Here, in its latest retelling, is the real reality, the great story, the story of God and us. And don’t you just love an English accent? Enjoy, and share your thoughts! (Via Robin Parry.)
Categories: Uncategorized Written by Arthur
Arthur Davis
Arthur Davis is an Aussie living in Tanzania, writing at meetjesusatuni.com.
Meet Jesus at uni 
The speaking and visuals style is a format that grabs you easily. Many people would love to be able to excel in this style of communication, and this video does well.
As I was watching I thought – this is superb – there is a real need for ways of communicating the story to people who know nothing of it. The medium is perfect for this, and I haven’t seen any other vid that does it this well.
Then I felt like it had jargon or assumed knowledge, so wasn’t quite entry level. Then again you can’t tell the whole story from scratch in 5 minutes!
Expect to see more attempts at this kind of thing in the future.
“Everyone knows an accent is sexy…” ;-)
Yes, I like the format (RSA Animate have made this their thing, and have many excellent videos of lectures on various topics turned into this format).
Three issues for me: (a) weak on eschatology. Apart from a reference to the kingdom “yet to come”, it ended with the church. Jesus’ resurrection was viewed simply as achievement, not also promise (which is a key NT theme).
(b) Multiple spelling mistakes. Yes, I’m a pedant (a.k.a. former English teacher), but I found these distracting.
Thanks for sharing.
(PS As an English teacher, I can’t count. I was going to made my resurrection point #2 and make spelling #3, but forgot.)
Byron — solidarity, fellow former English teacher!
(I half wondered if “forefillment” was deliberate, but it seems silly…)
These are helpful comments.
But I actually appreciate the immediacy and the now-ness of the video. Many of these sorts of things (including “gospel presentations”) seem to conclude by casting everything into the future, with little sense of inauguration.
And I like the way this video makes the church, corporate-wise, “we”, the centre of God’s saving activity.
(And what was that thing about being sent to Egypt because of sin??)
Yes, I did like the ecclesial comments at the end, but without a sufficiently futurist eschatology (of course, inaugurated), then present suffering destroys belief.
That said, to give a presentation like this that does run into some kind of theological criticism would be almost impossible, given the abbreviations and simplifications required. Overall, I do think it is a good job.
Oops – “that doesn’t run into”
I think that’s right — I guess the question is, What will we leave out?
Have you seen the recent popular tool being used by InterVarsity in USA? It’s sort of like Captain Planet meets Two Ways To Live: it’s emphasising the creational, corporate side of things.
“Designed, damaged, restored, sent.”
Here’s an interview about it, a diagrammed version of it, and a video version.
What do you reckon?
I like it.
Except for the very last line of the video presentation: “to bring God’s kingdom now”. I think that is a misunderstanding of the nature of Christian mission. But I do like the three advantages of that presentation (communal > individual; transformation > decision; mission > after-life). I would add a fourth, evil as cosmic and destructive > evil as human and rebellious. Ideally, both these ought to be present, but most evangelistic presentations only focus on humanity as an active agent of evil rather than acknowledging that we are also its victims, and so we only hear that we are guilty, not that we are also enslaved. The latter message has a lot of resonance with people in my experience.
Yes! The guy currently teaching evangelism at Ridley has developed a similar model, and also makes use of a pirate ship analogy: like a child kidnapped by pirates who grows up to practice piracy themselves, we are both victims of evil and its perpetrators. It marks out the problem as more of a systemic one rather than a “God versus the human race” sort of thing.
Haha – I bet I either know who that is, or where he got the image from.
Who is teaching evangelism at Ridley?
This guy…
Haha – yep, thought so.
He stole it from an evangelistic course developed by this guy (the first one) with help from my wife, my brother, and one of my best friends.
Tim was my old boss (& rector).
Nice one! :D