Substance - are we ready to deliver?

I've been reading and hearing recently about a growing backlash gaining momentum that is fed up with having presentation over substance. Whether its TV cooks or politicians, people are beginning to wake up to the fact that the celebrity status carried by so many charismatic people doesn't mean diddly-squat to someone who actually wants the truth from someone who knows.

The church had better watch out. For many years, the church has thrived on charismatic preachers who have wowed the crowds with wit and clever 'acts' that tickle the masses, but in the same way as the general public are getting fed up with a dumbed down media, so many are going to fall away from the church because they're going to realise that their church is all is all hot air.

Churches looking for cultural relevance should maybe start looking for integrity and start allowing their people to be themselves in their church circles. There's nothing more irrelevant than someone trying to be what they're not, and trying to force a person to be a product of a culture that is not theirs in order to be hip and trendy has the moral integrity of Vogue.

I hate it when politicians spin their version of events and I hate even more when I see churches spin the gospel into something that makes false promises and deliver shallow expectations. The church needs to stop condemning people for being in the sinking sand and also stop describing the chemical makeup of the sinking sand, but it also needs to make clear that the sinking sand is there and the world is sinking into it ever deeper (a church that won't talk about the sinking sand is too shallow and a church that talks only of the sinking sand is too dead).

The challenge, as I see it for my life, is to make sure that I don't try and impress with anything other than the truth. Anything else that comes through in my ministry in terms of humour or little asides or even multimedia and culturally aware language need to remain as sideline issues that are part of my personality. Construing a sermon to a point where I can tell a certain joke or grind any axe is just going to suck. It also challenges me to look at my life and how I live it.

Ben Elton said that at least in the old days, a religious belief cost something. The last decade or two has allowed Christians to live Christianity for free but as the world demands substance, we all need to ask ourselves; ARE WE READY?

Exposed to the Core

Podcasts are a fantastic way to listen to the 'radio' programs which cover only the things in which you are interested. Don't want to hear a program about the development of commerce in the North of England but do want to hear a program about your mobile phone and how to use it? No problem. Switch off the radio and pop on over to iTunes and subscribe to a free podcast.

Great. That's what I do.

But, I've found that receiving regular opinions from the core of an interest group exposes me to a lifestyle that is (not deliberately) portrayed as 'the way'. I'm fascinated by how the people I listen to refer to a $50 application as 'must have' and a $500 piece of hardware as 'essential' thus implying that if you want to be considered a 'serious user' or even a 'proper' user, then you have to get these.

Not only can a huge number of people not afford even one 'essential' $20 application, even more can't justify getting a new iPod when they already have one, albeit with 16GB less storage. Do you need to get a new Smartphone every six months in order to be considered an enthusiast?

As I said, I'm convinced that there's no intention to exclude anybody from the 'gang' in any of the plethora of podcasts that I enjoy, but it is interesting to see the social effects of having a 'community leader' (podcaster) defining the standard and establishing the 'best' stuff to buy. Even if I wanted to, I couldn't just buy the latest XBox game (I'd need an XBox first) if I didn't have the money. Would that make me less of a man?

This is the power of advertising and this is the single most thing that advertising needs in order to work; you are less important if you don't have our product. The challenge is for the common people to have enough self confidence and self awareness to be able to say 'that's nice but no, I don't need that'.