Preach Magazine Issue 5 - Preaching to the unconverted | Page 29

FEATURE

PREACHERS CAN THINK OF HOW,
WITHIN A TRADITIONAL SERMON,
THEY CAN PROVIDE INFORMATION
IN A STYLE THAT ENCOURAGES
SHARING OF SHORT SEGMENTS,
HIGHLY SHAREABLE VISUAL
PROMPTS, AND OPPORTUNITIES
FOR INTERACTION.

how important it is that the Christian voice
is someone who is ordained! Often street
preachers, described by one of my friends
as ‘shouting at the pigeons’ can have
questionable theology. Those contributing to
BBC’s Thought for the Day can come from a
range of backgrounds – producers ask that
you be yourself, tell your story and include
God naturally in that story, rather than as a
‘surprise’ push message at the end.

EARNING THE RIGHT
TO BE HEARD
Going even further, there are increasing
efforts to re-engage on a community level,
such as through food banks. Organisations
like The Message Trust in Manchester14
and the Awaken Movement in London15 ask
people to move into an area seeking to ‘be
the church outside the church walls’, as Rob
Peabody, founder of Awaken describes it
in their new group-conversation resource
Intersect. Organisations such as Street
Angels, Street Pastors and Streetlights not
only offer practical help to those out late at
night, but opportunities for conversation,
and apparently, opportunities for selfies with
some of those helped! Healing on the Streets
is a more overtly Christian outfit, which
offers healing as a gift of service, whilst at
the Winchester Christmas Market I noted
that Churches Together had an Instagram
board with #winchesterwaits, as they asked
what you were waiting for – a useful, and
invitational, conversation starter.
Overtly evangelistic activities are
undertaken by organisations such as
Operation Mobilisation, including their
floating mission ships. Universities
undertake frequent missions through
organisations such as UCCF and the
Student Christian Movement. Fusion will

29

give out toilet rolls or beans rather than
tracts at Fresher’s Fair. Rev Sally Hitchener,
chaplain at Brunel University hosts
‘Agnostics Anonymous’ and space for other
non-judgemental conversations. Within
workplaces, others seek to reach out through
organisations such as Transform Work16
and Ministry2Business,17 and the London
Institute for Contemporary Christianity,18
which encourages us all to recognise that
we have a frontier of faith, whether we work
or not. Hayley Matthews, formerly chaplain
of Media City, indicated that social media
tools gave her lots of opportunity to offer
pastoral care for stressed workers, many of
no particular faith.
There are so many opportunities for
‘preaching’ through simply living our
everyday lives. When I put out a plea for
suggestions on Facebook, they poured in:
sharing Bibles on SD cards to countries
where owning a Bible is dangerous, pub
church, Messy Church, adventure centres,
involvement in social justice campaigns,
Twitter campaigns, social media surgeries,
and yarn-bombing. The joy of digital is
that it’s easy to connect with someone who
has already done this, and be able to do
it yourself. As Rev Pam Smith, author of
Online Mission, says, there’s no ‘one size fits
all’, and social media offers a particularly
flexible space within which to engage.
1. bit.ly/BibleHubMatt28
2. bit.ly/PreachDefinition
3. bit.ly/AssembliesAdvice
4. bit.ly/BexLBBCLon
5. bit.ly/MediaUse
6. Livingstone, S (2009), Children and the Internet: Great
Expectations and Challenging Realities, Cambridge:
Polity, p 26.
7. bit.ly/BGRom12
8. bigbible.org.uk
9. bit.ly/Walk1000
10. speakerscorner.net
11. bit.ly/SpeakCnr
12. bit.ly/Sentamu
13. bit.ly/Bottley
14. message.org.uk
15. awakenmovement.com
16. transformworkuk.org
17. ministry2business.co.uk
18. licc.org.uk

Dr Bex Lewis
Dr Bex Lewis wrote this whilst Research
Fellow in Social Media and Online
Learning for the CODEC Centre for Digital
Theology, St John’s College, Durham
University. She is now Senior Lecturer
in Digital Marketing at Manchester
Metropolitan University, Director of
Social Media Consultancy Digital
Fingerprint, and author of
Raising Children in a Digital
Age (Lion Hudson, 2014).