The Churches Advertising Network (CAN) have thrown down the gauntlet for their latest campaign, offering £500 for the best 30 second summary of the Christmas story. The competition will be promoted through radio ads which attempt to tell the story in a rapid, sports-commentary style. 

The ads are the latest in a series of ad campaigns released to coincide with the major Christian festivals of Easter and Christmas, each designed to get people talking and thinking. Memorable past ideas include a billboard campaign portraying Jesus as Che Guevara, and another with the image of Christ appearing in an empty pint glass. This year’s theme was inspired by research from the Theos think tank that showed that many people do not know the details of the Christmas story. 

“We wanted to carry on with this idea of retelling the Christmas story, but in a medium suitable for radio listeners” said CAN creative director Chas Bayfield. “The new radio ads take on the style of a sports commentary and hope to engage in a humorous way with the youth audiences and encourage them to go to church to hear the Christmas story in full.”

You can hear the ads here. You can also sponsor ads to run in your local area.

Today is Blog Action Day, which is an effort to get as many bloggers as possible to address the same topic on the same day. In doing so, says the official website, “the blogging community effectively changes the conversation on the web and focuses audiences around the globe on that issue.”

Changing the conversation is something we seek to do at SGM Lifewords too. 21st century life is noisy, and into its maelstrom of news and advertising, scandal and gossip, we exist to speak life words, words of life and of hope. Blog Action Day is based around a similar idea, and we’re pleased to be taking part today.

The theme for the day is poverty. For our contribution I offer the words of Jesus, the ones he used to launch his ministry, as a reminder of God’s concern for the poor:

“The spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has appointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released, that the blind will see, that the downtrodden will be freed from their oppressors, and that the time of the Lord’s favour has come.”
Luke 4:18-19

Our friends at the Christian Enquiry Agency (CEA) have added a new film to their series for Hope08. This film explores hope through an interview with Brian McLaren, talking about September 11th, the environment, and poverty.

Click here to view the film, or here for more information.

CEA provides much of the follow-up to SGM Lifewords‘ Inspire booklets, either through their enquiry service or the rejesus website. Most recently, we worked with them on the historic churches postcards. Each one has a tear-off reply so that church visitors can request further prayer. These cards, and the prayers requested, are all handled by CEA’s network of staff and volunteers.

Update: CEA’s hopeinfo site has won an award for the Best Social Action Website in this year’s Christian blog and web awards.

DesktopLive! is an open source computer programme from the team behind Life Changing Words, that delivers a new background to your computer’s desktop every day. Like Life Changing Words, each desktop wallpaper features a daily Bible verse. It’s easy to download and use, is available in 12 languages, and just launched a new version. Download from www.lcwords.com, where you can also sign up for the Life Changing Words daily Bible email service.

17/9/08 UPDATE: the service has just been updated with new graphics. These will be used in DesktopLive!, and ecards and posters.

We’ve just added a series of short films to the SGM Lifewords website, introducing the Choose Life project. There are interviews with teachers and students, and insights into daily life in Kenyan schools. Click here to view the films.

This has been a difficult year for Kenya, with the instability that followed December’s elections. That has had an impact on our Choose Life programme. You can find out more about the challenges, and the response, in this update from our Africa Director.

The latest short film is live on Hopeinfo.co.uk, the public face of Hope 08. Run by the Christian Enquiry Agency, Hopeinfo is hosting a series of films throughout the year, all around the theme of hope. The latest, ‘Big Hope’, tackles the question of the afterlife.

All the films are available to download, should you wish to show them in your church or use them as conversation starters.

A further series of films is available from the Reaching the Unchurched Network, through their iMatter series.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM5urcHhsMg[/youtube]

For more, see www.beingyourself.info.

24-7 Prayer are running a series of daily podcasts for Holy Week. In association with Survivor Records, the Guildford boiler room have recorded a ten-minute prayer space for each day. The series starts tomorrow, Wednesday the 19th of March.

The podcasts include worship tracks, reflections and Bible readings, and they’re available from itunes or the 24-7 website.

Easter television schedules look like they will be dominated by the BBC’s series on the Passion this year. With episodes through Holy Week, the four part series tells the story of Jesus’ last week from multiple perspectives, in primetime on BBC 1.
The BBC have launched a support site for the series. As well as trailers and a guide to the programmes, resources include articles on the historical context, the Passion in art and literature, and schools materials. Click here for the Passion website.

If you would like to help promote the series, the Christian Enquiry Agency have posters to download, this one for outside the church, and this one for inside the church. Rejesus and the Bible Society have additional resources.

Theos, the public theology think tank, have released some interesting research on the Christmas story. In a poll of over a thousand adults in the UK, the survey found that 73% knew the basics of the Christmas story. When people were asked more detailed questions about the story, the number of people fully informed fell to just 12%.

Respondents were asked where Jesus was born, who told Mary that she would have a baby, who was Jesus’ cousin, and where did Mary and Joseph go to escape king Herod. Almost two thirds of those questioned were able to identify Bethlehem as Jesus birthplace, and an angel as the source of Mary’s revelation. On the two trickier questions, just over half did not know that John the Baptist was Jesus’ cousin, and only 22% knew that the family escaped to Egypt.

Unsurprisingly, Christians got more answers right, although only 36% got all four correct answers.  Older groups scored higher, with 55-64 year olds scoring best. 18- 24 year olds scored lowest, suggesting that younger generations are less familiar with the story.

Paul Wooley, director of Theos, said: “These findings show that the Christmas story, in its classic formulation is still very much in our cultural blood stream.”