TED Talks & Preacher Training

I wonder if Bible Colleges and other theological training centres use TED talks as part of their training in preaching?

A talk with a serious message given by one person with minimal staging and taking less than 20 minutes - for churchgoers among you, does that sound familiar? If I add that the vast majority of TED talks closely engage both the immediate audience and, in many cases, millions of people worldwide then maybe the familiarity decreases.

I've been known to say that the traditional lecture-style sermon is way out-of-date and an appalling way of attempting to engage with modern people in the modern world. There is an elderly and declining population of churchgoers who often like them like that, of course, but I have long argued that a new approach is needed.

In many ways I still believe that: sitting passively consuming the words of a supposed expert is a lousy way to learn. Yet the global success of TED talks does suggest that there is life in the format yet, so I think it's worth looking at some of the typical characteristics of a TED talk.

Pretty much all TED talks are given by people with genuine and obvious enthusiasm and expertise who are speaking about something which they believe matters.

The vast majority have a speaker who moves around the stage, rather than being trapped behind a lectern.

Many TED talks involve some sort of projection/PowerPoint accompaniment, used as a visual backup and complement to the talk itself; whilst the talk remains the main focus.

Many of the talks involve humour - but rarely in the form of isolated jokes, more as ways of making or supporting a particular point.

Some of the talks involve some degree of interaction with the audience, but this is nearly always limited. People want to listen to the speaker and there is a tight timescale.

So I would say it is time for preachers to rethink their methods, congregations to rethink what they ask of their preachers, and occasional visitors to church to give more feedback on how they experience the preaching in that church.

If a preacher doesn't have expertise and enthusiasm then why on earth are they there? If the preacher doesn't make the effort to engage with the congregation through movement, interaction, relevant visuals and/or humour then why should they expect the congregation to engage with them? And if a preacher isn't talking about something which has meaning and importance to listeners and to their neighbours then why is s/he wasting everyone's time?

What do you think?

People Like Us

About a month ago I did a post - A Quiet Life - looking at a couple of comments I had received about church services, and commenting on the second of them. It's well nigh time to look at the other one:

"Our Sunday service should be for everyone in the local community; but really it's for people like us."

To some extent 'people like us' could be seen in terms of standard things like age, race or class - and at St John's age in particular is a big factor. But I think there is another another sense of the term which has relevance to churches well beyond St John's, or even Caversham.

John Pritchard, in his book Beginning Again, makes the point that people have very different personal styles, which include different natural approaches to prayer and worship. Some have a very verbal, unemotional style: for them relating to God through words given in a controlled, formalised setting brings most satisfaction. Others need to be more emotional to fully engage, to express their hearts and to relate to God through feelings and desires. Then there are those who express themselves naturally in action and movement, those whose natural worship involves creativity and wonder, and so on.

I suggest that the vast majority of churches in the Reading area, and probably across the country, focus very tightly on the verbal and unemotional. Even those churches who sing modern "I love Jesus and he loves me" style choruses are, I would say, really only providing ersatz, prepackaged imitations of true emotion. Those who are used to such can use them, of course, to express something real, as can those who are used to formal prayers and liturgies. But that is really for the 'people like us' who are attracted enough to stick around in the first place.

Where is the space in our regular patterns of church worship for artists? Or for lively dancers? For prophets and healers to give God's blessing in the Spirit's time not ours?

It seems to me that the vast majority of church services in the UK are based around the idea that most worshippers sit passively to be talked to (at?) by one or more leaders, sit or stand to say words chosen by those same leaders or by some overarching organisation, and stand to sing songs chosen by one or more other leaders. Little corporate church worship is truly participative, or active, or truly engaging. Much, probably most, collective worship in UK churches is for consumers not for active members.

Inevitably most people who go to such services do so because they like it that way, more or less. Arguments and pressures are about details, about small variations in delivery ('happy-clappy' songs or 'dirgelike' hymns), and about ways of rearranging the deck-chairs ... well, furniture anyway. So most services remain for 'people like us'.

I write blog posts, so it is fairly obvious that I like working with words (along with the odd picture). I enjoy sitting and listening to a good sermon, although there are few preachers skilled enough to work without some form of visual input, I think. I generally prefer a style which is cool and thoughtful to one which is emotive and loud.

So, when it comes to 'people like us', I count as one of 'us'. But I value immensely different viewpoints and different styles, and I don't understand how anyone can function without a sense of wonder and an appreciation of creativity - even if it is other people's creativity.

Diversity is a vital part of human communities (indeed in non-human ones too), and part of the richness of the fullness of life Jesus offers lies in its range and inclusion of difference.

Having a restrictive church style is all very well and good for those who like it, but if we want to engage properly with the majority whose styles are different we need a rethink.

Maybe it's one church with several different congregations, maybe it is one congregation with a range of different experiences; maybe it is something else entirely.

God cares deeply for all those around who are 'not like us' - we are called to do the same.

Hot Metal

I was recently thinking about my favourite new rock bands; it struck me that out of six favourites (which one is THE favourite depending on mood and context) three are fronted by women. Of other highly-appreciated new bands a lot are FFM (female-fronted metal). Being me, I inevitably find myself wondering why - am I letting a pretty face override musical quality?

At the moment my favourite-favourite new(-ish) band is Within Temptation - I was given their Let Us Burn DVD for Christmas and I've just been watching the Elements concert. The music is fantastic, but it has to be admitted that Sharon den Adel is seriously hot. At the time of the above photo (try clicking on it) she was 38 years old and had borne three children!

Delain's Charlotte Wessels is also seriously good-looking, although in a rather different style. On the other hand, Danii Monroe from The Dirty Youth is pretty but far too young and cute for me to consider her hot.

Admittedly female-fronted metal's  female fronts do tend to be heavily (although not exclusively) inclined to corsets.

Rock music has always been about sex as well as music, of course, but I do think there is far more to female-fronted bands than that. Plus I find myself making some sort of mental distinction between 'hot' and 'sexual', which is weird when I think about it logically. Sharon den Adel in her initial Elements costume (above - doubtless highly metaphorical) looks incredibly hot, highly attractive, even sexy, but somehow, to me, not sexual. I'm strange, I know.

I enjoy the heavy end of rock, overlapping with the melodic end of metal, and hunger after creativity, expression, and a style which combines musical quality with lyrical interest. The contrast between crunching guitars and a rich soprano voice can be a wonderful experience, especially if seasoned with a light smattering of male 'growls'.

A common feature of many songs from Delain, The Dirty Youth and Within Temptation is that they tell a story, and express ideas in interesting ways. Stories about werewolves, deadly sins, or drunken nights out, told through tunes with varied musical structures, by highly talented musicians. All three also play songs of emotional intensity and rhythmic 'heaviness'. Dendera, Future Of The Left and The Virgin Marys (my other three favourites) share similar characteristics, in their varied and distinctive ways.

Of course there is also a lot of formulaic FFM around - it has become a popular musical style on the continent, and there are always those who are more interested in following a fashion than in creating something distinctive - but it remains a genre which, over the past 15 years or so, has attracted more than its fair share of original, creative and enjoyable artists. In my opinion, of course.

I hope you are having a great Christmas, and wish all who read this a happy, hopeful and adventurous new year. God bless.

Darwin's Fish

At heart I am a scientist, by inclination and by training. I think science is wonderful – literally full of wonder: look at snowflakes, or rainbows, or the Milky Way, or Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity, or wave-particle duality. It’s an amazing world we live in, yet science remains earthed by its insistence that anything real must have a perceptible impact on the world.

And I am a Christian, by conviction, conversion, commitment – a follower of Jesus and a believer in God. I reckon God is wonderful: look at snowflakes, rainbows, the Milky Way, or at the Christmas story, or the idea of the Trinity. God is amazing, yet faith in Him is earthed in that real faith always makes a positive difference in the world.

The old story is doing the rounds again that science contradicts faith, or disproves it somehow. It’s nonsense: there are plenty of us around, scientist believers, and for us, far from science and faith being contradictory, they complement one another. A purely material scientific view of the world can be fascinating but it’s incomplete, flat. Likewise a purely religious view can also be fascinating, but incomplete and flat. It’s when you bring the two together that you get a rounded, living picture of the amazing world we live in.

To take it further: I believe in the truth of the Bible, and I believe in the truth of Darwinian evolution. One helps us understand the other. One is a message from God, the other God’s handiwork: of course they go together – God’s words and God’s actions, both important, one shining a light on the other.

I do like the top picture above, showing an engineer 'fish' tinkering with its own evolution. That essentially is how evolution works, and it is marvellous. Whether you think that's just the way the universe is, or whether you think it's the way an amazingly creative God made it, it is still wonderful. I guess the main difference is whether it is personal - and whether it is purposeful - or not.

But I also like the rainbow 'Darwin fish' further down. I don't believe in a black and white world, not even with added shades of grey. To me this is a world filled with colour: I step out in Caversham and I see an infinite number of shades of green, not to mention all the other colours of the rainbow. It's not just a wonderful world, it's an incredibly diverse and beautiful world, for all its problems.

I hope that every one of you can see and feel the wonder and beauty of our world: believer in a creator God, or not; scientist, or not. May the grace and beauty of it all be a blessing to you wherever you go and whatever you do throughout the week.