in the talent competition. It  was nothing short of pantomime. We have a rags-to-riches story, songs, some dance, something for the kids, something for the adults. We have a goodie, two baddies and a fairy godmother in the unlikely shape of Simon Cowell.

However, unlike all good pantomimes where the fairy godmother is seen as light and beauty our fairy godmother, ours turned a little bit cynical and showed a dark side. 

Of course, before we all throw our remote controls at our television in disgust we do have to remember this all about entertainment. And the entertainment business is all about ratings. Quite simply you can't have a pantomime if you see off the villain half way through. It would suddenly become quite prosaic and dull.

Sometimes I wonder if the Christian life isn't more panto than serious life drama. It was mooted by the authors in God is Back that the Church is more powerful when it has opposition. When it doesn't it becomes complacent and weak. In other words, 'ratings' go down.

While we in the Church might complain against the wicked stepmother of Secularism or the evil old old witch of Other Religions, it is undoubtedly part of the story of the Church. We have our songs and script for this narrative and know ultimately it will have a happy ending. Meanwhile, it is all about perspective.

Although Church is not in the business of entertainment, perhaps it should learn to not take itself too serious and take an opportunity laugh at itself once in a while. After all, didn't the writer of Proverbs say something about laughter being the best medicine? (Proverbs 17:22)

ASD

Why X Factor has the Ah! Factor

Unless you have been on holiday in a remote part of the world where electricity is still an aspiration, it will not have escaped your attention that  X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing are back on our screens.

Much like last year my family and I have become full goggle-eyed X Factor addicts, even though my disdain for TV in general continues to grow weekly. But I do have to concur, it is the best escapist TV around - and in more ways than one.

I hear from a friend who knows how the X Factor producers work that the best way for your act to be seen by millions of people on national TV and YouTube is: a) be able to sing and b) have a sob story ready. Being talented and from a stable middle-class simply doesn’t cut it.

I have lost count how many times we have been introduced to a single mum wanting to re-kick start her life with a new career in music.

Last year you may remember we had Daniel who lost his wife to a terminal disease and sang at the audition in memory of her. The hardiest of us were caught out dabbing our moist eyes on the sofa.  However, the show painfully never allowed us to forget for one minute his loss and subsequently the media turned on him, accusing poor Daniel of using his wife’s memory to manipulate the judges’ decision. It felt quite uncomfortable.

There is a new film out this week called Fish Tank. It is the story of a girl  called Mia living on a rough council estate who is socially trapped. She drinks heavily and has problems with her mum’s choice of boyfriends. All she wants to do is become a professional dancer and find a way to escape the ‘fish tank’ that is her life. She goes for an audition only to find out that they want lap-dancers, not street dancers. Your heart sinks for her. It is not a happy film and has no Disney ending.

I wonder if the attraction of X Factor is that it is a people’s show. It gives hope that anyone of any social background has the chance to escape a unhappy and desperate life. It is the ultimate rags-to-riches TV show. No wonder the Americans love it.  The huge queues seem to bear witness to this theory.

Sometimes the naked desperation in people’s faces of wanting to be loved is almost too painful to watch. Surely some of them must know they can’t sing for toffee before they go on. Why doesn’t a friend stop them?

You have to also ask: what it is that drives people to risk making a public fool of themselves?

This may explain why X Factor has a higher viewership than BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing, which follows ‘D List’ celebrities that have already had their own fair share of fame and fortune, regardless of what they have done with it.

A teacher friend of mine in our church said recently that she asked her class of teenagers what they wanted to be when they grew up. More than one of them said “to be famous”.

It is easy to be cynical and dismissive of this response, but knowing something of the challenging school she teaches in the answer is not as shallow as you might first think. If you had your mother's boyfriend hitting you what would be your ideal situation?

Youngsters are more disconnected, confused, mixed-up than ever before. With the erosion of community life, and the cheapening of the currency of long-term loving relationships it is not hard to see how teenage depression has become a national phenomenon. They simply want a way out!

In my limited experience I do not see the same aspiration to be famous from children from happy homes who are blessed to have a mother and father. I am not sure either this is always to do with social hardship. Life can be living hell coming from a broken privileged background too. Sometimes it has very little to do with money.

As a Christian I wonder what the best response might be. At the moment I sit on my sofa on a Saturday night and shed a tear over some stranger's story. I know I have to do more. I must. Jesus’ words about “loving your neighbour” have never been more pertinent.

ASD

Susan Boyle - out of the ordinary comes the extraordinary

Safely back in the saddle after a week off, which included a trip to Chessington World of Adventures in aid of my eldest daughter's 12th birthday. Hope you had a good Easter too. This year I enjoyed two Green & Black eggs. Oh, the decadence of it all!

Been also enjoying Britain's Got Talent. Now I know there is a fine line between reality entertainment and exploitation, but I, like many millions of others worldwide, have been gripped by the phenomenon that is Susan Boyle, who incidentally is also a committed Christian. if you have missed all the press and magazine column inches, it appears that she is far from being an ordinary 47-year-old spinster from West Lothian, Scotland.

It is like one of those wonderful rags-to-riches Cinderella stories. Before she opened her mouth she was ridiculed and jeered because she looked, well, dowdy and uninteresting. No-one expected any good could come from someone looking like her. Yet after her performance she has simply set the world alight. Even American actress Demi Moore has Twittered on her remarkable singing gift.

It couldn't help but remind me of Jesus himself who was seen as just an ordinary Galilean, a carpenter's son from Nazareth. Hardly saviour of the world material. Yet when he started teaching, healing the sick, raising the dead he suddenly caught the crowd's attention and they started to follow him in their droves.

Of course, many came to mock and undermine, but this did not stop news ultimately spreading.

Thankfully God continues to use ordinary people. For instance, the apostles were called "unschooled and ordinary men" in Acts 5 in the New Testament.

All this to me seems to reflect that, at surface level, following Jesus is very uncool and odd, and deserves ridicule and abuse. Yet those who have encountered the living God through the witness and lifestyle of Christians would see it as being anything but ordinary and dull, but the most exciting thing ever.

Someone once said to me that in business it always best to under-promise and over-deliver. And the Kingdom of God business is no different. Kingdom values are the complete opposite to the world's values.

So as the BGT crowds snickered about an ordinary woman who wants to be the next Elaine Paige, it is perhaps pertinent to have a smile to ourselves and  remember Nathaneal's  response to Jesus (John 1:42), "What good can come out of Nazareth?".

God bless you, Susan Boyle

ASD

‘Make me a Christian’ reality TV? Oh, brother!

Reality TV has just taken us to next level with Big Brother meets religion! The new show on Sunday evenings on Channel 4 at 7pm really deserves no mention at all for its crassness in conception, but ho hum I’ve got some moments to fill...

To be honest, I have not watched it, nor do I intend to. The write up on Channel Four’s website was telling enough for me. 

“The Reverend George Hargreaves thinks Britain is in a state of moral decline and that a return to a more 'Christian' way of life would stop the rot. He and his team of mentors aim to show how by convincing a group of non-Christian volunteers to live by the teachings of the Bible for three weeks.”

Apart from the dodgy title, the candidates for conversion seem to have been drawn up from the left over hopefuls of Big Brother, so we have a lap dancer manager (also witch), a lesbian, a womaniser and a disaffected Christian turned Muslim etc.

It is flawed at so many levels. And really the so called ‘religious mentors’ should know better. The thought of someone saying to anyone, with their arms crossed and tapping their feet with impatience, “Go on, convince me” is no way to begin a dialogue of something so profound as a relationship with the eternal God of the universe.

I guess I am dismayed by the producers’ attempt to consumerise faith into entertainment fodder. As if our arrogance ever got us anywhere. It never worked for anyone in the Bible, either Old or New Testament, so I can’t see why it should have any effect on a 21^st Century TV reality show.

And who are these ‘mentors’ that are telling people to live their lives the Christian way when they aren’t even Christians? Talk about putting the cart before the horse.  

Any form of coercion is simply unchristian.  If ‘God is love’ we have to accept each other without condition. We have been given the gift to exercise our freedom and freewill as created human beings. And that comes with the profound choice to accept or reject the Son of God. Though, why anyone would want to reject him beats me, but then I didn’t have a camera pointing at me when I made my choice.

We belong, before we believe, before we behave, surely.

ASD

BBC series on The Passion this Easter

I have been a bit slow of the mark bringing you news of this, but Easter sees a major new BBC One drama tell the story of the final week in the life of Jesus. The Passion will be broadcast over several episodes during Holy Week (16-23 March). It follows Jesus as he is arrested and tried, crucified and buried, concluding with the resurrection appearances.

The drama is lined up for several half hour episodes in prime time slots in the week from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday. It boasts a strong leading cast. Joseph Mawle (Clapham Junction) will be playing the role of Jesus with support from James Nesbitt, Penelope Wilton and David Oyelowo. The programme has been produced by Nigel Stafford-Clarke who was at the helm for the BBC’s excellent version of Bleak House.

The newly revamped website Rejesus will be covering this film in some detail, and the beginnings of their new module on it are up already. New material will be being added over the next few weeks so that anyone with questions about the TV series, and about the final week of Jesus’ life can access reliable information and creative resources.

ASD

How do you get over a Cold/Flu without complaining?

I am feeling really groggy and ill with a cold or flu at the moment. Whatever you want to call it, it's a nasty one.  The trouble is, like most guys,I am a dreadful patient and I am not sure I have much of a theology for God healing me of the Common Cold or Man Flu. So to try avoid the self-pity trap I try and think of someone else who has had it tougher than me recently.

One guy who has helped me get my temporary misery in perspective is Roger Molloy.  I met him in Shoreditch, London and has turned his traversity into an opportunity.  Roger had his photographic gear stolen over a year ago.  All he had left was his camera phone, so he took shots with it and then made them into postcards, which he sells for £1 each in his make shift gallery in E1 to help buy new equipment. Truly inspirational.

Here is just one of his shots which I recently bought, but check out his work to see more.

It's not quite Lemsip. but it does help with some of the side-effects.

ASD

Hugh Fernley Whittingstall's Chicken Bun Fight

Some of you may know that we keep chickens. In fact we have a smallholding of 10 Rhode Island Reds.

When we moved up to Suffolk from Twickenham to start the church we brought our old shed with us.

My wife then had the great idea of converting the shed into a chicken house, so with the help of a local farmer we set up. Knowing we would never get through all the eggs ourselves, my middle daughter and I made a sign saying ‘Free Range eggs for sale’ and duly stuck it up outside our house.

We have had no shortage of buyers. We don’t even need to put out a sign anymore. People just come.

Last night I have had my thoughts focussed on my chooks by the Channel Four programme Hugh’s Chicken Run.  Hugh Fernley-Whitingstall does an experiment where he sets out to recreate the conditions of caged chicken farming, alongside a free range experience to see what difference it makes to the quality of the bird and the bird’s life.

Needless to say, the supermarkets hang themselves by their lack of co-operation in the making of the three-part documentary. Tesco, you should be ashamed of yourself.

For instance, did you know that supermarkets buy chickens from a farmer for just 3 pence? And if they don’t make a certain weight they are killed without question. Last year 45 million chickens were culled because they didn’t make the grade.

The consumers and chickens themselves weren’t too happy either. The scenes of Hugh taking around residents from Axminister were really quite distressing. The caged chickens were kept in the dark all day and night with no space and left with just enough energy to waddle over to the feeder and water. The residents were coming out literally in tears. One hardened lady who might have felt at home more in a SS Waffen guard’s uniform said she was unperturbed from the sight, as buying cheap meat was the price these chickens had to pay. She appeared to have no conscience at all, even though her son was sobbing.

So a campaign has been started to ban caged chickens from our shops and replace it with more humane free range chickens. The ones which had the freedom to roam looked healthier, happier, and more interestingly, less bored. They were given footballs and CDs to play with which seems comical, but made a difference to them.

All this has made me think about our own chickens. Yes, we have made the mistake of allowing our children to give the chickens names, but remember these are layers not eaters. But with the recent Bird Flu outbreak and us just being in exclusion zone it has been challenging time. We have noticed how distressing it has been for them to be locked up for weeks on end, complying to DEFRA’s directives. We have seen their feathers drop out and look less spritely.

The other thing we have noticed is that chickens lay, on average, six eggs a week, which means they take one day off to rest. How religious of them!  To quote the farmer in the film Chicken Run, “I tell yer, them chickens,they’re organised!”

The Bible says we have a responsibility to be good stewards of the earth and its resources. Cheap price or convenience should never be used as excuses to allow inhuman methods of farming. It betrays a lot about our own moral state and spiritual decline. As Christians we have a responsibility to care for all of creation.

I hope you get behind Hugh and the campaign. Please do your bit.

ASD