Permission To Speak Freely

You may have heard of Anne Jackson, the writer of Mad Church Disease, and now Permission To Speak Freely. On her website she asks "What is one thing you feel you can't say in church" and this is one of the responses.


This and the other confessions provided an interesting reality-check. You can read more on Anne's website or see a couple of slideshows on her facebook page.

ps. if you're interested in her book, she has 7 excerpts online - 1 2 3 4 5 6 7.

Atheists Know More Than Christians

Perhaps you heard about this survey in America. A phonepoll group did a survey asking questions about religion. From 32 questions, Atheists averaged 20.9, Protestants 16 and Catholics 14.7.

It's tempting (if you consider your self a protestant) to wipe your brow in relief and say "Whew! Just passed! At least we beat the Catholics." But that's not the comparison i'm looking at.

The survey is about religion - and Christians know the least!

OK, so the questions were on all religions, but why are Christians the most ignorant when it comes to understanding our neighbours of different beliefs. These are the same neighbours we are called to love. Have we become so insular that we understand only those in the same little niche as ours. (See Black Box Theory). Remember, this was a test about religion - Christians should be way up the top of the class. Or at least as high as atheists. That would be less embarrassing ;)

Anyway, you can do a sample from the test yourself. I got 14/15 and my friend 13/15. You'll probably do quite well. Maybe the selected 15 are the easiest from the original poll, or it maybe it's just that we're not American ;)

More about the poll here and here. In the second of these articles it says that only 57% of Protestants could name the 4 Gospels. That's probably a whole separate blog post just there!

[Full report on the survey here]

How To Speak Christianese

The other day i wrote about talking in code, and then today i found this great spoof infomercial for learning 'Christianese'.

Church V Strippers (Everyone Loses)

I don't know if you've read about the whole 'Church v Strippers' saga in the US, but i liked how the people at CMS summed up the lesson in two phrases

Antagonizing people is never a good way to communicate the gospel.

Your strategy should be consistent with your message. (If you believe in love, you should communicate with love - not judgement).

Two lessons that you think would be obvious, but apparently not - otherwise this would never have happened.

Instead it's yet another time where Christians have got in the way of someone knowing Jesus. Or as Todd Rhoades puts it "The one thing this church has done with their actions is pretty much guarantee that none of them will have anything to do with any of these people coming to Christ".

Talking In Code

I heard the following in a worship service (after a bunch of text had been read from the projection screen)

It's from Galatians - our lectionary epistle for this evening

and i wondered how that sentence might sound to someone not thoroughly trained in the church system. I reckon something like

It's from Blah - our blah blah for this evening

and we wonder why we have trouble communicating with others!

Gruen Part 2

Yesterday, i looked at the Gruen Transfer's analysis of religious advertising. Ironically, one of the most pertinent comments came in the (unrelated) next segment of the show. This segment focussed on a new online provider of electronic goods - who is taking market share away from the traditional stores like Harvey Norman.



The pertinent comment was this one from Russel Howcroft:

It's the clicks-versus-bricks thing. His entire empire is based on its real estate, its property, its warehouses. Then someone comes along who actually doesn't have any of the burden of all that cost. It's a young man with a 21st century business model - so he's like "Ooh, hang on a sec - what's going on here".

Sound familiar? An old-style empire based on owning lots of land and buildings, laden with a cumbersome cost-burden.

OK, in the church's case there may not be a major new competitor, but the lesson is still there to be learnt. Instead of waiting (like Harvey did) for someone else to outdo us in a manner that is more engaging, relevant and effective - why don't we do it first?

How Do You Sell ... Religion?

Each week, the ABC's Gruen Transfer program takes a look at advertising - what works, what doesn't, and why. Recently, they discussed the 'product category' of religion.



My highlights came from Todd Sampson (on the Jesus ad):

They had done a lot of research and basically the finding was "Church is bad, Jesus is cool". So they focussed on their strength, which is Jesus. But the advertising certainly won't solve the problem that brand Christianity has ... You can paint the advertising and make that look really good. If the experience is not very good, it's not going to work ... The advertising goes part of the way but it certainly doesn't go all the way.

and from Jeremy Nicholas:

Why it doesn't work is 'cause the whole thing is completely and utterly plastic ... the whole thing just eeks of out-of-touchness and then it has no relevance ... and so it does more damage than good

I do sometimes wonder what it says about how well we are following Jesus, when research says that "Jesus is cool - Church is bad". And why does faith-related broadcasting come across as fake, plastic and irrelevant? Is it that faith is something best shared person-to-person, rather than via mass delivery?