The whole “On the Street” worship idea is based around the thought that life itself is lived out on the street. If we are going to connect with the world around us as Christians we need to open our eyes and see what is on the street. The church needs to once again get out there where the people are living, moving breathing, working, playing, being. I guess that is what Jesus did and ended up being called the friend of sinners. Faith has to be at street level or it is not being true to the incarnation. Have a look at this video we put together a few years ago. This was the prototype “on the street video”
 

Now lets get up to date. Last September we launched the first of eight multimedia worship services around the theme On the Street. Here is an introductory video setting the scene for the worship service. On the Street: The music and the images in this video are meant to describe the edginess of being on the street. It doesn’t matter if you live in Moscow or Lima, Amsterdam or Glasgow, the street can be a dangerous place. What we are trying to do in this clip is set the scene for all our lives. Christianity is not a faith for the monastery or the secluded church building. It is a faith born out of struggle and hardship. It is a faith that came to life on the street. The first Christians encountered the power and presence of Jesus Christ not in an ornate holy temple, but in the cut and thrust of everyday life. In a community that knew what it was like to be under occupation and fear. Christianity comes to life when it engages with the dark places in life. So if your lost on the street of life hang in their because you will encounter some interesting people on the street. We are also convinced that God reveals himself more often on the street that in the so called holy places.
On the Street

It’s true what they say songs take on a life of their own. If you are a songwriter you always have to be prepared to give it away. In reality it never belongs to you in the first place. Many people contribute to the ideas that make up a song. A few years ago I wrote this song after hearing a story Willie MacPherson told me. He was describing the above shanty town known as Port of Belen built on a sewer that serves the city of Iquitos deep in the Amazonian Jungle. I was shocked when he described how a father of a 10 year old girl offered him his daughter for thirty cents. I was full of righteous anger how could anyone do such a thing. The world is a dangerous and desperate place. The story of Lent is all about encountering a God who makes his home in the gutter, who takes the sin of the gutter into himself. He is the God who dies on a rubbish dump outside a city on a Friday Night just before night fall. A few months later New York would never be the same again. In all our dark Fridays we need to believe that there is a Resurrection Sunday. If I got an idea for a song from Willie, I got the hook line from Tony Campolo telling his story about an old black preacher who could sum up the power and expectation of the gospel in six words, “It’s Friday night but Sunday’s comin’”. As for the rest of the song well Iain jamieson my song writing partner contributed as did Graeme Duffin whenit came to production. So you see song writing is never or seldom the domain of one person. Now when it comes to the video making its a team effort again, with a huge thank you to Rae Manger the best film editor in Bo’ness
 

Most people just live their lives oblivious to the reality of the world that is all around them. We drive past so many things of beauty and worth. My wife Martha is continually encouraging me to get out of the car and start walking. She’s right. When you take to the streets you see things that you’ve never noticed before. It’s the same with our spiritual journey. When we start walking through our lives at a slower pace we find ourselves being confronted with ideas that challenge us. We might even begin to understand people and things we’ve written off. A few years ago during lent we put together a short video highlighting the things that sometimes go right over our heads when it comes to trying to understand who Jesus really is. We recorded this video using a script we found in a book somewhere. We’ve since lost the book so we can’t give the scriptwriter credit. If you recognise the script pass on the authors name. If not I’m afraid he’ll have to continue to be living in oblivion.
 

Lord,
Can I talk to you a bit more about commitment?
What exactly would you say
Makes a good disciple?
I guess its about
Keeping the rules
Attending church every Sunday
Praying a lot?
Keeping the Ten Commandments?

Is it actually true
That you once asked a guy to sell up everything he owned
And give all the money he made to the poor?
That must have taken some nerve?
I mean to ask someone to sell all their possession
It gives a whole new meaning to the idea of travelling light.
So commitment in your book has financial implication?

Some of your ideas are challenging to say the least
Turning the other cheek
Loving your enemies
Accepting strangers as neighbours

You say
It’s not about rules and achieving
Nothing to do with rule keeping at all?
I find that strange
I know some disciples that
are into rule keeping in a big way
Have they got it wrong Lord?

Could you explain this grace thing to me
It all sounds too easy
Live anyway and God accepts you.

Ah you say ‘ no’ to that
What do you mean?
You can only live one way
The right way !
Because God accepts you
Are you saying when we know God has accepted us
We want to live a totally new way out of gratitude.
Ah !
That’s an interesting motivator
Can we talk about this again ?

Its a funny old world, they say you become more conservative as you get older. I think it’s happening the other way round for me. It’s not that I’m buying into the trendy political morality of 21st century Blairite Britain. I just think that it is important to constantly reflect upon the way things are now rather than the way things used to be. Nuclear weapons is an example. I could just about understand why successive governments during the cold war advocated the peace keeping role that such weapons had in the light of the Soviet threat.

However I cannot for the life of me understand why we want to invest 29 billion in new ones. I listened to Bruce Kent, the old “Ban the Bomb” campaigner on “Newsnight” this evening . He pointed out that there seems to be too much of a hurry to replace these weapons. He encouraged the government minister to pursue unilateral disarmament, he pointed out, the present arms system will still be operating until 2024. In other words we have plenty of time to try and decommission what we have worldwide Got me thinking if we put as much effort as we did into going to war with Iraq, I’m sure we could continue to be deescalating the present situation. How can we tell Iran you can’t have these weapons but we are going to be putting in an order for our upgrade. Its an impossible moral argument. I think we are talking with “fork tongue”. Its so easy to do and not to realise the contradictions in our lives. Have a listen to this piece of magic Glasgow patter. It sums up the fact that we sometimes need to take a long hard look at the changes we are embracing.burberry.mp3