Never say die

During this past week, I have spent a lot of time thinking about my session at Digimanc. I wanted to get across to people the tremendous possibilities for breaching the walls of the church through online activities. I wanted to blow the trumpet for the interruptive possibilities of social media, as it interrupts the preachers thoughts and reminds him or her that there is a complex and messy world out there. I saved up some stories about those places in my recent experience where online activities have brought offline benefits, and we looked at them together.

However, I saved the picture below for my final point. We may use all the technological devices at our disposal, but still the growth of the kingdom of God  is fundamentally organic. In three hours from now I shall preach a sermon using powerpoint and audio material. However, the most powerful presence in the room will be the sound of God’s word and the Spirit who applies it. I love this picture, taken a few years ago in Chelmsford. Some time in the late 19th century, somebody put up a cast iron fence in order to impose some order on the nature all around it. As you can see, the scheme spectacularly failed! Millimetre by millimetre and cell by cell, nature has taken it back. Even so, the Kingdom of God grows – cell by cell and soul by soul. We use every technological means at our disposal, and rightly so, but the power comes from elsewhere.