promotion schmotion

I spent a little time filling out a questionnaire for a publisher the other day. I have a love-hate relationship with these things.

I like the chance to explain why I write about certain subjects, especially since I communicate better with a little time and a keyboard rather than on the spur of the moment with an audience. And I can’t deny that it feels nice to be asked, even if it was by a standard document that started with the words ‘Please Return By 1st September 1997’.

But I feel awkward and itchy whenever it comes to the issue of promotion – more specifically, self-promotion. I don’t want to be the sort of friend that hassles his wider circle to continually get on and show their support at the next book launch, who’s always asking for just one more online review or who urges mates to buy the books themselves. I’ve known people like that – not many, I’ll admit, but enough – and it’s no fun at all.

And I don’t want to be the sort of Christian who suggests that what they have to say is important, urgent or new. I’ve known more people like this than I’d like to admit, and it always leaves a bitter taste. Hearing someone gloat over their latest accomplishments – regardless of how thinly they veneer the telling with a coat of ‘It’s All For The Lord’ – it just seems wrong. I’ve seen enough people preen themselves in the spotlight to not want to do it myself.

Besides, putting on a book launch feels to me like the ultimate blind date – only with all the bad stuff multiplied: will they all show? How can you keep them all amused, entertained and impressed? Who makes the first move? Does my book display look big in this?

Not that I’m modest. Really, I don’t suffer from an excess of humility. But I’d rather we told the truth here. Why? Why not?

Last week I saw an old friend for the first time in many years. He asked me what I was working on and then said ‘so, basically you just live off your royalties?’ I laughed. For the record, I don’t. Or, if I did, I really wouldn’t be all that healthy right now, or, come to think of it, alive in any way.

It seems to me as though there’s a bit of a veil over the whole notion of success and sales. It’s true that the richest people I know are those who have scored big with songs or books that would be familiar to most people who spent any time in a church. But that’s not a group that I’m in.

Not that I’m complaining. Please don’t misunderstand – I love writing about what I do, and if the words happen to help someone, then so much the better. But writing for big sales just isn’t something I have the head or the heart for.

Someone sent me a great quote the other day, and it indicates just how upside-down some of our thinking has become when it comes to determining what makes a ‘good’ or ‘successful’ book or song (particularly in church circles). Here’s what theologian Thomas Merton had to say:

‘If I have ever written a best seller it was due to naivety…. And, I will make every effort never to do the same again.’

There are far greater errors to make in life than to act naively, but to deliberately chase, hunger after and crave such artless foolishness – and then to call it success – well, it just seems dumb to me. Can’t we do better than that?

this church limps as it walks

There’s a pattern emerging here. I go to do the monthly breakfast down at the drop in centre and I return with a head full of thoughts about the nature of Christianity and the state of the Church. Yesterday it was the bacon that did it.

A pork-related incident occurred towards the end of the breakfast, when one of the – what do we call them: clients? Diners? Customers? – anyway, someone came up and asked for a bacon roll. She’d been on the computer for a while and had missed the rush, and as there was no more up with us at the serving hatch, my little buddy went back to the cook to see if there was any more that was ready to eat. There was. Just four rashers. Cooked and lip-smackingly-ready to get bapped up. But there was a problem: these last rashers were not intended for local homeless and rootless. They were for the cook.

It struck us as wrong, so we liberated said bacon and served the lady in question.

Part of me wanted to be able to slate the cook. I mean, you don’t turn up to serve at a breakfast for local homeless people and then deny them the very breakfast just because you feel a little peckish. What was it, a reward? And what’s with the four rashers; there were seven of us on the team – was he planning on trying to do it without us noticing?

But I couldn’t go through with the character assassination. For all his weird motives, awkwardness and curmudgeonly-air, this guy had given up his Sunday morning yet again to place himself alongside the poor. He had served, faithfully, in front of people he clearly struggled to connect with, when there must have been any number of excuses to give it a miss. Heck, the guy had even bought all the bacon. Did I really feel OK slagging him off?

My curly little tail somewhere between my legs, I left and came home. But the thoughts stuck with me for the rest of the day. How tempting is it to want to point out when fellow Christians get it wrong? How keenly do we feel the need to jump up and down and gesticulate wildly whenever we come across someone who acts in a way that is at odds with all that we understand to be at the heart of following Christ? How badly do I want to apologise on behalf of all the others who fall short of my standards?

Very.

A friend emailed me some thoughts about a book written by a wounded and saddened ex-member of Australia’s Hillsong church. She comes across better in this interview than she does in this article, something to do with the fact that I suspect that she’s not 100% convinced about some of her criticisms. But you should check them out for yourself.

There’s nothing new about the criticisms of Hillsong. In fact, many of these words could be said of thousands of other churches around the world. And for every church there must be a whole load of pre-prodigal sons, backs turned, wounded, saddened.

Perhaps that link’s a little clumsy. I don’t want to imply that Levin has no cause to complain or little ground to feel the pain and sorrow that she does. But it just strikes me that she’s writing a story that’s far from finished. What comes after the anger? What follows the pain? She talks of finding new hope in a quieter church, but she’s not fooling anyone: there’s bile and claws all through her article.

So, I have a challenge for Tanya Levin. It is this: you’ve written the book, but what about the rest of the story? Hillsong messed up, and your sales figures will reveal quite how much of a shared experience that is. But what comes next? Retelling the Worst Of… is easy. Grab some fellow Christians – the wounded, the ex-members, the gloriously-still-attached-at-the-heart and help them on the journey out of all this. Build something stronger, something bolder, something that fixes the bugs you’ve experienced.

And I have a challenge for Hillsong. You’ve found a message that resonates with people all over the developed world, but will you lean on and learn from others? You’ve been criticised for years, but is staying quiet really working? Will you step out, will you bring to the Church the very best of what you are and learn to refine that which needs work? Will you humble yourselves, strip back the signifiers of success and hear the questions?

This Church – global, local, fragile, human, incredible – it limps as it walks. There are signs of failure and error all over what we do, and yet this Church still walks. Even with our held back bacon, our bitter indignation and plastic-lite version of celebrity culture… this Church still walks.

That’s the story I’m interested in hearing about. That’s the one that’s got my attention.

what’s wrong with worship

I know nothing about gospel music, but I know that if you’re wanting to take its temperature you could worse than to shove your thermometer somewhere near Kirk Franklin.

So how’s about this for an interesting clip?

Let’s start with the facts: Kirk Franklin = Big Selling Gospel Artist. See that blurred logo in the bottom right of the screen? That’s the badge for TBN – Trinity Broadcasting Network, frequently held up as one of the symptoms of all that’s wrong in a world of Christians that preach prosperity. I once got bumped from an interview there by some Chinese Revivalists, but that’s another story altogether.

What Franklin’s saying might not sound too radical to certain ears, but to those that know, this is a significant clip. These words in particular are my favorite:

“What if God wasn’t nearly as concerned with making you happy as He is with making you His?”

To hear these words on this channel is like hearing somebody eulogize the importance of financial thrift on the Home Shopping Network or the value of abstinence on The Porn Channel. At TBN right now, I suspect, someone, somewhere is probably nursing some bruises.

Why post it? Because I think its significance goes beyond the network. I think it’s part of a wider shift that’s been taking place of late. Let me explain…

I’ve been thinking a lot about the way we package, sell and consume worship these days. I’ve been thinking about how we got to a place where sales charts and award ceremonies and ticketed tours with groaning merchandise tables at the back have become part of the accepted practice for worship leaders, bands and writers. I’ve been thinking about it all, and I don’t feel comfortable.

But discomfort’s not the only sensation. I’ve got some nerves in there too. I’ve never met one of these worship leaders that I didn’t like, and I feel nervous about them getting caught up in the crossfire of critique. And I’m feeling nervous about the fact that I take money off worship industry companies to put together words that help sell more albums. And I’m nervous that all this is just the same old cynical crap that led me to quit playing and walk away from worship a decade or so ago.

I think I’m vulnerable to the accusations of hypocrisy. And I think that talking about this will probably end up offending some people who I don’t think deserve to be criticized. But I don’t think I can discount this as recycled rubbish from the past. How come? Well, I’ve been listening a little harder than usual these days, and I’m convinced that these thoughts of mine are nothing new at all. In fact, I’m way behind the pack. There’s a growing breed whose involvement in the creation of songs is not limited to – or defined by – the approval of the worship industry.

And so I have made up my mind to write about it. Not that I’m doing an Amos or channeling Keith Green – although, I can think of far worse guides to follow. But, knowing me, this attempt to point out the flaws in a system will more than likely see it getting turned back on myself. How am I – and how are we – a part of the problem? How does our approach to worship create the problems that plague us? What comes first; the consumer or the salesman?

i have no idea why i’m posting this

I’ve been in a bad mood for, well, I don’t know quite how long it’s been, but I know it’s measured in weeks not hours. I’m not OK with it.

It reminds me of a time when, as a teacher, a pupil turned to me towards the end of term and said

‘What’s the matter, Sir? You’ve been grumpy for most of the term.’

She was right. I had. Post-natal depression has such an ability to spread, weed-like across the life of a family, to exploit the cracks and draw out the life and growth.

But today is not about baby blues or new-born anxieties. I’m not sure what’s behind my current era of being two clicks away from being pissed off, but I can have a guess.

It’s about life being beyond my control.

My mother in law used to punctuate conversations about future plans with the words ‘well, we’ll just take it as it comes.’

It used to bug the crap out of me.

I really don’t like taking things ‘as they come’. I’d far, far rather have a hand on the wheel, a few fingers at the keyboard. Control issues? Of course. But I prefer to see it as ‘painting within a big canvas’; I like to create, I like to produce, I like to feel like life has purpose and direction. So when I can’t do that, life feels unnaturally and awkwardly imbalanced. Is that really so bad?

I’m not even sure that I want to learn how to let go and live in the moment. And that’s just another addition to the list of Things Which Are Annoying Me Right Now.

I shall go and scowl and motorists now.

Extravagant

My stepdad was in insurance. My father in law was in insurance. My friend’s dad’s in insurance. What is it about those baby boomers and the business of assessing risk?

For once, I’m happy with the simple answer. Growing up among the debris of a country shredded by two wars in as many generations it paid to be cautious. With so much lost by so many, risk was understandably a four-letter word. And when you grow up with your food being rationed by the State, extravagance is similarly vulgar; even the sheer number of letters in the word seems over the top.

So many of my friends have tales of parents hell-bent on reducing expenditure. One used to serve orange juice in eggcups. Another limited the amount of toilet paper each member of the family was allowed each day, while my own stepfather was fond of keeping anyone but close family out of the house at all times, for fear of too much ‘chaos’ being brought in.

If only this generation had known about climate change, they would have known how to cut back on consumption all right.

But that’s not what’s on my mind.

I’ve been back in hospital. Not as a patient but accompanying my wife. It’s a long story, and one she won’t thank me for retelling to graphically, but the short version is that this final instalment of the Borlase clan that she’s brewing right there in her belly is throwing up a few more curveballs than the other three. She’s fine, the baby’s fine, but both are spending an alarming amount of time being checked, monitored, observed and told not to leave the building just yet.

I’ve been Daddy Daycare. I’ve coped. At times. And then there have been times when I’ve not done quite so well. In all of it I’m being reminded of quite how much fun and pressure and responsibility and ease and beauty and poo there is to be experienced in full time childcare.

But that’s not what’s on my mind either.

I’m thinking about extravagance. I’m not sure what this little baby has cost so far, but it must be nudging five figures by now. Scans and blood tests and injections and hospital stays and consults and ambulances and appointments and clinics don’t come cheap; and we’re not even half way through the pregnancy yet. By the time the little one comes out it will already have cost the UK taxpayer a small fortune. Thank the Lord for the NHS.

All along, there’s never a question about whether this is worthwhile; this baby is worth all the money, and then some.

Those around us have been great. More than great. Food parcels and meals and visits and help with childcare and no question of whether it’s too much to ask. People have given and given and given.

Do we deserve it? Not at all. But still the generosity and kindness flows.

And then there’s the toll on Emma. She’s having to rest, and I mean really rest. She’s been cancelling things from her diary like a paranoid Rapturist in a tropical thunderstorm. She losing money, she’s losing her fitness, she’s lost her dream of another great and natural birth, she’s losing her freedom and she’s losing the way she used to be able to interact with the other three Borlii.

But her instincts are strong; she nurtures this baby that she’s never met with all the force of nature. She can’t do anything else.

Is it worth it? Is this child worth it? Are we worth it?

I’ve been asking myself this a lot. All I can come up with are thoughts about extravagance and risk and expansive gestures and how even now, this baby is so blatantly not a dribble of orange juice in an eggcup. This baby is not a risk averted. This baby is chaos embraced and accepted.

I’ve got nothing against those baby boomers – I know I would have taken a different path had I not grown up feeling weary and frustrated by their own caution. But it seems clear to me now that this whole episode it teaching me something about the extravagant nature of God.

It’s quite nice, really.

Waking Up Hungry

I once woke up crying. It was the oddest experience. I hadn’t been feeling sad when I went to sleep, and I didn’t feel sad as I awoke, but there were tears all over my face in the morning. I couldn’t even remember what I’d been dreaming about, and the whole incident is so long ago now that it’s as hazy as my blurred view of the bedroom.

I know why the incident is back in my mind. I’ve woken up hungry. Not literally, you understand, but metaphorically. Something’s happened of late and my senses are alive and my appetite’s beginning to make some noise.

I’ve written about cynicism before, and there’s a natural inclination to consider that this is just another phase, that the emotions are just a little rawer than usual, that it will pass.

But while I value the input my cynicism has at certain times, this is one of them where I’m shoving it a pasty and diet Coke and telling it to shut it.

I’m waking up hungry, and I want to inhale beauty, passion, inspiration, truth, hope, words and more. I don’t know how long it’s been going on, but it seems like this is the time to break the fast.

So what’s on my plate? What am I hungry for?

Soul music. Not the sort that demands an overbite shuffle and gentle hips… I’m talking about the stuff that soars and peaks and paints the sky. I’m finding it here and here.

Running along the Thames.

The approach to Easter.

My mother’s annotated Bible.

Memories of one of the greatest novels I think I’ve ever read.

And somehow, in the midst of all this increased appetite I’m finding that the things that usually bother me – the times when we get it wrong, the gap between integrity and action, the wasted potential – have shrunk a little.

Who knows what this fuel is for, but right now the intake is enough of an experience in itself.

I’m wondering if I’m the only one?

hands up

Picture this: you’re helping serve Sunday breakfast for homeless men and women. There are other Christians there too, drawn from churches around the area. Like the breakfast you’re serving, the team of improvised cooks is an odd affair; a little over cooked in places, perhaps a tad quirkily-presented at times, but together you think you’ll manage to pull it off.

Before the doors are opened there is a time for prayer. Someone pipes up; all passion and furrowed brow and eternal angst. There’s no doubting that the feelings are genuine, but it’s the presentation that, well, bugs you. You can feel the old cynicism begin to flow, tempting you to label him a nut job, a Christian fundamentalist but without any of da fun.

Things continue and you follow the script. Someone gives a talk to the diners, you can’t hear because you’re trying not to burn the beans, but you can see enough to confirm your assumptions about the Earnest One: he’s there, slightly stage left, praying again with massive intensity while the speaker’s explaining what part faith plays in his own life. It all looks a little odd from where you’re standing, prompting your cynicism to give way to wearied embarrassment and jaded questioning. Why is the church made up of such people? Why do we give such credibility to these oddballs? Is this really what it means to be ‘on fire for Jesus’? Can’t someone put him out? You decide to be kind and humour him, but inside you know the truth – you think he’s missed the point.

It’s nearing the end, and something occurs to you: the fact that there has been pretty much no interaction between volunteer and client. Some of the apron-wearers are sat in the office, munching back egg sarnies, while others are just standing around looking awkward. And that includes you. The only one who isn’t hiding is the guy you pretty much wrote off earlier on. Play back the tapes and you conclude that he’s never once been in the kitchen, but has spent the entire time out front, serving, cleaning, smiling, talking and listening. It’s time to join him.

It takes just one comment for your cynicism to be exposed for the shallow, arrogant, selfish scam that it is. It comes from a 40-something ex-heroin addict whose face tells two distinctly different stories; years of abuse and struggle combined with a hint of optimism and newly nurtured self-belief. He tells you a little about his life, and it doesn’t take long before he reaches the climax:

‘It was this man,’ he says, pointing at the one sat next to you, the one you wrote off so swiftly, ‘he pulled me through. Every week he’d bring me this beautiful spicy soup and homemade bread when I was living on the street. Every week for well over a year. Never failed.’

It’s one of those moments where a choice has to be made. Do you accept that you got it utterly wrong, that your judgements were completely bogus, or do you continue to patronise and discount?

It wasn’t hard choice to make. I knew I’d been wrong, that I’d been an idiot. But what surprised me was the way that instead of leaving with a feeling of conviction and what-a-fool-am-I, something else was added to the mix. Sure, I still felt like an idiot, but one whose idiocy does not bar him from inclusion. As we sat and talked, me and the man and some of the diners, we disagreed on more topics than most, but yet again I was struck by the sense of being utterly alive in the moment. My bullshit was momentarily dismantled and together we were doing something good, something right. Is this what the kingdom looks like?

I suppose grace is one of the most intoxicating things of all. Just a hint of it, a millimeter crack exposed as you prize back the lid and inhale, it’s enough. The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that without it cynicism leads to a dead end. Grace – accepting the input and truth from a wiser, kinder, bolder source (as well as giving it out ourselves) – is surely the destination to which our cynicism should be leading us.

going grey

The first anniversary of mum’s death is nearly over. Two hours and six minutes left, but I doubt I’ll be here for all of them.

It has been a strange day. In some ways it has been like so many other experiences I have had of late; it measured up almost eerily well to my predictions. The result has been that, at many times, I have been struck by how normal it all feels. Of course we’re walking up to a cliff in order to throw ashes out into the Irish Sea. Of course we’re heading out for a meal dressed up smart and thinking about how different life would be if only she hadn’t died. Of course we’re feeling the heat from the fire crease our faces as we watch the oak casket in which mum’s ashes twist, smoke, flame and curl their way to share the same fate.

I felt this way at times in Africa. The images were familiar – the earth, the sky, the women with necks of steel and children with eyes and smiles that pierce the cynicism. I was used to seeing them a thousand times already, and it was easy to drive through without fully absorbing the experience.

That’s what I didn’t want today to be: just another day. Although, that’s exactly what I wanted it to be too: just another day like many more to come in which I would feel close to mum again. These kinds of paradox have become familiar over the last year. They started when the diagnosis prompted fear and relief, continued through treatment (when I wanted to both fully ignore and fully experience every moment of it), palliative care (despair and hope), through death (numbed shock and welcome relief) to grief, where I have spent much of this year feeling alive in both the sorrow of a life I no longer know and the continuation of a life that fills senses daily. I have found myself wanting to feel sad, to drink in the oxygen of exquisite grief, but at the same time feeling perfectly happy that life has been able to carry on with some of the same rhythms as it always has.

I suppose being a life-long Christian who followed the prodigal son’s script for a couple of years (I called my final teenage years ‘time off for bad behaviour’) I have had to break down some of the dualisms that were once so dominant on my landscape. I used to see the world in monochrome: church good, everything else bad. It’s had to keep that up when you’ve tasted ecstasy, when you’ve met genuine love and friendship in the lives of those who have little more than a vague awareness that God exists for others. It’s hard to divide the world up into saints and sinners when you realise that you’re saintliness is serious flawed and your time as a ‘sinner’ taught you more about yourself than any other period before that.

So life has been lived in the grey for years. I’m OK with that, I think. But it has been odd to experience it so deeply about things that are so unfamiliar.

mmmmmmmmm.

i can still feel the fear

Since we’re on a YouTube fest, I’ll post this one too. It was filmed while in Uganda. It was hard work.