Duvet and mattress, porcelain loo -
Are absent from Greenbelt and its campers, who
Make do without, all weekend long.
They shiver by night, and by day: pong.

My tenth year attending was worth my while -
Jude Simpson’s wit made my face smile.
Milton Jones – the one-liner King.
Dave Walker’s scribbling kept me giggling.

Roger McGough – a poetry machine;
He once helped to write: Yellow Submarine!
That beat-boxing Shlomo, the epitome of cool.
Rev Gerald A. boldly broke every rule.

Remember from Blue Peter, Simon Thomas?
His main stage compering was fab, I promise.
Went with my hubbie to a ‘talk’ in Bethlehem:
“Affluenza’s what we’ve got!” declared Oliver James.

Zic Zazou – very… French – noisy too.
Beer and Hymns (overheard from nearby queue).
Free tea from Speakers’ Lounge – totally fantastic.
First visit to Blue Nun – four quid for wine in a cup of plastic!

Fried potato, wine gravy… sausage perched on top.
I tend to scoff this every year – I like it quite a lot.
But now it’s all over – Greenbelt ‘adieu’.
Back to duvet and mattress, porcelain loo.

Last year my GB poem won me a box of pies through the post!
As you can see, this year I’m expecting signed photos/t-shirts/CDs/books/all-inclusive holidays, etc, from all the ’stars’ that are named.
I’ve briefed the postman that his job will become that bit more demanding over the next couple of weeks. It’s just a matter of waiting now.

Some info/pics re my previous talks at GB here.

My GB 2010 pics here.

An ‘official’ GB pic of me here (typical – the photographer came to our talk, took lots of pics, and this is the one they choose… of me freaking out as Peter had just decided that it would be a clever idea to kiss me for a photo, which made me go bright red, naturally)!

Read my article here, from Scripture Union’s magazine: The Life

[Please note, as the kind person has commented below, the correct UCCF web address is: http://www.uccf.org.uk]

If you’re a Christian writer in the UK, consider joining the Association of Christian Writers.

And I’m speaking there again this year… this will be the 8th consecutive year that they’ve been crazy enough to ask me back!

Here are a few pics from past talks (click them to enlarge)… some were as part of the ‘literary’ stream, some in connection with Generous:

2003 – first met the fab-tastic Penny Culliford, both involved with the ‘writer’s surgery’ in the inflatable church!

2004 – Penny and I doing: Bridget Jones Gets God!

2006 – a lot of talks/workshops/interviews in the Generous ‘zone’, a highlight being interviewing Janey Lee Grace, see pic here.

2008 – Me kindly allowing someone else to have their say during a Generous talk (perhaps I wasn’t feeling well)

2009 – Jac and I continue to urge people to Go Generous:

Doing this post is planting an idea in my head about having an entire page on this website, dedicated to Greenbelt-related this n that. This page has some GB stuff on already, but perhaps GB ought to have the honour of a page all of its own.
It’s the Summer hols and I’m off work for 5 and a half weeks… so no excuse not to attempt this, darn it.
I could dazzle you with my award-winning Greenbelt poetry. (Blogged a poem about the pies at GB… pie company found it, and awarded me with a large box of pies through the post, worth over £50… yum yum!).

Last year’s Generous talk (me and Jac) is available to buy here as an MP3… only listen to if you can cope with my very poor jokes relating to fair trade bananas and compost toilets. Seriously – very very poor.

Anyway, if you’re Greenbelting this Summer, call in to The Kitchen on Saturday, 2-3:30pm. The details of the talk/workshop/session/whatever are yet to be finalised. OK, granted… we haven’t actually started with the planning yet, but with 4 weeks to go, it’s quite likely we will, one day soon (myself and 2 very biblical-sounding guys: Peter and Paul).

And watch out for those pies… see if they inspire your creative juices to flow… then watch out for the postman struggling to your door with a large box of freebies…!

… but in the mean time, my ‘Study Guides’ for Dear Bob have recently had a revamp.
I first wrote them in 2003 (the year Dear Bob was published). It was when I spotted a reference to Gareth Gates that my concerns were first alerted.
Would any teenager/student know who he is nowadays? Answers on a Gareth-Gates-shaped postcard, please.

So, they’ve now been decorated with contemporary references and suchlike, and are available for your use should you wish, for a tenner.
No, only kidding… for zero pennies!

Suitable for any school/uni CU or Church youth group, age 14+

There are 3 studies, focusing on issues raised by Dear Bob:

Independence Day (Leaving Home)
Singleton City (Being Single)
God Who? (Doubting God)

It’s not essential that your group have read Dear Bob before embarking on one of these studies.
Honest!

It makes me smile to still be reading reviews of Dear Bob, seeing as it was published back in year of…
(…. just googled ‘2003′ to see what events of mind-boggling importance occurred in that year… turns out: not a lot, apart from Dear Bob being published, naturally).

Here’s a recent one from Woman Alive (national monthly printed magazine aimed at Christian women, read by more than 30,000 women each month… and perhaps by men in tune with their feminine side!)

READ IT HERE !

(you may need to summon the powers of ‘zoom in’ to read the review in question!)

In case you’re not one to wile the hours away on Facebook and/or not a Church-goer… this declaration is based on a similar one in the States. Christians are being urged to sign it, with the intent of informing the political candidates in question of our beliefs… and urging them to respect/protect them.

The first few paragraphs are entitled: Our beliefs and Values… Human Life… Marriage.
At face value, these are fairly straightforward. ‘Liberal’ (not Lib Dem) Christians could spend many an hour dissecting them, extracting the ‘conservative’ ness out and proposing alternative suggestions… and although I’m tempted, I feel my time could be used more wisely. Here’s one example of such views (Ekklesia) and while I can’t say I’m unwaveringly behind all he says, I do concur with the gist of the piece.

But it’s more the last two paragraphs of the declaration that disturb me:

Conscience
We count it a special privilege to live in a democratic society where all citizens have the right to participate in the political process. We pledge to do what we can to ensure our laws are just and fair, particularly in protecting vulnerable people. We will seek to ensure that religious liberty and freedom of conscience are unequivocally protected against interference by the state and other threats, not only to individuals but also to institutions including families, charities, schools and religious communities. We will not be intimidated by any cultural or political power into silence or acquiescence and we will reject measures that seek to overrule our Christian consciences or to restrict our freedoms to express Christian beliefs, or to worship and obey God.

Commitment
We call upon all those in UK positions of leadership, responsibility and influence to pledge to respect, uphold and protect the right of Christians to hold these beliefs and to act according to Christian conscience.
(words in bold is my doing)

We live in a Post-Christendom era. While it’s fantastic for us to get together with other Christians from a plethora of denominations and state our beliefs… the minute we attempt to enforce those beliefs on others, or demand that we have any sort of ‘rights’, we’re stepping outside of what our faith actually holds dear. Stuart Murray, in his superb book on this topic, suggests we ought to advocate equality for other faith communities… and advocate abolition, not extension, of Christendom vestiges. He states this is more feasible and ‘Christian’ than the restoration of a Christian State.

Granted, the declaration isn’t demanding Constantine to make a come-back… but its rhetoric is leaning in that direction, and for that reason I will not be signing it, and I’d invite you to consider doing likewise. We’re called to ‘be Church’ – to live in such a way as to be a witness for Christ. To be an example. To love and care for the oppressed. To share the Good News with those around us. But to demand/claim/expect any special treatment in the UK or anywhere else in the world?
No.

These are my very initial thoughts on this topic though, so please come back at me with your thoughts on this one.

Yes, it’s conceivable that I’m lagging slightly behind. ‘Black’, by Ted Dekker, was published in 2004 (the same year as my Dear Bob was reprinted, coincidentally). Still, I’ve only just read it. So there.

I’m not a fan of Christian fiction, which is both ironic and plain daft, as it’s what I write. So many Christian novels are sub-standard, compared with secular fiction (which I read copious amounts of… too much… no wonder my housework remains untouched!).
Is it that the authors aren’t pushed enough by the publishers to produce what they’re capable of?
Not sure.
Perhaps.

But there are exceptions. For example, I loved the Left Behind (LB) series. It wasn’t well written. Characters were flat. Lots of unnecessary preachy bits, sometimes several pages long. And so on. But the PLOT… was fab. Despite the criticism, no one can deny that they sold well, and made both Christians and the unchurched consider the second coming. The concept… the idea of what the world might be like post-rapture… gripping stuff.

And then you’ve got The Shack (by William Young). Couldn’t stand it. Very long and drawn out… very preachy (without moving the plot along in any way shape or form)… quite dull and boring… nothing gained.
Whereas some of the proposed theology in LB was a little shaky (to say the least) I was generally on board with what was presented in The Shack. Found myself agreeing with the majority of it. It just wasn’t a ‘good read’, in my opinion. Still, it too sold trillions of copies, and ostensibly introduced the many unchurched to God. You can’t argue with that. Even I can’t argue with that, much as I’d love to. If it helped anyone to ‘know’ God in a new or different way, my hat goes off to Mr Young. Truly.

But now to the point (!)… ‘Black’. A fabulous read. Half thriller (of the ‘biological warfare’ variety) and half fantasy (of the Peretti ‘demon V human’ variety). At first I was dismayed at the inclusion of the fantasy sections, but soon started relishing them. I’ve tended to disregard (secular) thrillers that even hint at fantasy, of any sort, but perhaps because this was ‘Christian’ fantasy, I could cope with it; it had an obvious purpose.
The protagonist, Thomas Hunter, is having dreams. Not normal ones… vivid ones. Lucid ones. (And as someone with a tendency to dream lucidly, this was of some interest to me.)
One minute he’s in the ‘real’ world… attempting to stop the baddie terrorists from releasing a deadly virus worldwide… that kind of ‘real’. The next he’s in a Garden-of-Eden style world, where he’s fighting bat-like demons whilst getting to know the Garden’s creator and sustainer. As the novel progresses, he (and we) realise that the two ‘worlds’ are connected… but how? And how will he save both worlds?

I desperately want to tell you that, as per the LB series, it was only the plot that I loved, whereas the writing style, or character formation, or pace, etc, was pants. It would suit me more if this were the case, as it would support my theory about the lack of quality Christian fiction currently on the market. But it’s simply untrue. Dekker writes a good thriller. Sure, I’ve read superior secular thrillers, but there’s not much in it. And the fantasy stuff just got better and better… I found it moving, engrossing, thought-provoking… sometimes all at once!

Turns out this is the first in a series of twelve.
Anyone free to come and manage my housework while I read them…?!

I’ve just started a Dear Bob ‘page’ on facebook… if you’re on facebook, I’d be honoured if you’d consider stopping by and making yourself a ‘fan’ !

Wanted to share with you a friend’s short story, that I’ve just read and really enjoyed!

Read it here