The Journey by Jordan de Laune

Well now I haven’t blogged for a long time, not because nothing has been happening, if anything the opposite. But something has got me motivated enough the blog my thoughts and that’s the atheist bus campaign.

Now I have nothing against atheists and fair game, anyone can advertise and do what they want with their money. But there has been a lot of religious and Alpha Course bashing going on. They’ve certainly done a good job in raising over 75k in less than two days. But seriously why?

If you have missed the news they plan to put an advert originally on buses but now it seems like anywhere and everywhere. Saying: There’s probably no God, now stop worrying and enjoy life. The meaning is sort of lost on me. They are basically saying: carry on how you are. At least with Alpha they are actually advertising a course.

I guess I just hate seeing money wasted like that, they only winners are the advertising companies. Why not spend the money on doing something ‘morally’ correct like helping the poor. To me it seems like they only reason this ad campaign exists is because they have had a enough of the Christian ads on buses. It’s their reply to Alpha’s Ad Campaign. Just in a way is great because it’s bringing the whole religion/God thing to the for-front again.

I suppose what hurts the most are the atheists mis-informed views of the Alpha Course. They seem to think it’s a course where we condemn people who are ‘weak’ and force them to become Christians out of guilt and fear. If you have ever been on the course you would find it’s the exact opposite. The funniest part is Richard Dawkins response to the campaign: “This campaign to put alternative slogans on London buses will make people think - and thinking is anathema to religion.”. Right? So thinking is anathema to religion? Wait a minute the Alpha Course is entirely based around thinking, discussions and debating… which is what makes it so popular and effective. Something doesn’t Ad up there.

So while I don’t agree with the atheist bus campaign for a few reasons outlined above. Fair play to them for raising so much money and putting their money where their mouth is. Pitty their argument is so weak. But that’s why money rules in a ‘morally’ correct world.

I had an amazing Thursday night at the passion world tour in London. Apart from the awesomeness of God the visual effects from the screen graphics to the lighting totally blew me away. For me they add so much to the atmosphere of worship. While they are not fundamental they do help you focus and get ‘in the zone’.

The speaker as Louie Giglio and what a speaker! He did a really moving sermon on God grace and lead the whole night tremendously.

Finally David Crowder Band was amazing. They were like a crazy christian rock band and I loved it. We even did some Texas dancing at one point. The atmosphere in the building was overwhelming and I can’t wait until the next passion event if they do one.

Every day I am blown away by God. I keep on wondering how it can get any better, but it does. Which is why the concept of Heaven and living for eternity is loosing it’s sense of eventual boredom. Things will just keep on getting better and better. As Nicky Gumbel loves to say: It was the best ever!

Words can’t describe the night, but hopefully this video footage will give you some sense of the evening.

So I went up to Watford today to go to the Holy Spirit Day at Soul Survivor. My sister was organising the event and it went very well. I helped steward the cars to begin with. Firstly it didn’t rain and was quite hot and sunny, which was great. It went very well on the whole apart from one point when I had a minibus reservsing into a space, two cars reversing out of spaces and cars coming along the road it both directions. It was a bit manic but no one crashed.

I had loads of people coming up to me what was going on. So I tried as best I could to describe Soul Survivor church and what the holy spirit was all about without freaking them out. Most people were very receptive which was good, one person even asked what time the service was on Sunday. I had a guess at 10am. Also doing the stewarding was Sam Parker (worship leader) he seemed like a really nice guy.

Most of the time I had to stop people parking in the spaces outside of the church because they were reserved for minibuses and disabled people. So a car pulls up and I start telling them where to go (at this point I am only looking at the passenger) the driver asks why he can’t just park in the spaces behind me, I start to reply as I bend down to see that the driver was in fact Mike Pilavachi. At which point my brain starts working overtime as I realise I am telling the pastor of the church he cant park there but has to park further down the street. He asks for a bit more explaination of where to park as I try to explain this building to him. It had a big soul survivor sign near the roof so I described it as the bricked soul survivor building (there were multiple bricked soul survivor buildings). I knew the buildings must have names and that Mike must have thought I was such a plonker and that I must have not known who he was. Ah well live goes on lol

Then I had dinner with Ben Cantelon another really nice chap. At one point he asked me how old I was and I couldn’t even remember my age, so I said the first thing which came into my head which was 19 (luckily it wasn’t something too silly like 12). So unfortunatly Ben thinks I’m 19 although I doubt he will remember that fact. Later on he took a few of us to the recording studio he has built for recording albums (shock horror, like anything else goes down in a recording studio). It was very nice inside and had two 30″ Apple Cinema Displays running ProTools.

The time of worship at the end of the day was really really good. The whole day was great and Mike is good at explaining the holy spirit although I have heard most of his stories before.

So the only Christian celebrity I have yet to meet is Chris Tomlin who I’m going to see at a gig next week. Not that I’m into Christian Celebrities that much, they are all completely normal people from what I have seen so far.

So a great day but I an pretty tired now (felt like falling asleep through a lot of the talks not because they were boring but because I was so tired.