I've Been Thinking About This…

One of the remarkable things about humanity is that it is aware of itself and investigates itself. Not just an ego, but a full-on ‘Why does this part of me work? How would it be if I didn’t have that bit?’ The brain is a particular conundrum. How can we use our brains to hold information about our brains? It’s a bit like putting a box inside itself. Imagine being in a position to learn what data your brain held. Where would you put that knowledge? Inside your brain, of course … which means that not only do you now know about the thing inside your brain, but you know about knowing about the thing as well, which inevitably leads to knowing about knowing about the thing. Next …em… ‘thing’ you … um … ‘know’, you’re in an infinite loop, bane of software developers everywhere (and especially FORTRAN coders).

Maybe 10 years ago I came across this web page – a self-referential story titled, “This is the title of this story, which is also found several times in the story itself”, and a few years later tried to take this self-referential test.

Every once in a while I bump into a video that stands out from the vast sea of usual-ness. In the above vein, some 4 years ago on YouTube.com, ‘bramsvan’ from Community Christian Church uploaded a (not terribly good) cover of ‘DaVinci’s “Title of the Song” from their 2000 release CD called “The Life and Times of Mike Fanning” – a song about boy-bands. The song is self-referential – see it here.

Then at the beginning of the year, Charlie Brooker (who has a satirical news show in the UK on BBC 4 called ‘Newswipe’) put on a self-referential piece about how today’s broadcast news shows build each piece from a template. This meta-news piece was bumped up to YouTube.com in late January – you can see it here, but be aware that there are occasional outbursts of inappropriate language.

This was followed in March by a brilliant meta-drama – a satire on what goes into making an Academy Award movie.

And 2 days before that, this self-referential trailer appeared on Vimeo.com – North Point Church made this video for a series called “Sunday’s Coming” …

… which I’m guessing was about how stuck in a rut we can get in worship. Yesterday’s liturgical tradition has become today’s contemporary tradition. It rings almost painfully true for the contemporary worship that we see in large churches (and that many smaller churches are moving towards). And just like any music worship anywhere you go, there are many, many people who have dug down deep to provide wise criticism without having the faintest idea about why the video was put together – check out all the comments if you want to see sadness in action. Truly, no area of church is more criticized than worship, and nothing there more than the music.

Isn’t it also true, though, how we need to keep on changing? This last video shows us that already, even though we’ve only been doing ‘contemporary worship’ for 20 or 30 years in even the most progressive churches, we’ve got it down to a formula. If God wants us to grow (and He does), that means we have to change. Maybe it’s time to think of new and different ways to do worship – not just for the sake of, but for the reach.

   Send article as PDF to

My pastor had a verbal slip of lips last Sunday – almost a spoonerism – when he merged the two words ‘clothing’ and ‘shelter’ – here’s his post. So in response today, I came up with a few possible definitions of his new word ‘Shelting’:

1. Pelting snow or sleet (don’t know where the ‘h’ came from – perhaps the opposite of the silent letter such as the ‘k’ in ‘KNOCK’?)
2. Herding, a task done by a Shetland Sheepdog (Sheltie)
3. Variants of the ancient Scottish activity of shelting:
   1. Originally, an ancient rite-of-passage that took place in the remote Scottish Highlands, where young bloods would leave the ancestral hovel in a blizzard and attempt to make it to the shepherd’s lean-to on the far side of the mountain. Because of their great dislike of anything English, it was considered even more manly to do this wearing a kilt – which is odd, when you think about it. Not to mention really cold.
      1. This custom is no longer much in vogue, except in families where the grandfather mentions he used to have to do it every day, in a time when the winter snow was much deeper, and it was 10 miles up hill all the way – and both ways, because the shelter had been blown away, so he had to come back home to get the axe to build a new one.
      2. Now being considered a sport for the Winter Olympics.
   2. Couples in their mature years enjoy staying at bed & breakfasts in the area and hiking to these old shelters during the long summer days. Although taking the same ancient paths to reach the lean-to, this cannot technically be considered ‘shelting’, inasmuch as (a) there are no frozen bodies beside the trail; (b) there is no longer any danger from wolves (although there is a large and growing feral rabbit population) and (c) they are more likely to find amorous couples in the shelter than half-starved kilted savages.
4. An evangelistic term, based on the metaphor – there’s a storm in the world that the lost are trapped in. As a church we want to draw them into the fold, thereby ‘shelting’ them.

   Send article as PDF to