Digital Evangelism Issues

In the Celtic Christian tradition, ‘thin spaces’ are times and places where the spiritual and the natural world intersect – occasions when it is possible to reach out and be touched by God.

Christmas, even in our post-christendom world, is such a thin space. Even despite the western consumer-fest of Christmas, even in countries with no Christian tradition, even with all the schmaltz and sparkle, there is often a remarkable focus on the story of God born as man.

It is the one time in the year when many, with no apparent interest in faith, will attend a church, or read the Christmas story – perhaps as part of their attempt to recapture something of the wonder of their childhood.

“But how did it end?”

Cartoon credit: Papas/Manchester Guardian. Used with permission of Guardian Newspapers

Staggering numbers of people use Google to find out more of the Christmas story. Websites which have outsider-friendly explanations of Christmas will receive hundreds, often thousands, of hits during December. It’s not too late to add pages to your church website, for example. Rusty Wright’s Christmas articles, along with some of our recommended embedded video clips, would be a quick ready-made way to go, and can put the Christmas story into the context of the entire Good News.

In UK last year, the usually secular BBC produced a compelling 4-part TV drama series retelling the Christmas story with great power.

Using video

Gateway Church has produced a very creative video to express the reason Jesus was born. Their team spent 80 hours in production and animation on this project. For this purpose, they’ve stripped any branding for the church to make it available for others to use. You can embed it on Facebook or blogs, or download an HD copy to use in a church meeting. Here’s the five-minute video:

Creative ideas

Christmas videos can go viral, especially if they have a new slant or way of presentation. The Beatbox Nativity video produced by a UK pastor has been featured in the national press because of its unique style, and has just won a national UK competition sponsored by TV company ITN.

Damaris resources on Christmas are another effective way of using this opportunity – see below. And check our other Christmas videos and stories and Power to Change’s Santa’s Greatest Gift.

Takes you back? Peanuts for ever! Nice. Followed by the Christmas story, sung by puppets to the tune of Bohemian Rhapsody, called, err, Bethlehemian Rhapsody…

Get embed code

More Christmas videos and ideas.

Creative ways of telling the Christmas story… here’s the winning entry by beat-boxing minister Gavin Tyte to the UK TV’s ITN Nativity Factor video clip competition:

Natwivity

If you are on Twitter or Facebook, you may like to sign up for the Natwivity Christmas tweet stream, telling the Christmas story through the whimsical imaginary tweets of Mary, Joseph and others. Sign up: Twitter | Facebook. You can also get posts by SMS.

You can use them as conversation starters, retweeting or sharing in Facebook or other ways.

Premier Radio in UK is also telling the Christmas story by text message 18 Dec to 1 January, but only within UK.

Free articles

Web evangelist Rusty Wright offers free-to-syndicate gently evangelistic articles on a wide range of topics. Check his Christmas articles, which can be republished in print or online. Articles are also available on many subject areas.

More resources

Check the great Advent resources from Damaris:

and our other Christmas videos, resources and thoughts.

Mary (Tatiana Maslany) and Joseph (Andrew Buchan) welcome a new arrival. BBC.

The BBC 4-part serial Nativity aired in the week before Christmas to wide acclaim. If it was not screened in your country, doubtless it will available on DVD before long.

I am among those who often find screen retellings of Bible stories tedious: identikit long robes from some 1950s costume department, wooden acting that tries to achieve imagined other-worldly religious ambience, all mixed with an overdose of syrup and generalized schmaltz.

The Nativity was refreshingly different. It was crisply written by top UK screenwriter Tony Jordan (Eastenders, Life on Mars), with excellent casting and convincing acting throughout. In any retelling like this (two hours screen time), of course much of what is portrayed is ‘might have been’, a personal interpretation by the writer. [Spoiler warning: if you don't want to know plot details, skip the following paragraphs.]

Prophecy

Although there were a few points at which the writer deviated from the bible account – for instance the Magi did not meet Herod in Jerusalem, but only by proxy through his envoy; and more could have been made of the meeting between Elizabeth and Mary in terms of Elizabeth’s immediate spiritual insight into the situation – the overall message was very clear. There was a very strong emphasis on fulfillment of prophecy: the birth of Messiah to a virgin in Bethlehem, as the Son of God who would take away sins.

The portrayal of the Magi was interesting: god-fearing Gentiles who were also keenly expecting the birth of Messiah, as a particular fulfillment of the prophecy of Balaam. Their astronomical research into the expected planetary conjunction led them to set out before its full appearing. (Of course, surely God would want to signify the most important birth in human history with a clear sign in the heavens, and also demonstrate its meaning to representatives of both Jews and Gentiles?)

Herod’s portrayal was chilling – an unstable paranoid psychopath, isolated in a twilight world of fear and ill-health.

Shame cultures

What many in the West may not fully grasp about the nativity story: the power of a shame culture to reject those who have apparently broken its rules. It is not so many years since single mothers were appallingly treated in the West. To anyone watching this film in the Middle East, the portrayal of Mary’s rejection would have been entirely expected and familiar. She must have needed every day of her three-month stay with her wise older mentor Elizabeth, the only person in the world who understood her situation, to gain strength to cope with what must have been months, probably years, of rejection and suspicion.

There was a helpful back-story about the life of one of the shepherds, setting the context of harsh Roman occupation by his anger at ill-treatment when the illness of his wife prevented timely tax payment.

The arrival of Gabriel to Mary, and later the shepherds, was refreshingly normal – he made his announcement seated, at their level. Mercifully, there was no attempt to portray the singing angels at the announcement to the shepherds, for how could you portray such a supernatural event without it seeming like pantomime special effects.

The writer has chosen to delay Joseph’s full acceptance of Mary’s story (despite his dream from Gabriel) till the birth in the stable. And there may well have been some truth in this – how long does it take most of us to even partially grasp something that God is showing us? How long did it take Peter, despite three years of teaching in word and deed, to actually ‘get’ that the good news was for Gentiles too?

A very reasonable ‘might have been’ was Joseph’s expectation that he and Mary could lodge in Bethlehem (his ancestral town) with a relative, Rachael. Her refusal to allow Mary to stay (bad news travels fast anywhere) forced them to seek an alternative.

The stable

In this story, everything culminates in the stable. The arrival of the shepherds and the Magi, Joseph’s final full understanding of the significance of who Jesus really is and his reconciliation with Mary, healing for the angry shepherd, and a ‘Simeon moment’ for the Magi, with the full conjunction of the planets into a powerful light above Bethlehem. It all powerfully comes together in the final scene of healing, understanding and revelation.

Tony Jordan claims that researching and writing the story has changed him.

It was as good a screen bible story as I have seen, all credit to a secular state broadcaster for commissioning this serial. Thanks BBC.

Here’s the trailer:

Outreach websites that created outsider-friendly pages about Christmas have received thousands of visitors over the last month. Many people go online to discover information about the background to Christmas, or how it is celebrated in different cultures or times in history. Consider ways to engage with this interest in 2011 – perhaps schedule a discussion about this for September. Here are free Christmas-related articles to use on websites and in print. Consider one for your church website.

Nativity by children

St Paul’s Arts and Media in New Zealand produced this charming video…

And finally…

For two entertaining social-networking takes on the Nativity:

And here’s Pastor Tim’s listing of Funny Christmas Pictures

Digital can enhance the ways we share the good news in a Christmas context:

• OurChurch blog post explains 25 ways to promote your church’s Christmas service with social media.
• Web evangelist Rusty Wright offers free ‘skeptic-friendly’ evangelistic articles for re-use in print and online. These include three new articles specifically related to Christmas. Check his other articles via that link, plus an article for Christians about web evangelism based on the Netcasters book.
• ShareCreative launched the Twitter/Facebook-based Natwivity on 1 December. This is a creative and whimsical way to encourage outsiders to look at the Christmas story. Sign up now for the Twitter feed, then retweet it; or ‘Like’ the Facebook page, then ‘share’ posts.
• There’s quite a Christian mythology built around the Christmas story – read The First Christmas: Myths and Reality.

• The Nativity Story: in the week before Christmas, UK’s BBC TV will screen a 4-part story of the Christmas story. (Presumably it will also be syndicated in other countries sooner or later.) Those who have seen previews say it makes an excellent starting point. Peter Graystone (of Fresh Expressions) writes:

  “My main message is that we can commend it to every church as something they can recommend with total confidence to their congregations and (even more importantly) those with whom they are in touch beyond their churches. It’s in four episodes t.hat will be broadcast on BBC1 in middle of the evening in the week leading up to Christmas Eve. And it is going to do more to promote Christian faith in this country than all the sermons of the year put together. It is that good!”

• By the way, the Bethlehem shepherds were not ordinary shepherds. And the sheep were not ordinary sheep.

Our latest Web Evangelism Bulletin is online. Topics covered:

Internet Evangelism Day 2011 – date is fixed.
Christmas evangelism – new resources.
Facebook – ways to use it effectively.
Twitter – help and ideas.
Video – the future.
Fishing Story – Emlyn and the Far Pools.
Search engines – latest.
Effective communciation – valuable articles.
Blogging for the best – excellent help links.
The world we live in – resources and ideas.
Mobile phones – growing opportunity for ministry.
Church ministry – stuff that matters.
Tech tips – latest stuff.
Plus our usual Tailend funnies.

What happened when a flashmob – actually the Opera Company of Philadelphia – burst into song at Macy’s department store?

Story within article from To The Source on the Madness of Materialism: shoppers get a “surprise demonstration that materialism is patently false”.

And here’s another flashmob doing the same thing in a food court in Canada. The people’s response is remarkable:

Incidentally, Handel’s Messiah is hugely popular in Japan, and represents a major ‘way in’ to the culture.

Until recently, I had spent a lifetime not knowing that the Bethlehem shepherds were not just ordinary shepherds. And the lambs they raised were not just ordinary lambs. At least, the first-born males weren’t. For the hill country around Bethlehem was the breeding area of lambs for the Temple sacrifices. So there’s added resonance for David’s city as the birthplace of his greater descendant, plus striking significance that these shepherds were the first people to see The Lamb.

Which reminds me of a cartoon, by the great political cartoonist Papas, that appeared in UK’s Manchester Guardian paper circa 1960. Santa Claus is telling the Christmas story to a child, who asks, “But how did it end.” The un-noticed backdrop to the scene: the Cross.

May you and your family know a special touch of blessing and peace this Christmas.