A whale of a collaboration
Last night it was my joy to participate in a Youth Service here at the church. Three weeks ago, when it was felt that something around the idea of facing up to God’s uncomfortable challenge might be good. We lighted upon the story of cowardly, ultimately defiant, little Jonah – and set some hares running. Two of the church’s teenagers talked last night about the challenges they face. To my great delight they did so in the light of the lessons they had learnt from Jonah. ‘He seems a bit like a stroppy teenager’, they said. They went on to talk about the pressures brought about by other people’s (often unwelcome) expectations and how they felt that Jonah could identify with such a problem.
The sermon looked at Jonah’s reaction to God’s call. In many ways he seems shell-shocked – without visible injury and yet totally disorientated by his experience. How can we avoid reacting that way when God comes knocking? We should, of course, ask the question ‘is it God’? If it might be, then we should probably go on to ask the question ‘is it possible’? Truth to tell, we should probably not linger too long on that one – since God delights in doing the impossible. If we go on to ask the question ‘is it really me’ – then the chances are the answer will probably be “yes” – since God uses all sorts of unlikely people like Joseph, Gideon, Mary, Peter, Paul…and me. We finished with the demolition of one of my favorite motivational phrases – Nike’s ‘just do it’. It turns out that the phrase was inspired by double murderer Gary Gilmore in Utah in 1976. Facing the firing squad he said ‘let’s do it’. Nike then adapted the phrase with the replacement of ‘just’ for ‘let’s’. With that phrase in tatters, I turned instead to the utterly brilliant #thisgirlcan campaign. When God comes knocking, this girl (or this boy) can…
Then it was time for some interactive feedback. Let’s be honest – that doesn’t always go so well. Feedback can be beset with reluctance and fail to deliver the data you are looking for. The questions the young people had set for the congregation were excellent:
- If God called you to go into a war zone and spread the Good News to the people there, what would you do?
- Would you obey God if you were faced a problem like Jonah’s?
- Do you find it easy to make decisions? Why?
How to get people engaged, though? In the end, I used magic whiteboard paper, carefully cut into four sections for the four tables, and assembling into the whale artwork which you see below. When the service was over, I saw people doing something they had never ever done – taking photos of their own feedback.
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Why was this, I wonder? Maybe it was for no other reason than that it was fun.
This is where the darts come in. On Saturday night I came across the feedback technique below from a healthcare professional and I was inspired:
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The moral of this story? Look for inspiration in unexpected places, and remember that an element of fun can contribute to a serious debate…
