jonnybaker

on innovation 4: get yourself a side project

like me i bet you have bought someone a present because you secretly wanted it yourself? if you live with that person it's quite a good strategy! anyway i bought jen a zine called the side project report - she is working on a side project so i thought she'd enjoy it and hopefully find a bit of practical wisdom and encouragement. she has now read it (and loved it) so it was time for me to sneak it away from her desk and read it. i couldn't put it down and i think i pretty much read every word. i would love to get a copy for every pioneer training at cms because it's so helpful whether you are running a project as a sideline or as a main thing.

it's published by the guys who run the do lectures which has been going nearly 10 years and was founded by the people who set up howies. their web site is really worth a look and you can order the side project and a whole load of other cool looking books from there as well as watch what look like some really interesting lectures. i'll be popping back. 

but in terms of innovation i think side project is a really interesting thing to pay attention to. it made me realise i always have some ideas spinning and usually am getting one or two going - i jotted down a list of a dozen things i have done over the years that are sideline type things - books, exhibitions, networks, proost. i am actually working with a couple of others on a zine publication right now called future present (watch this space). side projects can be a spare time ting that you fit around your main thing and the challenge can then be finding the time, but it is also the way i have got new things going within my work - start them on the side and let them grow until they can't be ignored. it was great to read something that said side projects are a brilliant way to get a project started. it also made me reflect how helpful that could be for pioneers. of course there are some people who will have a pioneer project that is a main thing - they manage to raise money or there's a paid role. but i suspect a large percentage of pioneer projects might better fit the idea of side projects. the challenge with sidelines is time of course and it needs determination to focus on doing what needs doing. but the big plus is that they don't have to bear the burden of putting bread on the table - they can run alongside other things and the best driver is passion or love not money anyway.i also think that there is very little threat in the idea of a side project - if it doesn't take off no problem. but if it does then that can be the time to give ore investment and resource to it. 

there was a really interesting (as ever) article by george monbiot in this week's guardian on volunteering and how in our changing world for many people meaning making may be associated with volunteering as much as with work. that combines perfectly with the notion of side projects.

there is some research, some stories and a kind of earthed practical wisdom in areas like time and money and  habits/behaviour (and what i think could be described as spirituality). 

i think i am going to be thinking for quite a while about side projects and i have arranged a catch up with someone next week where among other things we want to have a conversation about how long it's been since we did something creative so we need a new side project!

on innovation [2] - the creative stance

my son joel studied at chelsea art college. i was really inspired by what i observed of the course he did - it was creative, assignments were stretching and nearly all done as teams, people from various sectors in the creative industries and arts would come and speak, students were encouraged to do real work alongside their training, and the graduate show was mind-blowingly good. i was also regretting having studied maths rather than art myself i think! he was there at the same time that i was designing training for pioneers and i remember thinking that i thought an art school or innovation school was more like what i hoped we could create than a theological seminary. of course we would teach theology, mission, ministry but the environment or air that students breathe needed to be risk taking, creative, free. so when i was last in the institute for contemporary arts bookshop in london i couldn’t resist buying the creative stance. this is a collaboration between art college teachers in london on what makes for a flourishing creative student who trains with them. through their reflection they have come up with seven behaviours and the book is laid out in a series of chapters on each behaviour with a short essay by an artist followed by a discussion on that behaviour with three lecturers often in relation to a particular course. i really loved the book. the seven behaviours are essentially a kind of formation for art students. they are:

rigour, risk, imagination, provocation, agency, resilience, and ambiguity.

i discuss these behaviours with rick lawrence on the podcast i blogged about a few posts back. but i’d like to reflect on them here thinking particularly about theological education because that was the discussion i was in this week - what’s the relationship between theological education and innovation (and by extension ministry and mission practice and innovation).

to take one behaviour, rigour has an essay by grayson perry in which he reflects on two internal characters - hobbit and punk. to be a good artist the hobbit is the character who puts in hours to develop brilliance in skill in a craft - in his case pottery. hobbit alone can make nice pots but in terms of art can be a bit boring. so he also needs punk who is the character who messes with things to make them interesting. this interplay between hobbit and punk makes for a creative approach to art that combines depth of skill with risk taking imagination and innovative practice. the essay is actually available in the latest edition of creative review and is free if you sign up. it’s totally brilliant! when asked what advice he would give to an artist student perry says - ‘turn up on time, be nice, and put in the hours’. you can see where i am going with this - this is so resonant with pioneers. i suspect they are more attracted to punk than hobbit. but in theological education (and in the church generally) i bump into a lot more hobbits than punks. but it’s a great idea to nurture both aspects.

i won’t elaborate on all the behaviours - you can get the book but here are a few quotes and ideas i jotted down that caught my attention.

curiosity is foundational. if you are not curious you’ll stay on a safe path. 

Curiosity is the substrate of creativity, overlaid by an appetite for risk, necessarily followed by determination

i fear that safety is a problem in theological education and the church - we are generally risk averse which is ironic because probably the theologians and saints we admire are/were curious and risk taking. but various traditions of theology have systematised it and made it about information and right doctrine rather than a quest that is creative in response to the tradition and context and the spirit. and i think there can easily be an atmosphere of anxiety and fear about getting things right rather than one of exploration and play. art school gives people the confidence to make a dangerous decision - does theology school i wonder?

risk is… 

the enemy of your own and other peoples certainty. A state of optimistic dissatisfaction, of relentless questioning. A preoccupation with quality without regard for the established order.

how do you involve students in risk? 

You show them things that they probably haven’t thought about before and that aren’t necessarily part of that central canon.

the authors suggest that art schools should be creating the kind of graduates that can rock boats rather than row boats, that question and push. and they lament that the curriculum is currently too related to industry because of pressures. has play been ruined because it has to be turned to money? we might say the same of ministry students who are under pressure from industry a.k.a. church growth. the authors suggest that playfulness should be applied to everything and every moment you’re alive… a way of being.

ambiguity is fascinating i think. it requires doubt and where there is doubt there is great space for imagination. art students need to learn to transgress rules and fixed boundaries and conventions forging new paths where no one has trodden before. this sounds like a mantra for pioneers and cross cultural mission. but i have not seen this in much theological education i have visited so far.

for a world that is changing and in need of change creatives need flexibility, adaptability, openness, vulnerability, resourcefulness, avoidance of monocultures (which are fragile rather than resilient). the church needs the same - it really does. 

and i found it interesting that the exact same challenge i described in the last post of people who remake the world in order to create solutions is nurtured in arts students. they

reshape the world to contain the artwork you make, to create a new reality - because it’s never been enough just to make the art

(substitute the word theology for art)

there is a lovely section where a lecturer from chelsea art college ponders the percentage of students who go on to be artists and make a life in it which is quite small. but he then lists what they do go on to do in a wonderful list of enterprises, community development, change agents, educators and so on. in other words a creative education enables them to have agency out of who they are to participate in making the world a better place. 

anyway you get the point. when you look at a formation that nurtures a creative stance there is so much for theological and mission education to learn. but the contrast with what is valued and in the air in theological colleges is stark. if we want innovation maybe we need students to breathe different air, art school air?!

this reminded me too of will gompertz's book think like an artist which i have blogged about before. in that he has a whole section on education generally and why it should be like art school which i loved. he says 

Art school or not students need to leave education as independently minded, intellectually curious, self confident and resourceful - prepared for and excited by the future and what they might be able to contribute to it. The future depends on us taking a different approach.

i couldn’t agree more.

(thanks to the baptist theological educators forum who invited me to reflect on formation and theological education with them earlier this year that enabled me to develop this particular sideways strain of thought)

on innovation [1] - we do things differently

i keep talking to people about innovation. i have a ton of thoughts that have been knocking around my head for a while in the areas of change, newness, innovation, imagination, pioneering, mission and changing the world! so i will try and find some space for some blog posts. life is sadly too busy to blog enough but i must blog! i was prompted by this today because i was having a conversation with some good friends about theological education and innovation and whether they do or don't go together easily. i'll come back to that in another post. several of the posts will be about books i have read. 

i have pondered several times in the last few years why i spend more money when i am in an art bookshop than a theology one - see a tale of two bookshops where i suggest that it's because they seem concerned with changing the world and not just art. i have found myself almost repeating that exact same experience only with a different set of books - all of which i hope i will say something about in these posts...

i love people who come up with ideas that solve problems. i especially love it when to solve a particular problem you actually have to reimagine the world in order to solve the problem because the paradigm itself is part of the problem. it's akin to the future present imagination that i have blogged about before.

we do things differently is a book of stories of outsiders rebooting our world by mark stevenson. i nearly didn't buy the book because it has a terrible cover but i am glad i got beyond that. it is an incredible book that filled me with hope. let me mention two stories from it to give you the flavour. one that i mentioned at the new parish conference is of peter dearman who has invented an engine that emits zero carbon. he initially began by messing around with his lawnmower and antifreeze. as an engineer he figured that what drives a piston is temperature change and you could drive a piston by moving the temperature from sub zero to zero if you used liquid nitrogen (along with isothermal expansion). i won't bore you with the details but he has invented an engine that is not oil dependant, and has a bi-product of refrigeration which in hot climates with a lot of food wastage is brilliant. you can read about the dearman engine here.

i also loved the story of the indian scientist samir brahmachari. finding new medicines is and has been a really interesting and potentially life saving area. turberculosis is a disease of the poor so drug companies simply haven't come up with new new medicines to treat the increasingly drug resistant types. further the way drug companies go about it is a multi billion dollar expense to find a new drug which involves thousands of failures. samir's approach was to find a new process by tackling the genome annotation for tb - over four million letters. for one person to do the work would take 300 years. so he effectively created a wikipedia for science students in india to work on particular aspects of the task. through this process they found 350 people who were good and to cut a long story short the results were amazing - the most comprehensively annotated tuberculosis genome in history completed in four months and published online free!!! through this he then found people to create a computer model of tuberculosis bacterium that he could experiment on virtually. once they built that (which was complex) they open sourced it. and through participation 11 weaknesses to explore in the code were identified and the latest was that a cheap drug which already exists for diabetes can be used for tb. i don't claim to follow the details of the science but i found this story compelling. it's compelling because samir who is clearly a genius has to break through the old ways of doing things and imagine very differently to come up with a solution. you would think that the drugs world would be all over it but unsurprisingly he meets incredible difficulty - he is maligned in journals, poo pooed by experts and of course his whole approach is a threat to the economics of the system. it's hard to argue with him though when he says -

'we don't believe in the western concept of knowledge being proprietary. i'm not in this for wealth but because i would like to see  reduction in death'

wow - i am on board!

the book is full of stories of such people who have to reimagine the way the world is organised in order to come up with a solution to the problem - the stories relate to energy, education, drugs, agriculture, engineering, the environment, food production, cities...

thank god for the gift of such seers/innovators - i love that they exist and it fills me with hope. of course i am reading a parallel with pioneers in my own context.

the amount of difficulty they all have is extraordinary - whether it's farming or oil or drugs industries they do not like a threat to the existing system even if it's clear that system needs to change because there are vested interests (and money!) and frankly a lack of desire to even listen to or see the new solutions. (so it's not just the church that is resistant to change as it happens - it's normal for  pioneers all over to experience this kind of resistance sadly and i think we should all wise up about that).

connecting people together becomes really important for support, for encouragement, for hope. this is why i was stressing the importance of getting yourself connected in my last post on the value of networks.

two web sites that are connecting people producing the kinds of futuring solutions in this book are really worth looking up - 

the league of pragmatic optimists and the atlas of the future 

a conversation about imagination and creativity

when i was in colorado recently i got invited to have a conversation with rick lawrence on his podcast. we had been talking about creativity and imagination in the car so that was what we dived into (which happens to be one of mine and rick's favourite subjects i suspect). the flow of the conversation relates imagination to faith in jesus, the challenges facing the church today and how to nurture creative practice. the framework for the conversation is seven behaviours in the creative stance, a book put together by people teaching at art colleges in london to explore what helps someone creative flourish. i am sure i'll come back to review that book on the blog another time...

anyway the podcast episode is here - it lasts about 50 minutes

discordant zine

discordant is a new venture, a creative zine or journal with a DIY ethos inviting contributions from anyone engaging with christianity and culture. it's part of the proost family. the idea is to participate so go and take a look and get involved. the first theme is wonder and you have until february to contribute. there is an example here you can download for free which also has a sampler of 6 tracks free too. love it!

radical imagination: prefiguring the world that is not yet here

i appreciate that this blog is currently something of a slow burn, such is my busy life! but a massive thank you to those of you who still patiently hop onto the flow whether via a feed, twitter, facebook or the occasional digital drop in. i hope as you look back on 2014 you have some consoling thoughts and find hope for the year ahead even if it is against the odds.

a while back i posted a tale of two bookshops in which purchased four books at the ICA bookshop. i have enthused about two of them so far - feral (my book of the year i think and george monbiot is the person i would most like to be put in charge of running the country), and exploring everything.

well the third of the four is radical imagination. i bought this because i can't resist anything about imagination - one of the most underrated and undervalued aspects of what it is to be human. but i didn't read the small print - it turns out it's a book about social research amongst activist movements. but i ended up loving it and learning a load. there is a web site related to it that aims to study, broadcast and celebrate the intelligence, passion and creativity of social movements. of course the church is a social movement (though of course it is curiously part of the establishment in places too!). this book has lots to say to those of us interested in the transformation of society especially seeking to imagine a different kind of society and world that does not have to be the way it is now, and as part of that those of us seeking to effect change in and through following in the way of jesus christ (one heck of an activist!).

the single idea that has stuck with me the most and anyone who knows me well will have been subjected to it over a meal conversation or a work discussion is prefigurative research. what the authors mean by this is to design the present on the basis of an imagined future that is not already here. in their case they are based in universities and don't like the way the academic world is configured so they imagine how the university might be and design research on the basis of that - i.e. it prefigures it rather than settling for the current status quo. brilliant eh? 

so on the first day of the year what kind of world, society, economy, neighbourhood, community, business, or church do you imagine might be possible? and how can you live in the present in a way that flows from that radical imagination? i feel challenged about the training of pioneers i lead at cms - have we done enough imaginative work of what is possible out of which to design our training? we do love imagination but i am stirred up to do some more. i am sick the culture of greed in the wider powers that be and the systematic grinding down of the poor and it seems to me that here more than anywhere we need this radical kind of approach.

i also like the positive and yet honest way that haven and khasnabish talk about social movements. it's interesting to overlay this with whatever networks or movements yoiu have been or are part of such as transition towns, emerging church, pioineering mission or whatever. here's a few notes and quotes i jotted down for myself when i read it...

Take social movements seriously as fecund ecologies ripe with possibility

Movements can be alternative spaces of social reproduction, places where individuals and communities can re-create themselves and find support for doing so.

Social movements are driven by and co-create the radical imagination: shared landscapes of possibility and contestation that confront and contradict the reigning imaginaries of capital and power.... It is not something individuals have but is something networks, groups, movements do. It emerges from and guides collective doing...

Hope is important to balance struggle - fun, joy, celebration, acceptance, humour...

it reminded me just how important communities are in which conversation is happening about the world and change. three things i do that this has helped me continue to value are meet with friends over a meal most weeks one evening to linger at the table, talk, share life, dream and pray; a couple of times a year through the team i work with host a 24 hour dreaming space in which we go away and take on a theme or idea and explore it; and connect/network with others who share similar vision and passion around transformation. this is all part i guess of building infrastructures of dissent as they are described on the web site (i love that phrase - reminds me of the great mission thinker john taylor's notion of cells of dissent).

the book is also a reminder of how valuable research is. they see research as part of how movements are carried forward and propose the idea of a solidarity research strategy that opens up a commions for the imagination through community and participation. so their research involves facilitating focus groups, hosting events, and even a radical imagination festival. one of the issues for activists and i suspect a lot of us in many walks of life is that you get bogged down in the day to day task. one thing research does is pull people together to reflect and talk about what is going on with others. it opens time and spaces in a cycle of imagination, strategy and tactics. the kinds of questions researchers facilitate conversation about are 

• what events or ideas brought you to pioneering work and (how) have your thoughts changed through your involvement?
• what is the role of the imagination in your movement and your own pioneering?
• what would it mean to win? What’s your vision of a better society? Do these visions matter to you and your movement?
• what are the barriers to the radical imagination that you face?

i have changed politics to pioneering in the questions above to see how it crosses over into mission. i should have said that the project is grounded in the particular - in hamilton canada - so it's not just an abstract set of ideas. it really is involved in a movement for change.

so go prefigure! hopeful new year :)

 

hello america i have news for you!

proost now has a us site at proost.us!

for years we have had this cool little thing in the uk called proost which is home to wonderful inspiring resources that have been produced from artists and communities doing creative things. this includes movies, books of authentic liturgies, music, experiences such as the labyrinth and so on. but to access the resources you no longer have to come to the uk site and negotiate foreign currency of pounds - it's all in dollars. 

the big deal (and you guys love both big and deal) is that you can subscribe for a hundred dollars for a year and that enables you to log in to the back end of the site and download anything you like. 

we have some friends in the usa but not enough! so if you know about us do spread the word - in many ways this is still a hidden gem. but thought you'd like to know...

...and we will become a happy ending

occasionally something comes along that is a wonderful surprise. this happened to me recently when a book arrived in the post called and we will become a happy ending. it's a collection of stories and sayings, ponderings and pictures that describe a church called theStory in canada - it fuses meditation, liturgy, prayer, art, theology. it's laid out beautifully like a coffe table book. it really is amazing. you can preview the book here

when things like this come along i find myself filled with hope. it's a real labour of love. it's available on proost i am delighted to say - proost exists for precisely this sort of creative publishing that comes from the bottom up. it's available as a downloadable pdf. of course if you are a subscriber it's available as part of your subscription! i actually have 10 physical copies that i have bought - they cost me around £15.50 each by the time postage is added. i am very happy to pass them on at cost price so if you know me or bump into me just ask. or you can order it through amazon.

creativity in youthwork

tomorrow i am leading a training day for youthworkers in london on creativity which i am looking forward to. details, the flyer etc can be downloaded from here. i am sure it's not too late to just turn up!

small ritual postcards

steve has produced some brilliant small ritual postcards - he kindly gave me a set. i see they are also being contextualised for the dutch...

click to light the olympic torch! wonderful...

joel was contacted by bibliotheque design and asked if he could turn this poster design into something animated for the olympic opening day. click on the torch to light the flame and then drag your mouse across the screen to move the flame - let the olympics begin!

presentations and the dreaded powerpoint + links

last week i was taking part in a cms training conference for people in mission on communication. there were sessions on story telling, photography, movie making, social networks, and presentations. people takng part worked in pairs to present in whatever media they wanted on the last morning. these presentations were really wonderful and moving. 

i was invited to lead some short reflections/prayerful spaces and tried to incorporate a mix of media into them. for those people that were there here's a few links to some of the pieces...

network of christ

mobile confession was originally described here and i used sms2email.co.uk to set it up - click on the section with interactive messaging and keywords

st hilda community prayer - be still...

prayer of commitment

twitter prayers used visible tweets (which i will also blog about separately)

the jesus deck which we used for storytelling is available here

the prayer/blessing related to mobile faith is here

prayer of francis drake

tour de france road psalm

i was also invited to share my thoughts on presenting with the likes of powerpoint or keynote or equivalent. i found this a good challenge as it helped me reflect on my own approach. and i produced a handout summarising it here called presentations and the dreaded powerpoint (pdf) . you had to be there to experience the presentation itself! a friend seth who presented on photography used a quote saying that there is no such thing as a right way to take good photographs - there are only good photographs. the same could be said of presentations so by signalling my approach i am not for one moment suggesting it is the right or only or best way of presenting - it's a way! love to know your thoughts on your own approaches...

wonderful

wonderful is the title of the final show of chelsea art college's graphic and design show. the work produced by students is quite amazing . they all have portfolios online here if you want to have a browse through movies, photo, fashion, type, web design, branding and so on.

the show was put together and curated by a group of the students. joel had two pieces in the show. one was an amazing 3d neon sign saying 'amen' which was part of a design for a poster campaign for the nightclub ministry of sound. set on a wooden stand in a perspex case it made me think that someone with some vision and space should buy it or get one made to be a communion table! it would look incredible...

his other piece is colloquy - his final project which is a web site of affective text - i.e. text that resonds to mood/emotion. go and try it out... and his portfolio is here. next step - the big wide world! 

i took some photos here if you want a browse. the show is on all week...

[update: creative review do a write up here]

copyright free images

i quite often get asked where you can find photos to use in presentations. neil haydock has compiled a list of 10 sources of copyright free images here on prayerscapes

congrats joel!

joel is in his final year of graphic design and one piece of work this year was entering the D&AD annual student awards which are in a number of categories. he chose typography for which the brief was to create a series of typographic posters for the ministry of sound nightclub...

anyway congrats to joel for being nominated as best of year for his typeface and posters. the writing is envisaged to be made in neon - i can't help thinking some of these would look amazing made large in a church space. anyone out there ready to commission them?!

art in holy week day 4: the easter story engedi arts

[this is part of a series of blog posts on art in holy week - see also

• art in holy week day one: the lent cross delarosa
• art in holy week day two: raised in leeds
• art in holy week day three: the create project
• art in holy week day five: soul of sheffield 
• art in holy week day six: stations of the king's cross
• art in holy week day seven: noesis
• art in holy week day eight: the resurrection ]

the easter story is an exhibtion that opened last weekend in north wales in colwyn bay. this photo was taken at the opening which sounded like a big success. jen and i are heading up tomorrow to join in the fun... gav mart is a student on the cms pioneer course and is the person behind engedi arts who are putting on the exhibition. to get this in motion has involved quite an adventure and a serious amount of risk taking. this has involved taking out a lease short term on the imperial hotel on the hgh street, doing the place up, connecting wth local artists on quite a big scale, and meantime putting together funding bids and dreaming up a vision to enable the hotel to become a base for community and arts into the future - all of which is still unknown.

but the easter story itself is quite a simple idea. take sections of scripture that tell the easter story and invite artists to interact with the story. it doesn't matter if they are christian or not. in many ways the project is about saying that the story is the peoples and not the sole preserve of the church. i just love the scale of what is going on. there are quite a few pieces online about this so i don't want to repeat everthing here. cms write about it here, i really liked this photo story that tells the journey, and gav is interviewed here. here's what he says about it.

Engedi Arts is interested in what Jesus’ story looks like to non Christians, without the perceived barrier of the traditional church building standing in the way. We have handpicked all of our artists ranging from some of the top Welsh contemporary names to some established and up and coming new talent. Of our confirmed artists 80 per cent are based in Wales, and we have received an overwhelmingly positive response from the artistic community.

The 40 passages chosen range from the resurrection of Lazarus to the resurrected Jesus, and the fish breakfast of John 21, and are intended to highlight issues concerning: Life, death, women’s role in the gospel/Christendom, betrayal, economy, the Eucharist, loyalty, justice, gambling, denial, self denial, violence, doubt, theology and friendship, the community’s relationship with the church.

During the show’s run we’re planning a range of community (mini) events at the venue including an opening launch party, a song and creative writing workshop day and evening performance, a spoken word workshop day and evening performance, an acoustic evening, a meditative service, various arts workshops, a student open afternoon, an alternative worship event, a Maundy Thursday event, and a closing Easter Sunday Big Feast.

i intend to take some photos so will try and show something of what it's about when i get back. but if you scroll through the blog you can see stories of some of the artists involved and what they are up to such as this stroke of brilliance...

art in holy week day 3: the create project

[this is part of a series of blog posts on art in holy week - see also

• art in holy week day one: the lent cross delarosa
• art in holy week day two: raised in leeds
• art in holy week day four: the easter story engedi arts
• art in holy week day five: soul of sheffield 
• art in holy week day six: stations of the king's cross
• art in holy week day seven: noesis
• art in holy week day eight: the resurrection ]

the create project easter 2012 is one to particpate in! i stumbled across this on flickr and don't know too much about it. but the idea is simple:

1. create a piece of art in esponse to any aspect of the easter story (any medium - if it's digital leave the url or a memory stick)

2. drop it in a public place as a gift for someone to stumble across

3. take a photo of it and upload it to this flickr group here

people involved such as my dog sighs have a tradition of free art friday so good friday is the day to go for if you are doing one - up for it? go on....

i am making this worship trick 21 series 4.

[update: so i thought i'd join in - see what happened here...]

imagination, creativity and mission - interview on churchnext.tv

chris yaw contacted me a month or so back and asked if he could interview me for churchnext.tv via skype. we explored imagination, creativity and mission. the interview has just been posted. i've not met chris but he is buidling up quite a collection of interviews around mission, church, culture and so on on churchnext

stations on skin

it's raining in texas! - yes the third day in a row... so yesterday we spontaneusly decided to drive to houston and see some some art - the menil collection, rothko chapel and stations on skin.

stations on skin is remarkable. we saw it onlne the day before and the opportunity to see it was too good to miss. it's come out of ecclesia, a wonderful church in houston that chris seay is the pastor of. he was around so we got the chance to chat. ecclesia have a resident artist scott erickson (i wish more communities would employ artists!). scott designed 10 tattoos based on the narrative of the stations of the cross - see all the designs here. and then anyone in the community was invited to take that design and get a tattoo. so the art is literally etched on skin. but it has also been photographed and is beautifully displayed on the walls of the church as an exhibition. chris has the resurrection one so we got to see one of the tattoos.

perhaps unsurprisingly in america they are getting all sorts of complaints from people who see tattoos as bad somehow. see the comments on scott's post for a great response. but i loved the summary part of scott's post of why they are doing this...

The reason why we are doing this is because we believe in our context this is an appropriate contextual expression of our faith.

We had 126 people intially sign up to get tattoos out of our community. I had a conversation after one of the services with a young woman who had many tattoos. I wanted to find out if she had gotten the inking done locally (cause I was putting together a list of tattoo artists I could steer people too… support your local tattoo artist community!) but she told me she had gotten most of her work down in New York.

She’s only been in Houston for a couple months. She has a young daughter and going through a painful divorce. She explained to me what her tattoos meant. All of them had deeply personal stories. I asked her what she thought of this show and she said that she thought it was amazing. She went on to explain to me how most of the time when she attends a church that she feels like she needs to hide her tattoos… that they are inappropriate somehow. But to her, they explain who she is… so she feels like she has to hide who she is. (Sound familiar at church?) She then expressed how grateful she is to have found a community where she can be who she really is.

That’s it for us.

That’s the contextualizing we are striving for…. that there is a place for all who desire to know Christ and His resurrecting grace…. no matter how they are marked.

my favourite one was this one - it's so simple but very powerful - the nail in the hand and words from isaiah 53 - by his wounds we are healed. of course this gets added to the worship tricks series!!! it was such a treat to be able to see this.

the devil don't stand a chance

jon birch has been having fun. he got hold of some southern gospel songs over 90 years old so out of copyright and has recorded an album out on proost this month called the devil don't stand a chance. it will uplift your spirits and bring a smile to your face. here's what the 'reverend jon birch' has to say...

I do not claim these songs as my own, just the production of the tracks. These songs do not represent my theology, but i love their spirit, their humanity, their heart and the amazing spontaneity and emotion in these amazing performances. It won't be long before the original recordings on which these tracks are based are 100 years old. The idea that no one except historians and people with a special interest will hear these songs again is just too sad to contemplate. I hope you enjoy listening to these tracks as much as I enjoyed making them.

you can have a listen to one of the tracks on the album page...

we think it would be fun to do a remix album of these tunes. if you would be interested in remixing a track let me know.