What Would Jesus Blog?

Been in lectures this week as part of MEC2 – Leading, Mentoring and Accompanying the Emerging Church, one of my modules in my MA in Mission (Emerging Church) here at Cliff College. Phil Meadows has been talking about Technoculture – the culture that’s emerged as technology has evolved at a rapid pace through the Industrial Revolution and beyond. He’s talked about how this culture has taken things that used to be central and beneficial, such as conversation around the kitchen table as part of preparing food, and through a mechanism (such as pre-packed food) taken that away. I think he has a point – and I’ll certainly return to this later. I just find it really interesting to note that as we’ve lost so many things that are centered around human interaction, we’ve gained loads as well – Facebook and MySpace are entirely user-generated and are communication tools but there’s no substitute for real human contact.
PLUG ALERT!!

I guess that’s why mychur.ch is about mixed-mode church – not totally online cyberchurch but not totally offline and removed from reality-church either. Church should mirror real life and be immersed in real life – so it makes sense that church has a physical presence (but not a totally organised one) and an online one (but not one that’s totally removed from real relationships)

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I did something tonight that I thought I’d never do – I deregistered some of my domain names. I figured the ones that I’ve not had a use for in over a year just weren’t really worth carrying on with, and had no real resale value – and I’ve got more fun things to do with domains these days! I’m currently obsessed with domain hacks – making words that end with the TLD (the letters after the final dot) – so things like del.icio.us. I’ve got a few fun ones in the pipeline which I’ll buy as soon as I can work out how to get my ISP to let me manage them…..1&1 are great until you try to do unusual things…..

Or rather, the life of the people of God is much like a Shakespearean play – at least in one of the illustrations I’ve used in this essay I’m working on. I have no idea who first introduced me to this idea but I absolutely love it and I think it fits really well.

Think of the life of the people of God as if it were a Shakespearean play that is missing its fourth act, and we are filling in the gaps with our very existence. The first three acts are known – the characters are laid down, there’s more than enough in the Bible and in the testimony of literally millions of Christians over the years to have a good idea of who God is and how he reacts when his people do all kinds of horrible stuff against him, and good stuff for him. The final act is known – although not all New Testament eschatological writing is about the apocalypse by any means – and we know how it ends, new heaven and new earth and all that.

So what does this mean? Instead of rulebooks and lists of dos and don’ts (which many of today’s churches often make implicit rather than explicit – I hate it!) we need to put ourselves, both individually and corporately, in the place of an actor playing the part of the Christian in that fourth act. Does what we do line up with what God has praised in the past? Are we the people God wants us to be? Of course not – but the closer we get to God, the more we know and love Him, the more natural playing his supporting cast becomes. This isn’t a new idea at all – but one that we need to consider before we go on our next witch-hunt.

Incidentally, I went to see Yes Man with Mike the other day – it’s a great film, very funny but there’s one scene a few minutes in that I think really sums up the approach to evangelism that far too many churches take – Jim Carey’s character gets converted to this life-changing ethos by being publically humiiated, shouted down and pressured into accepting, but then doesn’t have the understanding of the concepts required to live it properly. I just can’t help but think of seeing people give their lives to Christ at rallies and the like and the church not being ready to disciple them properly – and comparing their testimony to that of people who got in with groups of Christians and over time saw a difference in them, and then accepted it for themselves. No judgement here on which is better – both bring people to Christ so both are good but I think they present different challenges that churches just aren’t ready for.