This is a kind of follow on post from the royal wedding. Millions of people would have seen Curry preach that sermon. However a quick trawl of you tube for the wedding sermon shows the three top hits of the whole 13 minute sermon were that CBS had 620k (split across two videos) BBC had 900k views. Then a few days ago Chris Pratt did the above speech which so far has 1.9m views on the MTV you tube site alone.

So there are some sound bite and length things, context driven things and audience issues, but a few observations. As a piece of public speaking it for me it captured the balance of fun and points well, it was challenging in an inductive way, provoking more questions of the post christian audience than it provided answers.

As I was reflecting on Pratts talk a Church Times article also popped in my news feed which suggested that even brilliant sermons like Currys would fail to draw in a significant number and I don’t think Chris Pratts style would either. Culture has shifted, if there is still a place for public speaking, thats now the podium (public square) rather than the pulpit.

I know the arguments for the pulpit is that people need teaching, but the evidence is that learning is most effective when not upfront, talk driven. Perhaps the argument is exhortation, but isn’t this more effective if people shared what they had done that week and encouraged one another, built in accountability and wrestled with their own discipleship. We have to accept that the culture has shifted and stop hanging onto the pulpit like some sort of holy cow.

Today I had the privilege to sit with 20 or so pioneers from across Cumbria. It struck me as I did the summing up at the end what a amazing array of experience was in the room. I was probably the only person who knew what everyone else was doing in their own context, and that in itself was humbling. We opened the day, thinking about the good stuff happening in our areas wether they were seeds of ideas just planted, seedlings needing nurture and just showing a few leaves, or flowers in full bloom. Then we thought through What shape were you as a pioneer. Following that the honesty people bought to the challenges was great. We put post its on hurdles and invited people share whilst holding a talking stick, from the outset we said we weren’t here to fix stuff, and it was amazing to stand in silence alongside our fellow pioneers as people shared their pain. Some breathing and mindfulness, and lecto divina, before I wrapped with strange fruit. I blew my budget on exotic fruit that people didn’t recognise so it was great to bless each individual with a peice of strange fruit and encourage them to stay away from the Granny Smith mentality and to mention briefly the array of work, those working in charity shops, changing their houses for homeless, doing church on the hills, or in community gardens, or in schools, on the estate. Reshaping family stuff in village churches, Messy stuff, and alternative stuff, faith stuff, and food based stuff, a bunch of people getting stuck into their communities with the stuff of life. THANKYOU