One of my very best friends* took up a senior post at this church in Manchester a year ago and it appears to be going really well. The problem is that it needs to be financially self-sustaining if they want to continue teaching the Gospel.

This inevitably means more people joining, so that more people can give and shoulder the burden. These guys are doing a fab job, so if you remember them, please pray that the Lord will add stable givers who can help carry the burden.

Anyways - here is an illustration for the site's leaders blog, conveying the idea of a church bursting at the seams, but with genuine treasure within.



*did I mention that he was one of my best friends? Actually he also led me to the Lord and was/is responsible for much of my discipleship. I hestitated to mention that at the start because I wanted to give a positive impression...

Tags: Jesus, The Plant

An image for a review of Inception posted at The Plant website:



From the review:

"the popular ‘existentialism’ that most 21st century Brits believe... is the idea that reality revolves around each one of us – we determine what is meaningful, right, wrong, true, false etc. – and if we come up with different versions of reality that doesn’t matter: it’s ‘my reality’ and it’s ‘true for me’.

But according to the Bible, if we see the world this way, we’re the ones living in a dream world! As Paul wrote, ‘...the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God’ (2 Corinthians 4:4)."

Tags: Faith, Film, Jesus, Devil, Death, Truth/Lies, The Plant

My personal view concerning 3D in movies is a cynical one. Much of the feeling stems from the sense that it is something being used to squeeze cash rather than push creativity*. This cartoon is really asking questions about whether the thing you are trying to say is worth actually saying in the first place.

With the epilogue text, Paul is making the strong point that when it comes to the message of Jesus Christ, you should avoid 'dressing it up' because it doesn't need it. In fact, he goes further in talking about treasure in jars of clay - meaning that the very format often tends to be less appealling purely because it brings God greater honour! The jars in the passage refer to the unimpressive, broken lives of the Christian believers including Paul.

Technology employed to clearly communicate the core message is one thing - using it as a way of disguising the content is quite another.

Which brings me to an ironic twist. I spent ages making a flashy colour cartoon (see below). In the end I realised that I was making too many points - trying combine some thoughts on the recent 'aggressive secularism' debate that the Pope stoked up as well as the 3D-dress-up ideas. In the end it stank of confusion so much that I had to go back and do something much more basic due to time pressures. The end version (above) is literally a pen-and-ink jar of clay. (UPDATE: I couldn't resist improving it during a free stretch of time...)

So there you go: you can't dress stuff up if it is a pigs ear in the first place. I include the rejected version by way of humble confession...



(*I also don't like having a restricted head-movement and sweaty eyeballs, but that is probably something to do with my strange biological set-up.)

Tags: Art, Consumerism, Entertainment, Evangelism, Film, Hypocrisy, Listening, Science, Truth/Lies, Wide/Narrow, Wisdom, 3D

Although the 2 Corinthians 4 text is quoted at length within the cartoon it helps to see the whole thing here.

Although it took a while to draw*, this piece came fairly quickly to me when I heard someone at our local church talking about signing up to become 'flu-friends' and assist collecting Tamiflu in the local community when people are incapacitated.

From a Christian point of view this leads directly into parallels with what Jesus did in coming to this world with a cure for our greatest ailment. The text in 2 Corinthians 4 is great as well because it combines the rescue mission of Jesus with our own weary efforts at making a difference.

In particular my heart goes out to Akik, Mike, Andy and the Stovell gang. I hope that this is a useful piece for your efforts.

*and also it is worth noting that this is the first cartoon for many years that I have produced virtually 1:1 ratio. I used a 0.05 pen to ink it initially.

Tags: Swine flu, Redemption, Jesus, Friendship, Evangelism, Death

The Bible epilogue text can be found here and here (you may have to scroll down a bit to find the exact part...).

Richard Dawkins is an intelligent man with plenty to say about christianity and religion that is fundamentally flawed. A TV program was shown where he basically did a rather stupid hatchet job. I wanted to point out that this hero cannot continue to be such a thing if he continues making straw-man arguments.

I wanted to dedicate this to the Christians in Science organisation, who do a great job of portraying a thoughtful response to so much incredulity.

Tags: Richard Dawkins, apologetics, Hypocrisy, Discrimination, Sin, Truth/Lies, atheism