Twice in the last month I’ve heard it said that we shouldn’t abandon the ‘weirdness’ of being Christian. If that means not holding an overly rational faith that leaves out the more miraculous and less explicable bits, I’ll go with that.
‘Mystery’ and ‘Christian’ are words that go together easily and if ‘weirdness’ is a more modern way of expressing ‘mystery’ and it connects us with a different group of people, then I’ll go with that too.
Some elements of the Christian story are easily described as weird. We’ve just heard the age-old story of Christmas and gone again in our hearts and minds to that hillside in Bethlehem. It’s so traditional that we maybe no longer hear the weirdness of it.
The fact is that God’s plan for communicating the story of salvation, the appearance of the angels to shepherds on that hillside is undoubtedly a weird way of announcing the most important event in history: the birth of Jesus in a stable, itself weird.
It’s a story that is still being told 2000 years later. As a communications professional, I can’t help marvelling at the choice of the shepherds to be the first to hear. Somehow, they made sure that they were not the last!
We know that the Christmas story is one that people react to, get their children involved in and which people are still reasonably familiar with even now, in supposedly secular Britain. In recent years in Britain over 80% of children have taken part in a nativity – even during the pandemic. That’s in a country where church attendance is around 5% of the population. That’s an effective communications strategy!
In the coming weeks and months, Lichfield Diocese will be rolling its diocesan strategy, including a communications plan. It’s my responsibility to formulate it, drawing on wisdom and experience from many quarters and much help from excellent colleagues. If any of it looks odd to you, just comfort yourself that it’s just me trying to be true to being weirdly Christian.
Back to the hillside in Bethlehem. At its heart, God was trusting us. Trusting the shepherds, no education, no standing. He was trusting them to report what they saw. They were witnesses. He trusts us with his message too, asking us to be witnesses too of what we know of God’s love and salvation.
That’s God’s communications strategy. How does it work? It’s a mystery to me, but it does!
Speaking or writing from personal experience always makes for the most powerful, compelling and authentic stories. That is what God asks of us, each of us - to be ready to tell our story of faith, our story of God’s goodness, kindness, mercy and forgiveness to us. Make it your new year’s resolution to keep telling yours. And remember the shepherds: picking your audience could make all the difference.
Arun Kataria is Lichfield Diocese’s Director of Communications.
Communicate with him via arun.kataria@lichfield.anglican.org.
He loves to hear good news stories from the parishes, chaplaincies,
schools and fresh expressions around the diocese.