Every year or so, we see an article about "edgy" church advertising in England. Here’s the most recent offering, this time focusing on ads for the "Alpha" course – the Alpha course is an introduction to basic (might we say "mere?") Christianity that’s been quite popular in England for the last several years.

So, I read this, and I wasn’t going to blog it because we’ve seen it all before, but then I read down through the readers’ comments on the article. These two in particular struck me:

The only thing that bothers me is that the money might have been put to better use. I recall a Christian event called Soul in the City which stunned London residents with the hard work of Christians who were simply willing to give some time and effort to cleaning up neglected areas in the community. Are adverts like these going to have the same effect? I worry that the church nowadays isn’t willing to dedicate the same kind of effort that Jesus and the early church dedicated to their cause.

That comment resonated with me because I’m always struck by the energy that churches are willing to put into some efforts and not in others.  The main place I see this is in stewardship efforts – I see dioceses and parishes willing to pour lots and resources and a shocking amount of time into Stewardship appeals (One of my parishes in Florida gave over a solid month of homilies – mostly from diocesan employees –  to try to get the parish to engage in sacrificial giving. Didn’t work.), and nowhere near the same kind of time and effort into, say, introducing the entire parish to Scripture reading and study or encouraging a eucharistic-based spirituality or serving the local poor. Which, I always maintained, would probably produce more fruit – including financial, in the long run.

But it was this comment that amused me:

Unfortunately, the narrow minded, stultifying reality of most English churches hardly matches the dynamic, revolutionary image they’re trying to push. If they spent more time helping the poor, campaigning for social justice, doing the things they’re meant to be doing and less time self-consciously trying to get bums on seats or serving stale biscuits and weak tea to defenceless pensioners, they might find things work out for them a whole lot better.

I’m not agreeing a hundred percent with this guy, for I think his sense of social justice and mine might not exactly coincide (but who knows!) – but his point is well taken. Christianity is radical, revolutionary and counter-cultural. Unfortunately, for most of us, whether we work for the institution or not, that battle between the world and its cultural expectations and the call of the Gospel, fought every day within our hearts, is won too much of the time by the former – especially when we mis-identify where the revolution lies. (That is – self-indulgence of any kind isn’t revolutionary or radical. Fidelity, commitment and sacrifice…are.)