Our good friend, David Newton of Gildersome Baptist Church, emailed my wife, Hilary, wishing her ‘your best Christmas ever’. You too can read his message on their web site She forwarded it to me, simply saying, Brilliant!
I could not disagree. I sent it to my friend, Bill, and he replied:
“Absolutely wonderful, when the Gospel comes to the Mall. I am sending it to many friends and posting it on our site. (Posting it there will take a few days.)”
I sent it to Keith and got this:
“Thanks very much. I was moved to tears.”
He is not, in my experience, a regular lachrymose. So what is going on here?
I wonder why this little email is having such an effect. I have some answers and my first thought was to explain them on this blog. Then I thought again: it would be better to let all my readers find out for themselves what this is about. Leave them free to enjoy it for themselves. And then let them share their reactions on this site.
So give a couple of minutes to it and then login and comment – positive or negative, celebratory or analytical. You can comment at the foot of this post, there is a link to the MBC forum below or if you can’t remember your login simply send a message via our contact form.
David Newton who started this off for us, has now told me why he thinks it has such an impact. With his permission I have edited his comments.
This is a great example of where people are at spiritually in our country and (obviously also) America.
1/ It is entirely contemporary in terms of viral communications.
It looks like something you would see in terms of communicating a message visually and emotionally. This contrasts sharply with the church’s more usual, cerebral enlightenment approach, which is probably the reason for the western church’s continual failure to communicate the gospel in the last 100 years. It is indeed interesting to see that western catholicism has declined significantly since Vatican 2, which removed the mystery and turned from mystery and emotion to intellect and explanation of the faith.
2/ It is music. The church has almost completely forgotten the power of music to communicate spiritual truth. ……the worship songs, which Christians love, ….are excellent in worship services, but have little or no meaning to the unchurched.
3/ It links with tradition. The music is familiar as a classical piece which has always evoked emotion.
4/ It gives. I read a book on marketing a few years back which spoke of the benefits of giving something for free. Once you give someone something expecting nothing in return you have their agreement..
5/ It is done to a quality. Whoever initiated it got a proper company to film it for them.