Science is awesome!!
The creativity that is emerging around the globe is staggering. No longer are people constrained by the companies who sell ideas, they are free to explore the possibilities. This is the beauty of the digital revolution.
I was given the opportunity to speak about alt worship/emerging church/culture with a group of people exploring their vocation to ordained ministry on Tuesday night. In a short act of corporate worship I showed the Vodafone advert*, “Dad he’s left me”. I used it as an introduction to The Lord’s Prayer. Later on we discussed the concept of the advert as a group. It is essentially based around two emotional responses it elicits from the viewer, identity and empathy. “This is how a Father should act, wouldn’t you like to be like him”? By sticking the vodafone logo at the end of this short story, we are invited to identify the product with the good guy – and they tell us nothing about their product.
The above video is amazing. If you had asked me half way through what it was about, I would have guessed that it was a bunch of mates who thought it would be really cool to slow motion capture an exploding hydrogen filled balloon. I wouldn’t have thought it was a company called GE trying to sell the US some solar panels.
No longer are people constrained by telling us about their product, they are trying to capture our imagination. They are telling us a narrative and inviting us to identify with it. With that in mind, I’m off to make a cup of Gold Blend.
*sorry, it seems to have been eradicated from the internet so if you haven’t seen it before, my apologies.
Hey, thanks for the Gold Blend link: was just talking about soap-opera adds with my teenage son the other day and I referred to these – now can show him the classic that gave birth to the genre!
Your session sounds interesting – how did people respond to it? And how do you reckon the church is doing in the ‘capture the imagination’ stakes?
I think we need to recapture the ability to tell our story in a way that captures the imagination. In many places we are still working with the enlightenment model of communication. “If I can adequately put down your argument against the existence of God…”
Someone pointed out that the bible never tries to prove God. It is a none question. God is taken as a given. The bible asks the question “what sort of God is there”?
The session went well. They seemed to like it and asked me back for next year. I will get some proper feedback from @twurchsteward as she has a friend who was in the group.
I agree completely that we are working with an outdated model. The trouble is I guess that the steady rise of both theistic and atheistic fundamentalism continually reinfiorces the Enlightenment modus operandi to some extent, and seems to perpetually suck one back into the ‘proving the existence/works of God’ trap.
‘What sort’ is a much better question – though it may not be any easier to answer adequately!
Have you got a specific ‘capture the imaginatiion’ project in mind?