I just finished reading The Shape of Things to Come. I like to finish books later than everyone else and listen to their comments as I read and take on board what is being said as I digest for myself the words and ideas coming off the page.

I am really excited and find myself resonating with a large chunk of what Frost and Hirsch say, and I think I will be blogging in installments over a few days maybe.

I particularly resonate with the view that ‘the medium is the message’. By this, they mean basically that WE are the message! Our very lives, our daily existence, is our message.

I guess this is the age old ‘your actions speaking louder than words’ stuff which we all know is true. Sometimes, though, we forget. I think it is more than actions, it is lifestyle and I have had a few chats with Sarah about this recently.

When someone says they are an athlete we have some idea of how they are different to us. If we think of Kelly Holmes, I know that while I am tucked up in bed she is training early in the morning. While I am eating curry and drinking Cobra on a Friday night, she is stocking up on carbohydrates for her Saturday race. What she is determines who she is and we all see the difference in her lifestyle to ours.

I was chatting to Sarah and asking whether our neighbours see us as being any

different to them. My neighbours know I am a Gillingham football fan as on a Saturday I leave, with Tom, kitted in a footie shirt waving my season ticket around. What I do stands out and is different. The observant ones would know I read the Guardian, and from particular posters at certain times of the year they know I vote Labour. What I do stands out and is different.

They see me go to church on Sunday – but I ask whether that is different enough. I have been challenged by this statement of message and medium.

The really exciting thing about us being the message is that God chooses to partner with us wherever we are and through whatever we do. Rather than a guilt trip that I may have put us all on a little while ago, the real question we should be asking ourselves is:

Can we join with God in his mission in whatever place we find ourselves?

I was brought up to believe that it was my task to take God to people, to my community. For a few years now I have felt this was actually wrong and quite unbiblical. I found myself thinking how bizarre it was to be actually thinking I could take God into a world which he, and she, (another blog post for another time when I feel in a particularly provoking mood!!)had created.

It was so good to see someone else thinking the same and drawing attention to the same. I agree with Frost and Hirsch, God is already there in the world. We do not need to lead people to God as such, God is already wooing them. What we need to do is join in that mission of wooing people to God.

This is where the exciting bit comes – to join this wooing we need to be joining God in the places where he is working. Places where the church would normally keep well away from, but places where we need to join with God to meet people.

In the relevant chapter, Hirsch and Frost give an example of John Smith, an Australian evangelist leading a stripper to Christ in her strip club. They then ask the question: was God in that strip club? There is, of course, only one answer. And if God is in that strip club was it right for John to be there? Again, there is only one answer!

Sometimes we think God is only in certain places, but he is everywhere and we need to have the courage to join him in mission were he leads us. I don’t think I could join God in a strip joint; I think I am weak enough to be distracted, but John wasn’t. Is that a mission field for others?

The important thing is, I think, that we have the courage to join God where he is, to look outside our boxes to see where we can join him. Is there some kind of precedent for this? – come to think of it, around 2000 years ago there was a bloke who hung around with drunkards, robbers, prostitutes and really offended the religious leaders of the day – he paid the price for it though!