I remember being at Bible college and having conversations about the sheer lack of quality, Biblically sound, Australian made Christian resources for kids. Everything was sooo American.
When I graduated I decided to dedicate my time to changing that and began creating my own children’s resources. During a stint as a director of Kidzlink, I started range of niche resources for churches to use at Christmas and Easter. They are short, inexpensive and high-quality stories packed with activities including colourful stickers. Every year for the past four years I have tried to publish a new edition. Each year we have made a steady sale. But to my surprise it has not been easy getting churches to part with their cash on what seems to me to be a no-brainer. It’s baffling why a church would waste time trying to create a home-made, black-and-white, meaningless stencil aimed at keeping kids quiet when they could be purchasing my beautiful, colourful, interactive and meaningful sticker stories. Why be so mediocre? Why waste your time searching online, cutting and pasting and copying pointless word puzzles and dowdy colour in pages?
[caption id="attachment_406" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Who's For You? My latest sticker story, this time a version for preschoolers with BIG stickers"]
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I remember someone from interstate ringing up and seeking to make a considerable order for Christmas. I offered what I believe to be a very generous discounted price and to my surprise they chose to purchase something else from the United States. They apologised and acknowledged the US product was of inferior quality and that they were letting Australia down, but said, ‘we gotta do what we gotta do’. In short, ‘it’s not you, it’s us’.
Australian Christians where are you? If you value quality, see the need for local resources and recognise the importance of reaching kids with the truth then you need to step up to the plate and pay for it.
Capitalism seems to always win against our patriotism. The US is not to blame, it’s us.
But it’s not just about being patriotic to Australian made product. It also about the cringe factor… we just don’t rate our stuff up with the best in the world.
Recently film reviewer, Margaret Pomeranz bemoaned the Aussie film review culture for not being kind enough to Aussie films, “Home-Grown Efforts Deserve More Than a Brutal Panning” (SMH October 11, 2014). (I have to admit that I regularly downgrade her Australian reviews by half a star in order to calibrate them against US films). She questioned the integrity of the Australian audiences ‘would you really rather go and see the latest Hollywood offering with its minimal challenges, just because it offers you everything you would expect, allowing you to go home feeling satisfied for a nanosecond but never requiring you to think again about what you have just seen?’ She suggests that our culture of colonial cringe and tall poppy syndrome stops us from properly valuing our own artists and prevents us from benefitting from their work. As a result many creative people leave the country and try and find audiences overseas. Then once they are recognised by the US, we Australians begin to think, ‘oh, maybe they’re ok!’ It would seem that this applies across the board to both secular and Christian artistic endeavors.
And it’s not just about the cringe factor, it’s about population. Margaret compared the enormous wave of publicity around the release of The Great Gatsby compared with lesser-known but equally worthy, Australian films like Predestination. Australia has a tiny population compared with the United States. Within that tiny population Australia has an even tinier population of Christians. Now this should make us value our home-grown stuff even more as it is generally cost prohibitive to make things locally for our local audience. Our marketing budgets are virtually non-existent in a context where the production cost of resources can barely be sustained by the local audience.
I have a dream to develop online television programs that are entertaining and open the Bible to kids of all ages. To do this I’m going to need a worldwide audience. Sound pretty good? Australia are you with me? Can we go on this journey together? Can I count on Australian Christians to be supportive?
Listen, how about we get coffee?
There’s something I need to tell you.
I just don’t think this is going to work out.
I’m really sorry, but it’s…
It’s not me, it’s you.
For more information about Stephen’s children’s resources and sticker stories check out:
