Turn to the left; turn to the right

At the start of my ministry, in the place I have just retired from, my wife and I invited people round for supper in groups of 15-20 once a month. Primarily this was to thank those who had worked on decorating our house before we arrived (a kindness) but it grew into a thing we liked to do. The first month we scrubbed up and made an effort. I may have worn a tie. Remember those?

Just before the second event my wife asked what I was going to wear that night. We do have this conversation or, from time to time, we dress a little too similarly and it scares us. I recall that my reply was that 'based on last time I thought I'd go for a fleece with food down it.' We dressed down a little bit but always felt part of our job was to pull the standard up.

Three things caught my attention over the last month under the heading 'fashion' - an article, a quote in a TV programme and an individual. Juxtaposition being the secret of most creativity, putting them together in my mind I wanted to have a go at talking about clothes.

Clothes are an important cultural signifier because of the response speed. '...you can react more speedily to the demands of the times with three-and-a-half metres of cloth than you can with, say, 5,000 tons of reinforced concrete.' (Marion Hume, Fashion Editor, the Independent 2/12/1994)

But we are increasingly mindful of those clothes which contain microplastics and the need to move on from throwaway society as we try to reduce, re-use and recycle.

Culture, Brian Eno once defined, is 'Everything you don't have to do'. So clothes aren't cultural but fashion is.

Of my male friends I am probably the one who cares the most about my appearance. I do care. I like to look good and to be individual. I realise I am setting myself up for a fall here but, as I have made my living in the Christian church for 37 years, I have to say it has never felt onerous to be the best-dressed person in the room and, when I notice that I am not, the person I notice is always very well turned out. As Patsy said in Absolutely Fabulous 'You may dress like a Christian but there the similarity ends.' I am talking here about those I perceive to be of my own gender (and I wouldn't have put it like that that 37 years ago, for sure). 

Comments on the clothing of those I perceive to be of other genders or non are kept to myself . Or discussed with Mrs T.

A few years ago, and I can't attribute, I heard this:

Men tend to dress to impress women; it doesn't work.

Women tend to dress to impress women; it doesn't work.

A more nuanced version of this would be Jess Cartner-Morley's, 'Much of fashion operates on a complicated code system that relies on your being sure of the level of sophistication your audience will bring to your wardrobe appraisal.' (Guardian Weekend 28/1/12)

Building on this, writing in the FT weekend the other week, Robert Armstrong drew a distinction between those who dressed ivy (as in Ivy League and almost effortlessly good) and those who were preppy (as in prep school and trying a bit too hard). I know it all gets frightfully snobbish when you step back a bit but, in very general terms, it is good to make an effort with your appearance, not necessarily with overspending; it is bad to make no effort or too much. Dolly Parton once said 'It costs a fortune to look this cheap.' To get to ivy not preppy, which means understanding classic lines and styles and keeping them contemporary, Armstrong says 'You have to care a little bit, spend some time shopping, and try things out. For most men, this can feel like a chore.' Still with me? Or going out in that dirty fleece?

That was the first of the three things.

From a relatively young age my Christmas and birthday presents usually included something fashionable. I enjoyed dressing up for special occasions and probably now spend more on clothes, hair and products than many men my age. I'm not sure whether I was influenced by my Mum, who trained as a dress designer and had a short career in the industry. My sister is a graphic designer and layout artist who worked predominantly in the fashion world. 'You think your job's tough but try getting a supermodel out of bed at 5 a.m. for a sunglass shoot.' If I let things slip she will have a quiet word and tell me what I should do (usually something very small) to show I know what it's all about. Those sideboards needed to be an inch longer. I wasn't one of the Thompson Twins.

When my sons were teenagers one went to a school with no uniform. All the students seemed to dress the same. One went to a uniformed school where individuality was expressed in coloured socks or wearing the tie strangely. Chambers Gigglossary describes fashion as '...a means of expressing one's individuality by wearing and doing exactly the same thing as everybody else.'

In the Texas Commerce Bank the bankers '...are conservative gentlemen and they are obliged to obey a 23-page dress code, a veritable Koran of corporate dressing.' (Tony Parsons 'Dispatches from the Front Line of Popular Culture, 1994)

There is a minimum way to show you know what it's all about. Wear what Douglas Coupland in Generation X labelled an 'Anti-victim device (AVD): A small fashion accessory worn on an otherwise conservative outfit which announces to the world that one still has a spark of individuality burning inside:...' To move from the 1990s to the present day, I think that's what Lady Hale (pictured) is up to with her famous broaches.

Most of us who enjoy the attempt at being fashionable probably started young. Which means there are some appalling, but thankfully pre-social media, photos of me making an effort mimicking the Tremeloes (pictured), on a non-uniform day in the late 60s. Buying yellow loons and making myself develop the personality to be seen in them in 72. Massive stack shoes and kipper ties in the mid 70s culminating in my wedding photos.

I haven't forgotten about the other two things. Let's get to them. We were on a winter holiday in Castle Combe recently, staying in a cottage on the village square. Each day we saw from our window a number of tourists pitch up and look around. One group, ethnically east Asian in appearance, were dressed much better than any of the others. And, to show I am culturally aware, a look known as preppy amongst Japanese girls and young women is popular. Whilst many tourists photographed the pretty village, this group photographed themselves with the village square as backdrop.

One guy must have been cold. Boat shoes. No socks. Thin baggy chinos turned up twice. He was carrying a dog. The dog wore a cricket jumper. The dog was a bag. The bag, which we googled, was a Thom Browne. It retails at £2,690. You read that right.

I filed that away in the 'ways I will never use money' section of me until a TV programme I accidentally watched in the unnecessary-extravagance-on-Alderley-Edge genre. A well-off family were having a small party for which they had rustled up caterers, live entertainers, a dog-groomer ('so she doesn't feel left out') and a wardrobe consultant, a man dressed in several layers and textures of white, plus jewels.

At one point the presenter, who was also getting a makeover for the party, asked the fashion guru 'Aren't you hot in all that?'

The  reply:

'It's fashion darling, It's not meant to be comfortable.'

So, for what it's worth:

You can spend too much on an outfit. Spending alone will not make you cool. You could end up preppy, or even Dolly but without the self-deprecation.

People who can afford expensive, timeless clothes spend less on them than those who buy cheap and seasonal. See the Terry Pratchett Sam Vines boots theory in his book Men at Arms. Expensive clothes last longer but there is a tipping point beyond which you can pay to look stupid when you think you're paying to look good.

If you are in sales, or at an interview where you are selling yourself, you need to match your customers' expectations if you are to sell to them. A young man I knew was told he could have a job as an MP's research assistant but he needed to remove his ear-stud. This was late 1980s. We've moved on from that and nobody blinks at most piercings any more. We've also moved on from the attitude discussed in Cosmopolitan in September 1994 '...dressing for success is a moral imperative for men and women'. A moral imperative? It was never one of those. But you will fail a live appointment process in the first ten seconds if your fashion isn't pitched right. Can you sell yourself better?

I think it's stupid not being comfortable but this includes being mentally comfortable that you can bear what you're wearing. I have a pair of electric blue trousers which I love but I can't mood-match them very often. You need to feel good about feeling good.

If you don't like talking about clothes you probably didn't get this far and never normally notice that I care.

As the French philosopher Barthes said '...fashion exists only through the discourse about it.'

Quite so.

Where do all our words come from?

Every now and again the lovely Guardian Review on a Saturday has a gem of an article. Last weekend James Meek had this superb little reminder. Click on the link for his article or read on for my summary first/instead.

The three languages of medieval Britain were French, Latin and English (but not as we know it). The Black Death forced the decreased population to accommodate each other and one language began to emerge.

Previously we had had:

• Francophone aristos
• Latinist clerics
• Anglophone peasantry

Meek's point is that it is interesting how we still in fact use:

• Latin or Latin-derivations for intellectual analysis
• French for power, military and finance
• Anglo-Saxon (plus Norse) for everyday

He added that the 'new clerics' include, lawyers, writers, some artists, scientists, journalists, some comedians, politicians, some entrepreneurs and actual clerics.

To use a word from each set he concluded:

Rise up, rebel, revolt

Today

Sometime around 1990/91 Gareth Owen, a neighbour and young friend, was the first person ever to say to me 'May the Fourth be with you.' I remember it. It was hilarious.

After a while this became a good greeting and then after another while (say twenty years) people began to wish each other a happy Star Wars Day, having fun noting who didn't understand.

Today several people, without irony or attribution, have said 'May the Fourth be with you.' I think they have expected me to laugh. I honestly have no idea why.

They are closely related to the sorts of people, who wear comedy ties - I know a joke and I'm going to tell it all day (children's hospital surgeons are excluded from this group - they have other, more laudable, reasons).

The secret of good comedy is timing. A forty year old somebody-else's-joke is bad timing. Very bad. Stop it.

Advent Thought 22 and Number 24

As soon as the world of retail notices people enjoying something it takes it off them, polishes it, and sells it back to them. Tony Parsons said words along these lines in his excellent book Dispatches from the Front Line of Popular Culture. Since the book is now 20 years old it would be interesting to re-read it and see how it has aged. May do that.

Taking the long view of Advent I notice that Christmas jumpers, which were never a thing, have been thus polished.

And Advent calendars are much fancier things than the ones of my youth. In the early 1960s they were a piece of landscape foolscap paper with 24 cardboard panels or windows. You opened one each day and tried to work out how the image was related to Christmas. My sister and I were required to remember whose turn it was. I'm sure we both feel the other one cheated.

Whilst the pictures were somewhat semi-detached to the festival we both knew that a nativity scene was coming along on day 24 - the biggest window of them all. The calendar, of course, started on December 1st so there were 24 windows. Then the world of retail can keep its left over stock until next year.

This is my final Advent thought. It is Sunday, the fourth of Advent and also Christmas Eve. The 12 days of Christmas start tomorrow.

Everybody's waitin' for me to arrive
Sendin' out the message to all of my friends

I hope you have managed to wait, hope, rest and pray during this Advent season. And I hope you have managed to hold on to one or two precious thoughts that nobody can make better with polish and packaging.

Noises Off

Heard an interesting Crowd Science podcast about noise today. They explored the whole idea of  the word, which clearly has pejorative overtones. There are sounds, which are neutral. Then there is noise, which is unwanted.

I am interested because my attitude to sound has changed over the years. I am obviously deafer than I once was. Those familiar sounds, such as close family members talking, are easy to miss. I often fail to grasp the first few words of a sentence and have to ask for a repeat. It doesn't help that I have a life-partner who talks to herself pretty much constantly and so I tune that out then discover, from time to time, that it would have been wiser to have been listening.

Aged seventeen and eighteen I had music on almost constantly. I did history at A Level and a coursework essay could be endured with five sides of LP. About 100 minutes for 500 words.

But today I am far more likely to prefer silence whilst reading or writing. Music accompanies cooking or ironing. My parents were kind enough to endure piano practice, something I played forward with a son learning guitar. Chase the mistake anyone? I have music or spoken word on in the car when I drive but usually turn the radio off when trying to locate a new destination.

I grew up near the centre of a city. There was a background hum that never went away. The comforting, familiar sounds of home included Birmingham University Clock every quarter of an hour, and on the hour throughout the night.

On the Crowd Science programme they interviewed people in one of India's largest cities often dubbed the noisiest place on earth. Drivers in Chennai sound their horn as a matter of course for very minor reasons. A family who lived ten feet from a busy railway line explained that house-guests never sleep. 'But after four months you hardly notice it.'

In downtown New York everything has to become louder to drown the noise of cars. One expert said 'Make the cars quieter and everything follows.'

But it isn't as easy as that. Electric cars could be perfectly silent but pedestrians are used to having their ears as an early-warning system. Electric cars have to come equipped with some noise, to reassure drivers and warn the jay-walker.

You see we don't like silence as much as we think we do. We like sounds. Your bank's cash dispenser doesn't need to make a noise as your money rolls out, but we like it to. Equally deceptive is the software that makes a shutter sound on a digital camera. Totally unnecessary. But we are now self-programmed to respond. We like those clicks and whirrs. Most of you, if you have a printer in your house, will know when it is making the right noises pre-job.  It is a little dance of preparedness. I am doing what you expect me to do, it tells you.

When I first moved into my current home, a modern dwelling, I was weirded out by all its noises. But the clicks of those expansion joints as the sun comes round is a good thing. At half past two on a spring afternoon our conservatory wakes up. It is a cracking sound telling me everything is working as it should be.

We all get used to the sound of our home's heating system. Not noise.

I rejoiced at the arrival of quiet carriages on trains. Pretty soon I realised that I was more maddened by rule-breakers in those than the noise in the others.

I had an interesting discussion over the weekend  about sound quality on vinyl music. Is the presence of surface noise or left-over studio sounds an imperfection or part of the reality of construction? And do you tend to listen for the imperfections or to the tune? A member of my family is a musician whose main instrument is computer. No extra noises there. The music is good but it is a monocultural landscape without hedge or ditch. All sound and no noise. It was interesting the way someone such as Burial introduced industrial and surface noise sounds to his music to make dubstep. Improved by imperfection.

How do you take your noise? One bump or two?

New Popular Culture

I haven't listened to much new music for the last few months. I feel the loss but it was a decision, of sorts.

I think I have discussed previously the rule, as it relates to those of us with limited time to engage with cultural activities, of cyclical proficiency.

In case you haven't come across it, the rule suggests that developing knowledge of one area of culture can only be achieved by disregarding some other area temporarily.

Do you have a hierarchy of culture? I think I do, although it has flexibility. I read every day. I make sure I haven't gone to sleep without reading some of a book. Even if it's only a chapter of a pappy thriller before lights out, it is a rule of life for me. No TV or tablet in the bedroom last thing at night.

Secondly there is sport. In particular football and cricket. Not so much live these days but I make sure I keep up with the weekly TV updates.

What else is there? Theatre, cinema, music, art. I love all these things.

So it becomes quite awkward, when I am already lamenting that I haven't been to the cinema for six months or so, when something new and demanding pitches up. Podcasts are it.

I let them pass me by for a while, apart from occasionally catching up with a Radio 4 show I had missed. Then I started noticing reviews of podcast shows in the weekend newspapers. About Easter time this year people were writing and talking about S-Town. Presented by Brian Reed of This American Life (a programme on Chicago public radio that became a podcast once it could) it is a wonderful seven part story that introduces people not normally given air time so positively, heads off in all sorts of strange plot-twist directions and ends with a nice resolution.

It wasn't long before I discovered Serial, another spin-off which goes into an old news story in more detail over a longer period. It hunts for miscarriages of justice, or at least the truth about controversial carriages of justice.

Now I am into twenty two back years of This American Life and I may be gone some time. It is what is on the headphones as I walk about these days, or playing in the car on long journeys. Getting inside the skin of the USA and introducing intelligent, thoughtful stories is a real antidote to the news from Trumpton.

If it's OK, please nobody invent any new culture for a bit. Thank you.

Revolution 1966-1970 at the V and A

A brief coda to my previous post reviewing this. A review in theipaper by Robert Bevan (copied from the Evening Standard) made two negative comments; that it was populist and that it ignored, inter alia, architecture. A brief response:

Firstly, I don't think you can critique an exhibition for being populist. Museums are full of high culture and whilst important and helpful it don't pay the bills. A certain amount of the common touch is necessary. Us commoners seem to have been, in the main, impressed.

And secondly architecture? Well most architecture built 1966-1970 was probably conceived pre-66. '...fashion is the most responsive barometer of social change ... you can react more speedily to the demands of the times with three-and-a-half metres of cloth than you can with, say, 5000 toms of reinforced concrete' (Marion Hume, The Independent, 2/12/94). Architectural ideas from 66-70 went up in the early 70s.

But I save the worst until last. The final scathing comment in a review that gave this exhibition 3 stars (out of 5) was that it failed to mention the Gay Liberation Front at the 1971 Festival of Light. Could it be that it was a year late? I only ask. I'm not a professional reviewer.

Revolution; 1966-1970

At the Victoria and Albert Museum at the moment, running until 26th February 2017, is an excellent exhibition about the years 1966-1970.

It aims to answer this question:

'How have the finished and unfinished revolutions of the late 1960s changed the way we live today and think about the future?'

It is hard to decide when the sixties (as referenced by writers) actually started. They usually mean the period that started in earnest once the Beatles hit the charts and drifted on into the next decade. So about 1962-1971 is 'Sixties' culture.

I spent that period being 7-16 so it is the time I grew up. But my first festival experience wasn't until 1972.

But the years 66-70 saw one of the most important periods in history for cultural change. Our understanding of race, gender, travel (to space), fashion and many other things began a process of change which continues to this day.

Visitors to this exhibition, wearing headsets to replace the hotel lobby background music with rock and roll, wander through the late John Peel's collection of vinyl sleeves. Clever technology aligns what we hear to on-screen voices as we approach a TV and so we hear archive footage of social commentators from the period. We go to the Moon, experience student riots and sit in on the Woodstock experience (The Who, Sly and the Family Stone and Jimmy Hendrix).

We gaze on the costumes from the cover of Sergeant Pepper and get to read Paul McCartney's handwritten resignation letter from 1970.

It costs £16.50 full price with a number of discounts. Those who were aware of all the sixties are now pensioners. Although I do recall someone saying that if you could remember the sixties you weren't there. Man. You need a timed ticket and it will take a couple of hours to enjoy properly.

Illustrations are a couple of our vinyl sleeves - Traffic's Mr Fantasy from 1968 and Free's Fire and Water from 1969.

Christian Culture

I was archiving some old sermon and talk/seminar folders from the 1990s when I came across notes I had made for a presentation interestingly entitled 'Are we becoming a Christian counter-culture?' It was delivered first in about 1996 and adjusted and re-used for a few years thereafter.

We are all (Christians) 'in' the world, but to what extent are we of it?

At the time I was using as biblical material Paul's experience in Athens where he encountered  a new culture and explained the gospel to that culture starting from where they were - an unknown god. It was a bit simplistic - I was largely speaking to untrained youth workers - but the questions that follow are a reasonable indication of the extent to which you have separated yourself out from the world in order to live in a Christian counter-culture. I speak as one who has often been warned of going to the opposite extreme.

It included this questionnaire, which I had forgotten all about. Every yes scores a point. The nearer to ten you get the more likely it is that you have lost touch with the real world:

1. Most of my favourite music is Christian.
2. Most of my close friends are Christians.
3. I read more Christian books than popular fiction.
4. I wear a Christian logo/badge over and above a simple cross such as a WWJD wristband.
5. I belong to a Christian group or union at school/work, or work in a Christian environment.
6. I regularly go to national Christian events/festivals - Spring Harvest, Greenbelt, Soul Survivor, New Wine.
7. I have, or aspire to, a career in Christian ministry.
8. I find the world's values a constant source of temptation and try to keep clear.
9. I come from a Christian family.
10. I hardly ever go anywhere where I meet non-Christians socially.

I think I score 3. How about you?

Photos

Married in 1977 we have a book of twenty wedding photographs. Yes. You heard me. Twenty. I have a lot of special memories about that day, mainly because I got to concentrate on it.

There's an article knocking around from the New Yorker. It suggests that in the future we will only look at things in order to photograph them.

I have in my possession one photograph which worries me immensely and tells me the danger of such a future.

Two weeks ago I baptised a couple of lads at church. It was a great experience and the crowd (outside on a cool March morning) watched and cheered. I baptised by immersion in a large paddling pool.

Now such a baptism involves carefully, and pastorally, making sure the candidates are fully under the water. I try not to scare them or bully them.

But one photo clearly shows me holding one lad underwater by the throat. There can be no doubt. 

Except there is. Because the crowd will tell you I did not do that. It is a passing shot. It caught my hand moving position and froze it. And there lies the danger. Not from photoshop, although that is dangerous enough, but from thinking you have captured reality when you have created it.

Try and record reality with your own eyes and brain and then see if the photographs remind you of it. This ship may have sailed.

Cultural Islands

I have mused less on culture recently than I did in the mid 90s and early 00s. I found a definition of culture which I loved, and have never seen improved. It has not proved necessary to say much more. Until today. I have a new thought. But first the definition.

Musician and producer Brian Eno says that culture is 'Everything you don't have to do.' Thus food is not culture but cuisine is. Clothes are not culture but fashion is. And so on.

It means it is not a cultural decision to eat rice if rice is the only thing on the menu. But once there is a choice of two foodstuffs, or about how to prepare the one, the decision being made about food is cultural.

I've had one or two discussions with folks who don't like this over the years but their arguments against have never seemed to take us beyond 'I don't like it'. I like it.

How we worship the one we call God as a church is, above all, a cultural decision. A church represents the attempts of a local community, perhaps in the context of a national church's guidelines, to worship God and serve others in God's name. It will develop a culture. It follows that the smaller the Christian community gathering on a Sunday is, as a percentage of the community it is there to serve, the less likely it is to be culturally relevant to the non-attenders. The choice of day is also a cultural decision.

Now I am the minister of a planted church which was set up in 1989 to be a worshipping community in a particular new-build place. Many people who moved onto this estate joined this church and established its habits. Two things happened. Well OK, lots of things happened but I am going to talk about two.

Firstly this community established ways of doing Sunday church that were a bit different. To begin with it met in a pub, which got some publicity but did not last a year. Meeting in a school enabled an informal style which people bought into more easily. Movable chairs and a light airy atmosphere worked well for this. Musicians played instruments other than an organ. This attracted outsiders from beyond the boundaries of its area becasue they liked that sort of thing. It became eclectic. To some extent it also neglected its mission to its area of the parish in which it existed. To some extent. Don't worry about giving me examples of how it didn't so neglect.

Secondly, a group of people who joined the church from another place, geographically speaking, who had rejected the cultural style of the nearest church as 'not them', asked if we could enable them to set up another community nearer where they lived. We are doing this.

I have returned again this morning to a determination not to allow the cultural preferences of the church community to jeopardise the relationship with non-attenders as I listen to an illuminating and helpful set of talks on hospitality. Because hospitality is one of the key values I have tried to ingrain in the church. Hospitality not simply us giving books to people and telling them where to sit, but a real welcome, a helpful accompaniment of stranger plus coffee and biscuits that are free. Followed up by a visit to newcomers by someone not the vicar and an invitation to eat with people as soon as possible.

I have repeatedly said that hospitality is not welcoming people when it is convenient for you but when it is convenient for them.

But it is more, I now learn. For hospitality, in its strictest sense, is a meeting of equals. The provision of warmth and nourishment is not the hospitality; it creates the environment in which a genuine encounter can talk place where both bring something to the meeting. The Old Testament, I discover, had no specific word for providing food and shelter. It didn't need one since it was a part of what you did automatically.

Your church should be changed every time someone new walks through the door. Ours hasn't been, enough. But if that were to happen we would never become a cultural island in which people say to us 'We don't like your style' the way they have to the other local church. For our style would be up for grabs to anyone who wants to join us. Strangers come and contribute. What a massive vision. And what a massive culture change for the church to adopt it.

Thanks to Nick Jepson-Biddle, Precentor of Wells Cathedral for sparking these thoughts at a chapter quiet morning. Grateful.

Bible 3

The very wonderful Brian McLaren is talking of the idea of Bible 3. In fact not so much an idea as a description of the era of Bible-use we are now in.

In Bible 1 culture very few people had access to the scriptures. Only significant spiritual leaders did. They told the people what the Bible said and the people responded. So whole nations became Christian, because you did what the king/emperor said.

In Bible 2 culture local communities had their own spiritual leaders. So churches developed with a particular outlook. It is one of the reasons the Church of England has liberal Catholic churches next to charismatic evangelical ones. The local priest told the people how to behave, what to believe and they followed.

This culture lasted longer than it should. It was one of the reasons Philip Pullman's criticism, that the church was an organisation designed to keep people in order, hit the mark. It was. We didn't let people think for themselves soon enough.

In Bible 3 everyone has access to everything anyone has ever said everywhere about all passages all the time. If I preach something unpopular the congregation can google seven different interpretations of the same passage before Sunday lunch.

Bouncing off this thesis, it seems to me that the job of the preacher is now much less to expound one particular model of certainty but to explain the options. And Christians will need to become much more comfortable living with people of opposing, or complementary, views.

So I may say, of an early Genesis passage, there are Christians who take this historically and those who believe it is fable. You need to decide what you believe, and if that makes a difference to the truth it contains.

Of sexuality I need to say that some people feel the Bible's stance against same sex behaviour is fixed and immutable for all time. Others feel the Bible models a developing understanding of same sex relationships and knows little of exclusive, lifelong same-sex marriage so cannot affirm it. You may need to be welcoming to people who do not agre with you that they are sinning.

It's one of the reasons why I am keen to start a 'Questioning the Unquestionable' group soon. I have a few guinea pigs for a meeting next week and, if it is a goer, will advertise more widely. It may be that some who are not church members, because they feel some things cannot be be questioned, might find it a useful route in.

Seeking After Truth

There is a certain way that churches do evangelism. Probably applies to conservative and evangelical churches more than liberal ones. Liberal ones tend not to do evangelism.

The methodology uses the metaphor of a meal and feeding a baby.

The parent has the food. As much food is put into the baby as possible who then needs to burp before any more can be taken.

The teacher has the truth. As much truth is put into the enquirer as possible who then needs to burp before more can be taken.

Alpha uses this model. The talks are the food and the discussion groups are the burp. It still works for some people, especially those who have a respect for the knowledge and ability of the teacher. The discussion groups allow people to respond to the talk and the next talk builds on this.

It was perhaps nearly twenty years ago that I met my first brother in Christ who would describe himself as an 'emergent' Christian. The person in question, who I encountered at a very funky little group at the Custard Factory in Brum where Christians involved in the arts could support each other, called himself a 'Seeker After Truth'.

I loved that. I loved the language, the spirit of enquiry, the lack of certainty (therefore the presence of mystery), the general cultural alertness of the members of the group.

In doing their work (and all were highly effective communicators of the gospel) they emphasised some things that operated counter to conservative Christian culture. I will call the communicator 'teacher' in these examples but I mean it more in the sense of philosopher, or journey-leader. Here are some emphases:

1. Seeking. Both teacher and disciple are seeking. Both might be changed by the process. The person who is interested or enquiring is valued as someone who has something to bring to the party. The whole one-beggar-sharing-bread-with-another thing.

2. Vulnerability A. The teacher owns up to uncertainty or times when Christians have disagreed. If there are two views both are expounded and decisions are not forced.

3. Vulnerability B. Rather than packing a meeting with seven Christians for every enquirer (again, often my Alpha experience) the teacher will go alone into a room full of seekers, facing the questions, the difficulties, alone.

4. Biblical literacy means talking about the historicity questions academic theologians have discussed for years but have largely been kept from congregations. It is about being honest with the truth.

5. Story. Stories have a power. Jesus used fiction to communicate. He very rarely told people what the story meant and even when he did his explanation often contained more mystery than certainty.

I ran Alpha for some years. Still would given half a chance. But I was quietly subverting it by setting out options and not insisting on one line. My Alpha course embraced universalism, hell as a metaphor not a reality, the possibility there was not a real Satan, the possibility of God no longer healing physically, the fact that some committed Christians were gay ... not saying these things were all acceptable but allowing people to come on board with such views and be included.

In reality Alpha don't like you mucking about with their course and still calling it Alpha. In my last church I just about held together some of the most liberal thinkers I have ever seen in a traditionally evangelical place of worship, including a number of lesbian and gay Christians. Almost all left shortly after I did. Which saddens me.

I'd like there to be a possibility of this not happening where I am now.

Annoying Filler

I thought only one newspaper regularly did this sort of thing, but reading more than one organ on holiday I find it is more common than that.

A series of restaurants has opened, mainly south-east but that is where we are, where booking is not possible. You have to pitch up and queue. I'm pretty sure Pizza Express have had this policy for ages unless you are in a large party but we'll by-pass that.

So the Times did that thing of phoning the restaurant, pretending to be calling on behalf of various celebrities, to see if there was any latitude in the rules for pompous, over-paid, self-publicists who didn't do queues. Turns out there was.

Journals of truth using lies to expose hypocrisy. Annoys the hell out of me.

Although I did enjoy the answer to the request that Jeremy Clarkson be allowed to park outside the restaurant. 'This is a pedestrianised street.'

What To Do Next?

I've Never Seen Star Wars. Marcus Brigstocke's Radio 4 programme introduces celebrities to experiences they have never had and asks them to rate them.

I recently came across an article Richard Osman (the boffin on Pointless) wrote in The Guardian. It was a smart deconstruction of the time commitment necessary to follow the advice of the '...100 X to do before you die' format.

To cut a longish story shortish - you can't. I have wondered before if it is a singularly middle-class developed-world expectation that every good thing in the world, be it painting, park or panorama, is only there for me to see and no other purpose. As natural resources that enable travel become fewer and fewer I need to jettison my expectation that I could see everything. The Golden Gate Bridge and Sydney Opera House can manage without my custom.

Osman looked at the time necessary, let alone the expense, to read all the books, see all the boxed-set TV series and movies, eat at all the restaurants and visit the galleries and concluded that there would be no time to do anything ordinary.

A while back I developed the rule of cyclical proficiency - you can't get better at one skill without getting worse at another. So this last year I read a good number of books, better than average, but I seemed to be constantly behind with the newspapers and didn't see enough films.

So as a thought for the start of the year may I encourage the skill of selection. Can you decide on one area where you might become more engrossed this year? And work out the cost. What will have to have less time devoted to it in order to compensate? One of the best-read people I know has no TV in her house. Another manages to blot out all around her in order to be lost in a book for a couple of hours. Chaos may reign in her household but she will not be moved.

The alternative is to continue to be a massive generalist, in which case there will often be 'Did you see?' Or 'Have you read?' conversations where your answer is negative. And this can feel bad if everyone else has seen Gravity3D and you haven't, or read The Da Vinci Code or seen 'that' clip on YouTube.

A Radio Bristol presenter recently announced that he had just seen The Sound of Music for the first time. He followed this up by saying that he had, really, never seen Star Wars. He managed it without shame which was cool.

I find that the lot of a parish priest is to be a generalist. When you meet someone new and they tell you what they do for a living it is helpful to be able to grasp the next question to ask and to discuss their life with some sense of being in on their secret a little bit.

All this means that the skill of selecting, from the huge range of human experience on offer, which ones you cannot afford to overlook, is a peculiarly third millennium one. There comes a time when you need to know about Harry Potter, The Sopranos and One Day I am sure. But when? Tough call.

Quote Book Index 541-550

From Tony Parsons' excellent 'Dispatches from the Front Line of Popular Culture':

545. The sleeve of Nevermind featuring a baby floating underwater, seemingly about to make a grab for a hook with a dollar bill for bait, was the most cynical cover to ever appear on a rock record.

Quote Book Index 531-540

Nearly finished Coupland (for now):

532. Option paralysis: The tendency, when given unlimited choices, to make none.

Quote Book Index 521-530

Still Douglas Coupland op cit:

529: Anti-victim device (AVD): A small fashion accessory worn on an otherwise conservative outfit which announces to the world that one still has a spark of individuality burning inside:...

Quote Book Index 511-520

Several wonderful lifts from Douglas Coupland's seminal 'Generation X' (1991) which ought to be compulsory reading for everyone once they become about thirty:

518. Decade blending; In clothing: the indiscriminate combination of two or more items from various decades to create a personal mood.

Quote Book Index 501-510

507. If your work was informed by other people's opinions it would look like everything else around you.
(Amanda Lever, architect of 'Future Systems' on Channel 4's 'Without Walls')