foolish network

I had the pleasure of attending Leeds Festival over the weekend. British Indie music is clearly at the height of it’s revival with more bands than you can shake a stick at, each offering their own version of cheeky, arrogant, guitar music you can dance to, it’s great but will it soon get tired? I hope there isn’t a pop revival like the late ninties. The headliners didn’t particularly interested me but there was a few good non-mainstream acts there, Seasick Steve, !!! (chk, chk, chk) and Battles were all entertaining. !!! certainly had me a dancing. For me the stand out band were a four piece, American outfit called Mute Math. They had a great mix of amazing musicianship (their drummer is a machine), athletic performance and awesome sound. Check them out…

Look at this two posts in one day! I have a confession to make, I tend not to like Christian music. I know that’s going to be a shocking revelation to some…sorry. For sure I like worship music but when I’m worshipping or focused on God. I find it strange as background music, normally if I have worship music on it’s at full volume and I’m screaming my lungs off to keep up with these guys. I don’t want to upset anyone I just find it odd to have worship music in the background at 5 on the volume, I know some people find it a real benefit to hear this all the time, one friend of mine talks about filling your house with praise and I would not for one minute criticise that concept. But….
Contemporary Christian Music or CCM (deary me even the genre sounds bad) I have a real problem with because it can be so bad, so often it’s getting something from the mainstream, trimming off the bits that are a bit dubious, throwing in some christian words and selling it to christians who think that anything with a back beat is of the Devil.
I think Tom might tell me off for being so cynical on here so I better get positive quickly, one word Switchfoot.

(more…)

Well finally Heroes has arrived on to Terrestrial TV in the UK and I advise anyone who has nothing to do on a Wednesday night or has access to a VCR or PVR (Sky+) to set it recording to BBC 2. It seems like quite a few people have watched it already and it could be a rating success for the channel. It’s nothing new in one sense as it is very close to the concept of the X-Men but it is done in a very different way so much so that my sister-in-law enjoys it. It’s action packed, plenty of twists and turns, a little gory in parts, good characters, some humour, suspense and there is even some interesting philosophies in there too. If you hate spoilers I’d avoid anything that even remotely mentions it on the internet.

Who are the people that have this footage on tape to upload it to Youtube in the first place? Just search on Eurovision it’s crazy. Well Woody meets Billy, it’s fluffy stuff but you can see a mutual respect. I’m not sure you get something like this on Television today. I can’t imagine Ricky Gervais sitting down with Rob Bell, though I’m sure Rob would enjoy it.

Part One

(more…)

I think I’ve always wanted to be cool. When the Fonz entered the room in Happy Days the audienced cheered just because he turned up. It was early on in life that I realised I was never going to be the Fonz, I could never pull off the leather jacket look. Thankfully my quest for coolness was aided by the late nighties/early norties acceptance of geek chic. I finally felt there was one trend I could aim for and potentially achieve, I think my friends might say I achieved on the geek part but it was never really chic or cool. Our desire to appear cool is often about being accepted or recieving love or adoration from our peers. Cool is also attractive, we are drawn to cool things and when we feel cool it can lift us, my favourite part of going to a wedding is seeing all my mates in suits and pretending in my mind that we are part of a mafia or something and the whole time I’m thinking ‘How cool are we?! ‘

Like so many things in life cool is defined by having an opposite, uncool. (more…)

So I spent too much of this bank holiday weekend watching television, well actually video. I tend to watch a lot of US drama and I’ve recently been making my way through the new series of Battlestar Galactica. I apologise for those who may groan at the thought of science fiction but this series has really highlighted to me how good sci-fi can be. Science Fiction is a relatively modern genre but by it’s nature it allows you to pose lots of hypothetical ethical and philosophical questions. In the new Battlestar Galactica the enemy cylons who are robots now have the ability to create robots that behave and look like humans. I’ll try not to give too much away but the main philosophical theme of Battlestar Galactica is the nature of humanity. What does it mean to be human?

(more…)

I passed my driving test a few years ago and since then people have often asked me when I am going to buy a car. As a teenager I’d always wondered how people paid for cars and was amazed when my brother explained to me the concept of ‘Finance’. Knowing the traditional Evangelical view on debt I came to conclusion I would never own a nice car. I still haven’t bought a car though I might need to at some point in the future. I’ve always fancied a car with character like an old Mercedes, BMW or Land Rover Defender but then my desire to care for the earth that God has given us gets in the way of purchasing a polluting machine. If I purchase a new car then I get something that is greener and economical but would almost certainly get me in to debt. You may think “Why on earth are you going on about this?”, well I think that as christians it’s important that we wrestle with issues instead of following the crowd whether that be those within or outside the church.

I thought I’d highlight some guys who are wrestling with this very issue in an active way. They call themselves the Junky Car Club and they’ve decided that instead of getting fancier and fancier cars that they will instead buy cars outright and use the money they would have spent on a monthly finance deal to support social justice projects or organisations helping the poor. It’s a simple but great idea, we know that following Jesus costs a great deal, some like to philosophize that away to such an extent that it isn’t an actual real monetary cost, not these guys. Check it out here www.virb.com/junkycarclub

Just to let people know that Rob Bell is touring the UK in June this year. Rob’s sermons, books and videos have been a great inspiration and source of challenge over the past 3 years. I first saw the Nooma film Flame when I was at University and was amazed that someone had actually created a credible piece of Christian Video with content to match the visuals. Then a while later I found that Mars Hill Church (where Rob is the teaching pastor) puts all their sermons online for free. Rob has also written two books Velvet Elvis and more recently Sex God. I read Sex God last week whilst away on holiday and found it an easy yet revelational read in a world that seems to have lost it’s way defining what it means to be sexual.
Calling All Peacemakers will mainly be in venues associated with rock gigs, tickets are available here and a £1 from every sale goes to the Turame Microfinance Project. Might see some of you at Wolverhampton.

The master in the ART of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labour and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion.

He hardly knows which is which.

He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decided whether he is working or playing.

To him he’s always doing both.

James Michener

As a University student, which is fast becoming some time ago, I was quite involved with establishing a Christian Union (CU). I went to a small art college in what I would call a small, remote, ostracised city, others call it Carlisle. Finding other christians was tricky but eventually a group of about 5 got together, assisted by a gentleman called Tim from an organisation called Operation Mobilisation.

There was some debate as what the group would be like, some thinking a social get together for like minded religious folk and others a more conventional CU with meetings, cell groups etc. Eventually we asked a larger christian students organisation to get involved and we met our local workers. It was great to get some support but we had a meeting and the conversation will stick with me forever. At the time the organisation’s values were promoted as Mission and Maturity and we were challenged on how we went about these, particularly mission. As I understand it from friends who studied elsewhere the traditional campus mission goes a little like this. A week long series of events that are mainly social and fun, building to an evangelical meeting where the gospel is preached or even a series of fun events with a ‘God-spot’ or epilogue tagged on the end.

The new CU didn’t have the resources or people to put on a week long series of events like larger campuses but our real difficulty was this concept of what constitutes mission. (more…)