Some Thoughts…AVA & The Awesome Generation
May 28th, 2006 by Mark Tiddy Posted in Christianity, Media, Music
Firstly I thought I’d meantion that the amazing album ‘We Don’t Need To Whisper’ from Angels & Airwaves is number 6 in the album charts for this week and if you don’t own it, go buy it because it’s awesome!
Secondly, following several recent things I think it’s time I had a comment on ‘Proclaimers Church’ and ‘Awesome’ formally talked about by Benvolio,. Firstly for those folks reading this in Peterborough or indeed the rest of the world Proclaimers is a church in Norwich, think Hillsong and your there! Including an austrailian or two!
Now to comment on a few things which Ben has meantioned for starters ‘Church without the boring bits’ a quote used by Proclaimers to talk about their church, now personally I can see where they’re coming from on this, stereotypically church is boring, people picture pews and hymn books and organs, and the younger generation (who I believe are probably the main outreach area of Proclaimers) are not looking (typically) for organs and hymn books, I grew up with them and they’re not for me! So if I heard ‘Church without the boring bits’ I’d assume that it meant lively.
Now to comment on the ‘Audacious’ to the ‘Awesome Generation’ transition, at the end of the day it’s a name! Churches have different names, youth groups have different names and they don’t really describe the group, for example my old youth group ‘After 8s’, doesn’t describe us, we’re not minty chocolates but it’s a name!
Audacious means to be bold (dictionary.com) which as Christians we certainly should be, now awesome on the other hand means ‘inspiring awe’ so what do I think ‘Awesome generation’ literally means? I think that for starters (as previously meantioned) the ‘generation’ part must be talking to every Christian regardless of age, as for awesome, I think perhaps they have a point, as Christians people should notice us for being different and surely being ‘awe inspiring Christians’ isn’t a bad thing? If you admire something you normally want to know what caused it which surely gives us an opportunity to talk about God!
To find out what Proclaimers is actually about I guess we have to look at their ‘Statement Of Faith’ which is as follows (taken from proclaimerschurch.com)
• We believe the Bible is God’s Word. It is inspired, infallible, accurate, authoritative and applicable to our every day lives.
• We believe in one eternal God who is the Creator of all things. He exists in three Persons: God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. He is totally loving and completely holy.
• We believe that sin has separated each of us from God and His purpose for our lives.
• We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ as both God and man is the only One who can reconcile us to God. He lived a sinless and exemplary life, died on the cross in our place, and rose again to prove His victory and empower us for life.
• We believe that in order to receive forgiveness and the ‘new birth’ we must repent of our sins, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and submit to His will for our lives.
• We believe that in order to live the holy and fruitful lives that God intends for us, we need to be baptised in water and be filled with the power of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit enables us to use spiritual gifts, including speaking in tongues, which is the initial evidence of baptism in the Holy Spirit.
• We believe that God has individually equipped us so that we can successfully achieve His purpose for our lives that is to worship God, fulfil our role in the Church and serve the community in which we live.
• We believe that God wants to heal and transform us so that we can live healthy and prosperous lives in order to help others more effectively.
• We believe that our eternal destination of either Heaven or hell is determined by our response to the Lord Jesus Christ.
• We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ is coming back again as He promised.
So what about the statement of faith? Dodgy?
To be honst I say no! Everything I see there is biblical and is what most churches believe, perhaps if you want to be picky you could query the ’spiritual gifts, including speaking in tongues’ because of the tongues emphasis which isn’t unbiblical but it’s good to remember that the bible says not everyone will speak in tongues! But other than that which isn’t really anything nothing wrong with the statement of faith!
If you open the ‘Statement Of Faith’ PDF the first part reads ‘Our mission is to reach people for Christ and influence culture by building a large Church in Norwich’
hmm, culture, the whole ‘Church Culture’/'Youth Culture’ thing always make me feel slightly concerned, because it’s good to remember that Church is about God, Jesus and nothing else!
Culture means “the typical behavior patterns of the things around us” and for me, once again I don’t see a problem with influencing culture, after all as blogged previously romans tells us not to fit in with our culture, Christ tells u to spread the good news to the world, surely if we spread the Gospel and people become Christians that is going to change the culture we live in?
Benvolio wrote this in context to ‘Air Strip One Church’ which to be perfectly honest I don’t know much about however, he says
‘I cannot help but feel that Awesome is doing the same - being as loud as it can in congratulating itself on the sheer numbers within church and not focused at all on the people the church is supposed to reach’
So? Perhaps awesome is being as loud as it can, however that’s style! Some churches have acoustic guitars, some organs, I’ve known one to have violins and pianos, awesome having a ‘UNITED’ style rock band doesn’t make it anything more than style. As for not focused on all the people the Church is supposed to reach, from my experience of Proclaimers they seem to be doing what Jesus taught, they’ve been going out and helping the community to show the love of God (Awesome Action), they go into the city and try and get people to their services, ok, perhaps the style isn’t appealing to all, for example I very much doubt my grandma would enjoy it or the volume of it, but they’re targeting a key group which to be perfectly honest most Churches don’t have a clue about reaching, Proclaimers and Awesome for all the things people might question is at least getting off it’s arse to go out into the community and get people into their Church with the aim not to steal from other churches, Mr Rawls (pastor) once said ‘We’re not in the game of sheep shuffling’, a term which made me laugh but it means they’re there to reach the lost!’
To conclude and finalise this rather longer than intended blog I’d say that belief-wise Proclaimers seems fine, style wise, although it’s not for me, lots of young people can obviously connect with it which is good and yes, perhaps there are bad bits of the church but there are bad bits of every church, and it’s down to opinion, kinda back to the ‘you say tom-a-to, I say tom-ato’ kinda thing. I’m personally not sold to the ‘Rock band worship’ church but I’m not sold to traditional organ church either. However any Church that does what Christ calls us to do shouldn’t be critisized for doing so, I am in no position to critisize a church which I haven’t been to a huge amount of times so perhaps based on that my blog is worth nothing other than being my thoughts. Blogulation over!
P.S. Sometime soon I intend on blogging on the ‘Hillsong UNITED’ style Church, the Careforce area group meet up (including peddle boats!) and more!
