This week, a very exciting project is launching across the university of Oxford, where every new student is being given a DVD of the testimonies of 3 students who became Christians last year with a short explanation of the gospel afterwards. Both filming and production have, in my opinion, been excellent – certainly better than I’d expected! The plan is to deliver around 3500 of these door-to-door to new students to give them a chance to explore the Christian faith, and ask any questions they have arising from watching it. See it for yourself in the videos below, and please keep the project in your prayers. If you’d like to know more, or if you’re considering doing something similar at your university, please do get in touch with me at stephen.hibbs@spc.ox.ac.uk
At the moment I am really appreciating Christian graffiti, there are some amazingly talented artists out there and I am so blessed that instead of not bringing God into their graffiti art, they are letting the two flow hand in hand.
The video above features a few Christian graffiti artists, including Camer1 and Fasm who we have seen before in a Christian graffiti video put together by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.
One of the great privileges of being a Christian in this age is to be able to have access to some of the best preaching happening today over the internet. Today I would like to point you over to the website of John Piper: a preacher, author, poet and thinker who has deeply impacted my own life. A good place to start (especially as this is a Christian arts blog!) is perhaps with one of his stories.
In this simple story told on Palm Sunday to his congregation, we are reminded as the King reminds his own servants:
Though arrogance and rage assail
Conspiracy will not prevail.
In death recall unerringly
That you will always reign with me
It’s a beautiful tale – if you can listen to the audio rather than simply reading then you are treated to hear the passion that Piper puts into all of his sermons, and the deep heart-knowledge he has of the glory of God. The preaching right across this site is very powerful and very varied in subject – covering huge issues such as biblical authority or God’s salvation plan, and also very earthy issues like spiritual depression in the Psalms, or struggles with anxiety, pride or envy. He also does a fantastic series of biographies of wonderful lives lived for God in the past, and what lessons we can take from them.
Finally, this is a poem that almost leads me to cry each time I hear it – a look at the consequence of Jesus’ birth for the Innkeeper who gave him somewhere to stay. What a costly birth Jesus’ was – please listen to this and be humbled:
A couple of months ago I read a review of Jon Foreman’s first solo album, ‘Fall & Winter,’ in Christianity Magazine. The album received a 5-star review so I though I’d check out a few of the tracks on YouTube. Now you have to understand something about me – I often struggle with ‘Christian’ music. I find it can sometimes be unimaginative , both musically and lyrically, and this frustrates me. However, after hearing just a few of Foreman’s songs, I promptly bought both this album and its follow up ‘Spring & Summer,’and have been listening to them almost constantly since.
Foreman, the lead singer from American rock band ‘Switchfoot,’ has created two albums that are intimate, vulnerable, honest and imaginative. His songs are refreshingly free of Christian cliché and unimaginative chord sequences. Musically these albums are on the level of artists such as Josh Ritter, Ryan Adams and Sufjan Stevens. But the thing that impressed me the most were Foreman’s lyrics. Often drawn straight from the Bible, Foreman combines his poetic skill with the beauty of the Word of God. For example, the words of ‘The House of God forever’ on Spring & Summer are taken directly from Psalm 23, the words of ‘Your Love is Strong’ are those spoken by Jesus (see video below).
As a music lover, ‘Fall & Winter’ and ‘Spring & Summer’ are a joy to listen to. As Christian, these albums speak of the Glory of our God in a fresh and exciting, yet familiar and simple way. It’s exciting to find another artist who bridges the unfortunate gap between these two, often separated passions of mine.
St Paul’s Cathedral is undergoing a restoration in celebration of it’s 300th anniversary. As part of this restoration, the Cathedral ran a competition for textiles students to design and create a “collection of contemporary heritage fabric designs for vestments in silk and altar frontals that would… establish a leading and long lasting visual identity for St Paul’s Cathedral.”
The competition was won by Marie Brisou, who has been working on the competition since september 2005.
I came across Blair Wingo on the Internet by accident about a year ago, she is a fantastic poet. The above video is the first poem that I saw her give and it is powerful. It’s so refreshing to see a christian of high calibre not only stand up openly in unwavering faith, but who is also willing to challenge church thinking across the board. I have seen many of her other poems and have found my self changed for the better. if you want to see more of her work or that of the organisation she works for [P4CM] please click here
Every month or two I receive a street art magazine called Overspray (which if you are interested in street art is WELL worth a read). In the latest issue there was an article about a guy called “Rubin N” who goes around the streets of New York tagging “Jesus Saves”. In the interview that the journalist had with him, Rubin explains how this is his evangelism, and by leaving these tags it “preaches it for me, 24/7“.
I think this youtube video, which appears to be blackbook work of Rubin’s, is very interesting. Although at first it seems that some of the drawings seem a bit childish, there are some real gems in there, including some good humour! The variety is absolutely amazing, and when you consider quite how many drawings there are, you realise that a lot of time and effort has gone into this.
I’d really like to know what people think about using illegal graffiti as a form of evangelism. Certainly graffiti and street art are more and more becoming a great way of putting messages across, and to truly live a life devoted to Christ is about living a radical one, Jesus himself was a real revolutionary, and did stuff that upset people to make a point and make them think. How far should we go as Christians to share the gospel? Should we be doing outrageous things that, in the eyes of the law are illegal, but, may well reach a lot of people who may not be reachable in other ways? I’d love to hear what you think…please do leave a comment with your thoughts.
