Lee and Baz

They’re just £50 inclusive for a box of the latest Tom Jones edition. There are 50-60 magazines in a box, so that’s a saving of over £100.

Just perfect for men’s events, evangelistic outreach, Back to Church Sunday or just for blessing a load of blokes.

Order a box and pay online and we’ll ship them out immediately.

http://www.sorted-magazine.com/product/?pid=10014

Go for it lads!

Lee and Baz from www.leeandbaz.com address the issue of church and it’s youth work failing lads and men.

Controversial subject but a discussion we need to have.

There are many advantages of being in youthwork for a long time, one is that you see young people who you worked with become your friends, but you also see things come and go. Even people and practices that were commonplace when i started as a full-time youthworker are no longer around. For instance on my facebook page is a picture of me and Jimmy Saville (!), Jimmy is a slightly odd legend here in Leeds, but the other day a twenty three year old said “who’s that man with you on that picture” – i was gutted!

So here is an old timer ready to say a controversial statement in an evangelical magazine – ”I think we are letting down the young men we work with by doing too much bible study and worship!”

Let me explain…one of my youthwork heroes is Pip Wilson. He used to run ‘the rolling magazine’ tent at Greenbelt for many years, when i was thirteen ‘the Rolling magazine’ tent was the place to be – it was mad group games that had a healthy sense of competition, snappy two minute talks and famous special guests. By the end of the two hours you were sweaty and tired with a massive smile on your face and if you were lucky you had met simon Mayo! Pip is a legend, but where are the ‘rolling magzine’ style youthwork these days?

As youth-workers I believe we get are partly paid (or volunteer!) to be ourselves, so whatever journey we are on it is bound to spill over into our work. So as I have written four books for men, that has obviously spilled over in to my thinking, and i have started to ask the question that Dave Murrow poses in his book ‘why men hate going to church’ – Is the church / youthwork becoming more feminine?

I wonder whether we have changed some of our youthwork into something it was never meant to be, it has become a quiet group in a house listening to Tim Hughes cds and then doing an hours bible study on the twelve greek words for worship. By the way…asking that question doesn’t make you a male chauvinist or a sexist pig – its just a fundamental question to ask, like ‘what is Church?’

Dave Murrow says about modern worship…
‘Many of today’s most popular praise and worship songs are feminine in nature. They envision God as a lover rather than a leader. A lot of these songs would be considered homo-erotic if sung by a man to another man. What would you say if a man walked up to you and spoke the words of this popular praise song:

I can feel your presence here with me, Suddenly I’m lost within your beauty, Caught up in the wonder of your touch, Here in this moment, I surrender to your love

Men don’t call each other “beautiful.” Nor do they talk about being in love with each other. Yet every Sunday we invite men to express their love to a male God using language no man would dare say to another. Even at Christian men’s events the praise music is often feminine in nature.’

Dave would also say we are setting our young men up to fail. Lads don’t read as well as girls (they are usually two years behind) and because of the testosterone racing through their veins they don’t sit still very well, but what do we often do – tell them to open a big book, read out loud and sit quietly ‘waiting on God’.

My friend Dave is a child Psychologist he said ‘we must keep the lads in our youthwork active, mad games are great, especially for young to mid-teens.’

All i am saying is lets get some balance.

If our youthwork is cerebral in nature then let’s have mad outdoor competitive times as well. If we always allow girls to win, we will lose our lads. Dave Murrow says that ‘women do masculine but men don’t do feminine’ So if we make our youthwork more male-friendly it is not off putting to the girls we work with.

Also where are the rights of passage in our youthwork?

Many other cultures have them, but we have defaulted the rights of passage in the UK to having your first drink, fight or sexual experience. I spoke to my friend Luke yesterday, a youth worker in Leeds and he is going to do a rights of passage residential next year, setting outdoor challenges for the lads, with the chance that they will fail! We don’t talk about failure very often do we?

‘What if we stopped begging young men to be saved and started challenging them to follow Jesus Christ?’ and why can we openly question everything in the church except ‘why do we think worship is singing songs?’

We invite your response!

Lee Jackson is the co-author of the mens book ‘Cut to the Chase’ see www.leeandbaz.com

Further reading:
‘why men hate going to church’ book and dvd by David Murrow www.churchformen.com
‘boys becoming men’ Lowell Sheppard http://www.lowellsheppard.com/boys.htm

Gail Dines, the author of an explosive new book about the sex industry, on why pornography has never been a greater threat to our relationships

The last time I saw Gail Dines speak, at a conference in Boston, she moved the audience to tears with her description of the problems caused by pornography, and provoked laughter with her sharp observations about pornographers themselves. Activists in the audience were newly inspired, and men at the event – many of whom had never viewed pornography as a problem before – queued up afterwards to pledge their support. The scene highlighted Dines’s explosive charisma and the fact that, since the death of Andrea Dworkin, she has risen to that most difficult and interesting of public roles: the world’s leading anti-pornography campaigner.

Dines is also a highly regarded academic and her new book, Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality, has just come out in the US, and is available online here. She wrote it primarily to educate people about what pornography today is really like, she says, and to banish any notion of it as benign titillation. “We are now bringing up a generation of boys on cruel, violent porn,” she says, “and given what we know about how images affect people, this is going to have a profound influence on their sexuality, behaviour and attitudes towards women.”

The book documents the recent history of porn, including the technological shifts that have made it accessible on mobile phones, videogames and laptops. According to Dines’s research the prevalence of porn means that men are becoming desensitised to it, and are therefore seeking out ever harsher, more violent and degrading images. Even the porn industry is shocked by how much violence the fans want, she says; at the industry conferences that Dines attends, porn makers have increasingly been discussing the trend for more extreme practices. And the audience is getting younger. Market research conducted by internet providers found that the average age a boy first sees porn today is 11; a study from the University of Alberta found that one third of 13-year-old boys admitted viewing porn; and a survey published by Psychologies magazine in the UK last month found that a third of 14- to 16-year-olds had first seen sexual images online when they were 10 or younger – 81% of those polled looked at porn online at home, while 63% could easily access it on their mobile phones.

“I have found that the earlier men use porn,” says Dines, “the more likely they are to have trouble developing close, intimate relationships with real women. Some of these men prefer porn to sex with an actual human being. They are bewildered, even angry, when real women don’t want or enjoy porn sex.”
Porn culture doesn’t only affect men. It also changes “the way women and girls think about their bodies, their sexuality and their relationships,” says Dines. “Every group that has fought for liberation understands that media images are part and parcel of the systematic dehumanisation of an oppressed group . . . The more porn images filter into mainstream culture, the more girls and women are stripped of full human status and reduced to sex objects. This has a terrible effect on girls’ sexual identity because it robs them of their own sexual desire.”

Images have now become so extreme that acts that were almost non-existent a decade ago have become commonplace. From studying thousands of porn films and images Dines found that the most popular acts depicted in internet porn include vaginal, oral and anal penetration by three or more men at the same time; double anal; double vaginal; a female gagging from having a penis thrust into her throat; and ejaculation in a woman’s face, eyes and mouth.

“To think that so many men hate women to the degree that they can get aroused by such vile images is quite profound,” says Dines. “Pornography is the perfect propaganda piece for patriarchy. In nothing else is their hatred of us quite as clear.”

Born in Manchester, Dines moved to Israel in 1980, aged 22, and soon became involved in the women’s movement. An event organised by the feminist consciousness-raising group Women against Pornography in Haifa – in which pornography was shown – changed her life forever. “I was astounded that men could either make such a thing or want to look at it,” she says. From then on, she knew she had to campaign about the issue.

There were two images from Hustler magazine that she found especially shocking: a cartoon of a construction worker drilling a jackhammer into a woman’s vagina, and one depicting a woman being fed through a meat grinder. “I was newly married and told my husband that night how appalled I was, which he fully understood,” she says. “If he had said I was a prude I don’t think I could have stayed with him.”
The couple moved to the US in 1986, and Dines has taught at Wheelock College, Boston ever since, where she is professor of sociology and women’s studies and chair of the American studies department. She is something of a lone voice in academia. Aside from what she says are “a handful” of colleagues across the US, most contemporary scholars are positive about pornography, and Dines thinks this is due to both a fear of being considered in alliance with the religious right and the view that pornography represents and champions sexual liberation.

“Many on the liberal left adopt a view that says pornographers are not businessmen but are simply there to unleash our sexuality from state-imposed constraints,” she says. This view was reflected in the film The People vs Larry Flynt, where the billionaire pornographer of the film’s title – the head of the Hustler empire – was portrayed as a man simply fighting for freedom of speech. Dines disputes these ideas. “Trust me,” she says, “I have interviewed hundreds of pornographers and the only thing that gets them excited is profit.”

As a result of her research, Dines believes that pornography is driving men to commit particular acts of violence towards women. “I am not saying that a man reads porn and goes out to rape,” she says, “but what I do know is that porn gives permission to its consumers to treat women as they are treated in porn.” In a recent study, 80% of men said that the one sex act they would most like to perform is to ejaculate on a woman’s face; in 2007, a comment stream on the website Jezebel.com included a number of women who said that, on a first date, they had, to their surprise, experienced their sexual partner ejaculating on their faces without asking.

Sexual assault centres in US colleges have said that more women are reporting anal rape, which Dines attributes directly to the normalisation of such practices in pornography. “The more porn sexualises violence against women, the more it normalises and legitimises sexually abusive behaviour. Men learn about sex from porn, and in porn nothing is too painful or degrading for women.” Dines also says that what she calls “childified porn” has significantly increased in popularity in recent years, with almost 14m internet searches for “teen sex” in 2006, an increase of more than 60% since 2004. There are legal sites that feature hardcore images of extremely young-looking women being penetrated by older men, with disclaimers stating all the models are 18 and over. Dines is clear that regular exposure to such material has an effect of breaking down the taboo about having sex with children.

She recently interviewed a number of men in prison who had committed rape against children. All were habitual users of child pornography. “What they said to me was they got bored with ‘regular’ porn and wanted something fresh. They were horrified at the idea of sex with a prepubescent child initially but within six months they had all raped a child.”

What can we expect next from the industry? “Nobody knows, including pornographers,” she says, “but they are all looking for something more extreme, more shocking.” She recently interviewed a well-known pornographer, while his latest film played in the background. It contained a scene of a woman being anally penetrated while kneeling in a coffin.

In Dines’s view, the best way to address the rise of internet pornography is to raise public awareness about its actual content, and name it as a public health issue by bringing together educators, health professionals, community activists, parents and anti-violence experts to create materials that educate the public. “Just as we had anti-smoking campaigns, we need an anti-porn campaign that alerts people to the individual and cultural harms it creates.”

“Myths about those of us who hate pornography also need to be dispelled in order to gain more support from progressives,” she says. “The assumption that if you are a woman who hates pornography you are against sex shows how successful the industry is at collapsing porn into sex.” Would the critics of the employment practices and products at McDonald’s be accused of being anti-eating, she asks pointedly.
The backlash against Dines and her work is well-documented. Various pro-porn activists post accusations about her on websites, suggesting she is motivated by money, hates sex, and victimises women to support her supposed anti-male ideology. Salon.com reported recently that the sex writer, Violet Blue, had launched a pro-porn campaign to counteract an anti-porn conference that Dines and colleagues held last month. Dines is regularly criticised by pornographers in the trade magazines and on porn websites and she tells me that her college receives letters after any public event at which she is speaking, attacking her views.

Does she ever feel depressed by all this? “It gets me down sometimes, of course. But I try to surround myself with good things – my students, colleagues, and my family.” She says the blueprint for her aims is the eradication of slavery in the US, which was achieved despite the fact that every single institution was geared to uphold and perpetuate it. “What is at stake is the nature of the world that we live in,” says Dines. “We have to wrestle it back.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/jul/02/gail-dines-pornography

Venue, times, speakers and seminars…

BLACKBURN Saturday 12th June 2010 9.30am – 3.45pm http://www.cvmen.org.uk/be-men-of-god.html

LIVERPOOL Saturday 19th June 2010 10am-4pm http://www.cvmen.org.uk/liverpool-regional-day.html

SHEFFIELD Saturday 26th June 2010 9.30am – 4.00pm http://www.cvmen.org.uk/going-for-glory.html

go for it boys!

Serving Christ Outside the Church © Mark Roques

“There is not a square inch?in the whole domain of our human existence?over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all,?does not cry: ‘Mine!” – Abraham Kuyper (Dutch Prime Minister 1901-1905)

Introduction

There are many ways to serve Jesus Christ and in this essay we will be thinking about our talents, gifts and callings. How can we serve the Lord with imagination, flair and courage? How can we invest our lives in God’s kingdom? Too often Christians focus exclusively upon church and church programmes and this stops Christian people thinking outside the church box. Of course some people are called to serve God inside the local church community and this is important and not to be neglected, and all Christians are called to worship together. Preachers, pastors, evangelists, youth workers and other church workers are busy doing God’s work. But there are significant and influential Christian callings that go beyond the local church gathering. This essay will help to address this issue and in our conclusion we will turn to you and help you to think through your calling to follow Christ in every area of life.

First a story.

The Shay Cullen Story

Father Shay Cullen is a Missionary priest from Ireland and a member of the Missionary Society of St. Columban. He has devoted his life to rescuing and ministering to child prostitutes in the Philippines since 1969.

He was born in Dublin in 1943 and was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest in April 1969. Later that year he was assigned to parishes in Zambales and Olongapo City in the Philippines. Once there, Cullen became aware of the brutal sex industry that flourishes in this third world country and he began to combat its sordid and corrupting influence.

Cullen is famous for his espionage and undercover activities. He can be described as a spy for Jesus. Sometimes he swaps his clerical robes for the guise of a paedophile tourist. Using hidden video cameras, he visits and exposes the hidden places where children are prostituted and abused. On one occasion in 1995 he infiltrated the brothel of an Australian madam who explained calmly and rationally that this was the ‘cheapest’ sex around. After filming these conversations with pimps and brothel owners, Cullen calls in the police, rescues the children and has the guilty people arrested.

In the Philippines there are an estimated 100,000 children who work as prostitutes. Some of these girls and boys have been sold by their impoverished families into a life of slavery. In the worst forms of sexual enslavement children are chained to beds, abused daily, threatened and tortured, beaten and bruised and made into a plaything for the rich and powerful.

Cullen contends that sexual slavery thrives because of corruption which functions at all levels. Police officers, judges, and government officials are bribed by the sex offenders and their cases never get to court. Cullen has witnessed many abusers and paedophiles walk free from courtrooms and prisons.

Consider the following two examples of corruption and injustice in the Philippines. In the 1990’s a Filipino congressman was sentenced to life imprisonment for the rape of a 12 year old girl. The wealthy politician transformed his prison cell into an oasis of comfort and luxury. He took over an entire dormitory, equipped it with television, shower, heater and fan. He employed fellow prisoners as servants who set up a hamburger stand for the politician’s personal use and enjoyment. The congressman was even able to start a tennis club in the prison grounds! All this was made possible by the ancient art of bribery and ‘greasing palms’.

What a contrast with the tragic story of 12 year old Jamie. This small boy was arrested by the police because he was playing cards on a street corner after school. The police claimed that the boy was gambling; his family said it was merely a matter of a child playing a harmless game. The boy was convicted and sent to prison where he was repeatedly raped and abused. His family was unable to find sufficient money to bribe the police and Jamie languished in prison. Fortunately Cullen has now rescued Jamie and he is slowly recovering from his terrible ordeal. Cullen often visits prisons in order to rescue innocent children like Jamie.2

In 1974 Father Shay Cullen established his Preda Foundation in Olongapo city. Cullen and his co-workers are struggling to eliminate child abuse and his foundation gives rescued children a chance to recover and find healing in a loving Christian community and to enjoy a much happier life free from violence and abuse. Here is one of the many positive stories that highlights Cullen’s work.
Jenny, 13, had been abused by her step-father and raped by her cousins. When she was rescued by the staff at Preda and arrived at the foundation, she was sullen and morose. She would not talk or smile and she spurned any attempt to befriend her. In the following weeks, she began expressing her pain, fear and anger. Two months later, she was laughing, playing with the other children and learning to cook. This is a wonderful glimpse of God’s kingdom breaking in and restoring a young girl’s life.

Shay Cullen has also been involved in business activity that brings huge blessings to Filipino people. The foil fruit drink pouch is the latest way to deliver and sell drinks in the Philippines. But the foil pouches have a serious drawback as they are an environmental hazard when the empties are thrown away. Cullen’s Preda recycling project turns the hundreds of thousands of throwaway aluminium foil pouches into raw material for lucrative economic projects for abandoned mothers, survivors of sexual exploitation and young people rescued from prisons. All are getting a piece of the foil pouch project which recycles the pouches into high quality shopping bags, back packs, wallets, hats and other attractive, colourful and useful items. Hundreds of poor people are employed and many more are joining this great recycling and sewing project. A business enterprise rooted in biblical principles of justice and stewardship.3

Although Cullen has saved many lives and helped countless others, his provocative work has made him very unpopular with Filipinos sympathetic to crime and vice. He has received numerous death threats and is under constant harassment. Attempts have been made to deport him because his exposure of the sex trade has been damaging to local government officials who profit from the trade.

Cullen has received several human rights awards and has been nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize. He has testified before the US Congress, the Philippine Senate and is a well-known speaker at international conferences.

The Significance of the Shay Cullen Story

As Shay Cullen struggles against the evils of the sex trade we are confronted with both slavery and the widespread tendency to treat people, in particular children, as items to be traded. Children have morphed into sex toys. Young people have been made playthings.

This is the fruit of a consumerist way of life. When life is exclusively focused on consuming goods and services, people relate far better to things than people. And so often the committed consumerist loves things (watches, cars etc) and uses people. Instead, as our King, Christ calls us to work the other way round: love people and use things.

Notice that there are two different kinds of slavery in this story. We can speak about external slavery and internal slavery. The child who is chained to a bed is a slave in an external sense. She does not want to be there. Her freedom has been stolen from her. On the other hand consider the internal slavery of the abuser. This human being is enslaved to a way of life that is deeply sinful and destructive – not just to other people, but also to themselves. The paedophile is addicted to lusts and cravings that enslave them in a vice-like grip. The good news of the gospel is that Jesus Christ, the Liberator, has arrived to set both the abuser and the abused free. Free from the slavery; and free to live the full abundant new life Jesus came to make possible.

As already mentioned Shay Cullen contends that the sex slave trade flourishes in the Philippines because there is endemic corruption at every level of Filipino society. He is often shocked when powerful, rich abusers have ‘greased palms’ and hey presto they are set free. Bribery is a form of sinful behaviour that is condemned on many occasions in the Bible. Consider this passage in the book of Deuteronomy.

Appoint judges and officials for each of your tribes in every town the Lord your God is giving you, and they shall judge the people fairly. Do not pervert justice or show partiality. Do not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and twists the words of the righteous. Follow justice and justice alone, so that you may live and possess the land the Lord your God is giving you.

Deuteronomy 16:18-20

Shay Cullen shows that in the Philippines there are police officers, judges, business people and politicians who offer and accept bribes. They force innocent children, like Jamie, to languish in prison because his parents cannot bribe government officials, whereas rich, powerful politicians can bribe or pay to have their own burger bars and tennis clubs – even when they are in prison! We could say that even prisons reveal a sort of consumerist caste system: the rich and powerful are pampered and the poor and weak are enslaved.

At an international conference of church leaders the convenor asked the assembled participants what was the greatest problem in their countries. Almost all included bribery and corruption as the most serious problem they faced. The convenor responded as follows:

“If corruption is the major problem, then why are we preparing our young people only to be pastors and evangelists? Why aren’t we training them to be the godly entrepreneurs, economists, police officers, judges and politicians that our countries so desperately need?”

It’s worth spending a few moments amplifying this important insight. It is not enough for the church to produce gifted evangelists, youth workers and pastors. We need Christians to be busy serving God in all spheres of life. The job of a politician can be made into a calling to serve those they govern rather than feather their own nests; a judge can serve Christ by being just; a police officer can refuse to be bribed and avoid brutality; a journalist can research and write with honesty and integrity; an entrepreneur can seek profit without profiteering; etc. Jesus understood this broad understanding of calling when he famously spoke about salt.

You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown outside and trampled by men.

Matthew 5:13

In this passage Jesus is calling his followers to be a salty, healing presence in all of life. Consider little Jamie. He needs police officers who care for him and show him mercy. He needs magistrates and judges who refuse to put him in prison because he is playing with cards. He requires godly entrepreneurs (e.g. Cullen’s plastic pouch recycling business) who can give his mum and dad good jobs.

Jamie also needs politicians who make sure that prisons do not tolerate the abuse of vulnerable children. He requires a justice system that does not reward guilty politicians with cheeseburgers, mustard and tennis on demand. Jamie needs Christians who serve God outside of the local church congregation. Christians who serve God in their everyday jobs. And, remarkable though it may seem, the witness of Christians doing their jobs honestly, imaginatively and responsibly can have a powerful knock-on effect on others in the work place who may not be Christians.

Let’s focus for a few moments on this word ‘justice’. God is just. Consider this verse in Deuteronomy.

He is the Rock, his works are perfect, and all his ways are just. A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is he.

Deuteronomy 32:4

Psalm 72 is another Scripture which can help us to gain a deeper insight into what this means.

Endow the king with your justice, O God,
The royal son with your righteousness.
He will judge your people in righteousness,
Your afflicted ones with justice.
The mountains will bring prosperity to the people,
The hills the fruit of righteousness.
He will defend the afflicted among the people
And save the children of the needy;
He will crush the oppressor.

Psalm 72:1-4

Throughout the Bible God is always urging his people to focus on defending the poor, the needy and the oppressed, and at the same time with the punishment of the oppressor. Innocent people must be protected and guilty people must be punished fairly. This is the heart of the biblical teaching.

Jesus summed up this biblical teaching in the following way.

Woe to you Pharisees, because you give God a tenth of your mint, rue and all other kinds of garden herbs, but you neglect justice and the love of God. You should have practised the latter without leaving the former undone.
Luke 11:42

Shay Cullen is an outstanding missionary and his story commands respect but he would be the first person to point out that the church should not concentrate exclusively on missionary activity. Of course little Jamie needs people who can tell him about Jesus: that’s essential. But there are many other needs as well. We could say that in spreading the gospel the evangelist, the youth worker and the pastor depend upon godly police officers, judges and government officials etc doing their bit outside in the world. And these people, in turn, depend upon the evangelists, youth workers and pastors doing the preaching and teaching. This is what the New Testament means by the Body of Christ being made up of many parts but all functioning together as one unit (1 Corinthians 12).

Thinking through this Story and your Calling

As we soak ourselves in this story and its significance, we can learn so much about the many ways in which believers can serve God. The story can really help you to think about how to use your life and your gifts as part of your contribution to God’s kingdom wherever you end up working. You don’t have to be a priest in the Philippines to work for God.

Let’s now think about how different people with different talents and passions could serve God in the Philippines.

Focus for a moment on the callings of politicians and government officials. They have power and authority which they can use for good or ill. They can feather their own nests with bribes and ill-gotten gain. They can do deals with paedophiles, multinational corporations and brothel owners. Little Jamie and his parents will suffer when these callings are twisted and betrayed.

God needs disciples like you to take up this kind of work! You could be a modern-day William Wilberforce. You could go into politics and work to help to set captives free (Luke 4:18-19) by championing the plight of the oppressed in society. But perhaps political service is not for you? Think again.

Could you imagine yourself as a police officer? You could work powerfully for God in all sorts of ways. You just need a Holy Spirit breathed imagination. As a copper you could have helped little Jamie in the most practical of ways. Instead of getting the hump because Jamie’s mum and dad couldn’t bribe you, you could have rescued the lad yourself and taken him home. As a believer in Jesus Christ your police work could be transformed. God loves justice and mercy (Micah 6:8) and police officers can faithfully serve the Lord by protecting innocent people and locking up the guilty. This is ‘salty’ police work.

But you might say – “Sorry but I don’t want to be a copper. I want to be a plastic surgeon. How on earth can I serve Jesus doing a liposuction?” And I would say to you – you need a baptised imagination. Consider little Jamie once again.

He has been in prison and he has been abused. Perhaps his nose was smashed to pieces when he was beaten up by a grumpy inmate. In that situation Jamie really needs a plastic surgeon and you could be an agent of God’s healing love. Instead of wasting your talents helping rich women feel more desirable you could sort out little Jamie’s injury. But perhaps I am challenging you too much? Maybe you should only work for the rich and powerful. Jordan is probably a much better client than little Jamie. In that case don’t think about serving God at all. Worship the money god (Matthew 6:24), get rich and buy a yacht!4

Again there are many people who have no interest in police work or the surgeon’s scalpel. Suppose you want to serve God as a journalist. Well you could waste all your talent and energies writing articles about Jordan, Paris Hilton and famous Filipino celebrities.

Yes – you could easily sell your soul to the devil and the old liar would be cracking open the champagne ‘down under’ but you could be a responsible and godly journalist. Get that baptized imagination today. You could write articles about Jenny, Jamie and Shay Cullen. You could expose corruption, bribery and injustice. You could think through an intelligent Christian response to the Filipino situation and write witty, informative and powerful essays. Your pen could humble mighty armies of filth, sleaze, and degradation! Maybe that’s too much of a challenge? Don’t worry, relax and spend your time writing superficial articles for Hello magazine. It’s lucrative and easy. Just cash the cheques.

So you lack writing talent? How about serving the Lord as a judge? A perk here is that you can wear an impressive wig (if you live in Britain). Judges can do amazing things. They can imprison paedophiles who prey on little girls like Jenny or they can take bribes and imprison little boys for playing cards. So you want an easy life do you? Take the line of least resistance. Collect the bribes, become wealthy and retire at the age of fifty. Go to Spain and play golf all day long. Crack plenty of inane gags about Bruce Forsythe and Jimmy Tarbuck.

Perhaps judging is not for you. You lack the degrees and legal insight. I understand perfectly. How about joining the prison service? You could become a prison warder instead. Think about the good you could do. You could stop rapes, beatings and abuse. You could protect little Jamie from the bad guys. You could pray for him and show him love. This would please the Lord and make Him smile because you’d be spreading His good news. Don’t forget Joseph – he served God as a prison warder (Gen 39:22).

But you might say – “I love cameras and I want to be a photographer! Can I serve God in that way?” Again you need a baptized imagination. Buy one at the supermarket today! You could take the most haunting and poignant photos that tell the truth. Or you could prostitute yourself and become an annoying wasp who stalks famous celebrities and members of the royal family. Don’t waste your life and talent on that cul de sac. Too many fools have gone down that road. It’s well paid but empty and God-forsaken (Matthew 7:13-14).

Maybe you are very gifted in an intellectual sense and you long to be an academic. Let’s say a sociologist. How could a clever thinker like you serve the Lord? Again it takes some thought, perspiration and imagination. You could write a discerning scholarly account of Filipino society. You could analyse data and statistics about prostitution and the sex trade. Your ground-breaking book could help people to understand the underground brothels, the corrupt police force, and the stinking, rotten prisons that cry out for sensitive and prophetic analysis. Scholars can serve the Lord in their unique way. Reading their books will build up both faith and understanding. Christian academics can inform and persuade those in power to make positive changes. One more piece of the kingdom jigsaw.5

But you say all this bores me. It leaves me cold. I want to spend most of my time writing poems. How can the budding bard serve the Lord? Well again the recipe is godly imagination and thoughtfulness. You could craft explosive poems about life in Filipino jails. You could write about little Jamie and his hero Shay Cullen. You could have the whole church weeping and praying. Your musings could evoke strange worlds, desperate men and God’s merciful rule at work.

Now you’re getting cross and you start shouting and using blue language. “I’m a fan of the Italian renaissance painter Caravaggio and that’s my passion. How can I serve the Lord Almighty as an artist?”

“Calm down” I would say serenely, “You don’t have to paint ‘religious scenes’ in order to please the King of kings. You can paint unforgettable scenes of life in the Philippines. Brush into existence cheeky characters with both their glory and their shame. You don’t need to follow Tracy Emin and focus on just the seedy stuff. Nor do you have to do a Michelangelo and glory in Man’s greatness and Lofty Grandeur. Take a leaf out of Rembrandt’s book and conjure great art that honours the biblical worldview. Both the glory and the shame. Capture this in your paintings.

And you say – “But this is not me. I want to tell little Jamie about Jesus. I want to be an evangelist.” And I say to you – “Marvellous, be an imaginative evangelist but make sure you work with all the other members of the Body of Christ. Together you will bear fruit. Together you will build God’s kingdom.

The End

MARK ROQUES BA, MPhil, PGCE is Co-Director of REALITY BITES, a great story-teller (see http://www.markroques.com), and speaks at conferences in the UK and overseas. He taught philosophy and RE for many years, and is passionate about salt-water crocodiles and football. He is the author of Curriculum Unmasked: towards a Christian understanding of education; The Good, The Bad and The Misled: true stories reflecting different world views for use in secondary religious education and Fields of God: football and the kingdom of God.

REALITY BITES offers training and fresh contemporary materials for youth workers, schools workers and all those involved in mission and education (see http://www.realitybites.org.uk/ and http://www.markroques.com).

REALITY BITES is an educational ministry of WYSOCS and is led by Mark Roques and Arthur Jones.

WYSOCS is the West Yorkshire School of Christian Studies, which provides opportunities for learning in a wide variety of subjects from a Christian perspective. Join the mailing list via www.wysocs.org.uk to receive short monthly newsletters and details of events and courses.

Enquiry Contact Information: mark.roques@ntlworld.com

WYSOCS, Outwood House, Outwood Lane, Horsforth, Leeds, LS18 4HR
(0113) 258 1569, www.wysocs.org.uk, Registered Charity: 271987

Copyright © 2010 by Mark Roques

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