Thouhgtcrime; Ownlife and The Awesome Generation

... Okay so its been a long time, but i miss looking at Proclaimers and deciding whether my annoyances are founded or not, so here's another adventure in my nosy round the `Church of my dreams`.

News on the home page is there's another wallpaper to download... Apparently the guy with the sunglasses isn't cool anymore. link: http://www.proclaimerschurch.com/downloads/wallpaperapril.JPG
...And Tom is back in fashion. link:
http://www.proclaimerschurch.com/downloads/awesome.jpg


... ahhhhhhhh, that's better. I mean awesome!

Other news from the homepage is Proclaimers is `Church without the boring bits`... So it's good to see the Church in Norwich caters for the kingdom of Heaven in both conventional, effective and `non boring` ways. After due consideration, I've decided what I want out of church, is `not boring`, and lo and behold... !

mission statement
``Our mission is to reach people for Christ, and influence culture by building a large church in Norwich - to disciple and empower people in every area of life and shape the future of our city and beyond``.

Let's discover how they go about doing this... From my experiences with Proclaimers and being part of the Awesome Generation (hmm, that phrase makes being a Christian all tingly - but more on that later) - Loud music, loud speakers, loud spotlight colours, loud PA systems (with the `love` offerings to pay for them) and most of all, loud oppressions of `the world` culture that threatens the dominion of the church all converge to a brilliant piece of showmanship and theatre on a sunday evening.

Amongst my last adventures in Awesomeland, was their last birthday. The indoctrinated culture of `Audacious`, had conspicuously become distinctly uncool, and was a bit of a 2004 drag. (However, in a decidedly more inconspicuous note that appeared a fortnight later, it happened that another youth church event up t'north had taken exception to the name `audacious` as it had been plagerised by who were soon to become, the `Awesome Generation`. )

The soon become `Awesome Generation` (or `congregation` in uncool terminology) were packed dangerously tightly into the foyer of the hotel while the finishing touches of bringing the generation's worth to God were not yet finalised. Eventually, amid a fog of stage smoke, the name `awesome` was unveiled, and from that moment, I transformed from being a `audacious Christian` to part of the `Awesome Generation`, and touch wood & copyright licencing, haven't looked back since. This new outlook on life was so decided because in taht week, we had all stopped being audacious and awesome became a more apt adjecive for this particular bride of Christ, and of course, with my new outlook on life, came the new logo and theme tune.... oh and of course, the new wallpaper.

Presently, it became apparent that part of being `awesome` meant beige became a taboo, and all things mediocre were out, bland colours were out; bland music out; and somewhere within this new culture, bland evangelism was also out. Oh, but thoughtcrime was in.
When i questioned Paster Tom Rawls on why I had to be radical to be a Christian, I was told i was against the work of the awesome generation... I received the same answer when I asked why the church needed to pay £10,000 on a pa system it already had... and I was then asked why I had raised these issues before on another Christian forum... the insecure Paster had already picked an argument with the moderator of said forum and been laughed at by many people in the process.
So Rev R spoke to me about this (as did his whippin boi' Phil) - and to my education i was content with my answers (which I was subsequently assured had been given me somwehere along the line) and sat down and shut up.

So Mission statement complete - i guess `culture`, `large church`, `disciple and empower` all points big signs towards:

`Air Strip One` church.
Whereas Oceana has only to put up with the bushy moustached Big Brother to figurehead the party, by looking on the awesome generation website, they have an array of popular, young, pretty, optimistic looking Chrsitians to represent Air Strip One Church... In fairness, that probably is indicative of the conesnsus of the awesome generation itself - studenty Christians with too much zeal and not enough common sense to draw the line at some sort of sensible display of post-modern evangelism... However, the self indulgent nature of all things awesome cannot help but hint that perhaps the church may well be slightly too inwardly focused... too intentnt on spending God's offetory on itself, too intent on videos about the leaders and nothing else, too intent on it's own fads and barely at all intent on the wider problem of the city... Oceana prides itself on being able to see teh good in everything, and doublething allows for a reduction in the chocolate allowance being an increase and a net congratulation for the party - 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. Perhaps Kings of NYFC or Zion will take the rap for that.

When all said and done, ownlife (the desire to show individualism against the orthodoxy of teh party) and thoughtcrime seem to be the biggest crimes against proclaimers, and duckspeak (the blind shouts and cliche's to exhonerate one's self for the furtherence of the party) seem to be encouraged. I'm always slow to call anything a cult, but I cannot help but think that Proclaimers is nothing more than a cult as it actually tries to indoctrinate its own culture, and inwardly develop itself while feeding on the proletariot aspect of the awesome generation - a decidedly curious trait for a church considering the mission statement says `to reach people`.. with this in mind, the rest of the mission statement could be summised by replacing the first sentence with `to impose people` - or `to displace convention of society with...`

who knows, perhaps if my pals in the awesome generation get our way, we may well be outer party members to the first right wing Christian totalitarianism in society - not just in the Ramada on a sunday...