When something entertains it engages. Today people entertain and engage through painting and drawing, writing plays and performing. But by far the biggest and most widely consumed form of entertainment and art is television. If we want to engage our contemporaries with the good news, Christians must master this art-form. Living with the Enemy is a new SBS series, and in the first episode, Anglican minister, David Ould lives with a soon to be married gay couple. I was pleasantly surprised by this show; I didn’t get bored, or switch off in disgust because I felt that the editor’s knife was unduly biased. Each segment propelled me further into wanting to watch the show. How about you?
How many of us who present the gospel regularly engage our own local audiences like this?
Often we can forget to earn our listeners attention. Too often we take for granted that they’ll sit through and stay tuned to something that frankly, needs a good editor. Good art entertains and engages and keeps bringing people back for a second look. Entertainment doesn’t have to be comedy. It can be the nightly news. It can be drama, a love story or documentary. The Bible has all of these and more. But sometimes I feel like we’ve flattened out the Bible so that it all sounds the same. God engages us in so many different ways through the Bible. Have we lost touch with the art that is in the Bible?
Btw did anyone notice one of the golden rules of storytelling being employed in the show? Both sides had three stunts, three little problems to deal with before a major kind of resolution took place. So David took the ‘enemy’ to bible study, the church and his brother. The gay men (names) took the ‘enemy’ to their wedding, a party and a gay pride march. The rule of three - preachers take note!
Whenever I write a new show for Anton’s Antics (www.antonsantics.com) I sketch up a story-board. If I find myself trying to draw up 4 or 5 drawings to communicate the Bible’s message, it’s a redo. How many sermons do you see or hear where they guy has 5 or 6 points in it? Hmmm.
But when its not your show, your pulpit, you have no control over the storyboard or the edit suite, so there are some big risks. You may express yourself clearly and eloquently only to have that bit omitted from the final cut. You can have the most generous body language toward your opponent but the editor may choose to use a different reaction to fit their caricature of you, making you look like a git. Telling a story even handedly doesn’t always make for great TV either. You can see by the story line ‘stunts’ that were pulled on both sides that the producers were trying to get the sparks flying.
Ok so it wasn’t a generous doco where you might find an empathetic producer wanting to write the story in post production. Taking such a risk was not something the Amish were willing to do, but nonetheless a very engaging show was made with their editorial control in ‘Living with the Amish’. What surprised me about this show was the Amish said and did very little. It wasn’t preachy. In fact, the non-believing English students who lived with them did all the talking. The Amish presented their lifestyle and occasionally gave reasons for living the way they do and the students gave all the commentary. While other Christians might not agree with all things Amish , the lives of the students provided a stark contrast that made, I felt, the worldview of the Amish, attractive. Sometimes the best way to share the good news is to say very little and hold a mirror up to society.
While people on both sides of the debate may have felt that Living with the Enemy failed to get proper discussion of the issues going, (after all the two gay men were pretty livid the whole time), Living with the Enemy at least succeeded in bringing us along for the journey. More importantly, what’s lacking in both sides of the argument, if we listened closely, became more evident.
