I was thinking the other day, possibly after a sermon at church, or maybe a random MP3 one, or actually it was probably chatting to Al about why we elevate Christians to be some kind of celebrities, particularly within the church. So someone preaches great sermons, someone writes great books, some writes amazing songs – yet they’re exactly the same as anyone else in the church, sinners saved only by the grace of God. I kindof feel sorry for these people, surely they have the same struggles, doubts, failings as the rest of us, yet we almost idolise them. And I know I’m guilty of this… I always ‘name-drop’, always ‘big-up’ my favourite preachers and authors… there’s two ways in which I think this is wrong, firstly it idolises these ‘celebrities’, second it devalues the ministry of normal Christians – ministers in small churches, old ladies who keep praying, the people who offer hospitality.

Anyway, I was reminded of this when I met a celebrity the other night. Andy Flanagan, Irish singer-songwriter came to play at Sussex as part of the StopTheTraffik tour – promoting the campaign to end human traffiking. I felt a bit bad about setting up our rather old, not very good PA system for him, but it worked, and he didn’t sound too bad through it. Also chatted to the minister from church.co.uk and managed to avoid asking any contraversial questions about atonement.

Andy Flanagan did an acoustic set…

Another thing struck me… a lot of people care an awful lot about justice, about rights for human beings, about equality, about fair trade. Few people care about Truth, about eternity, about God’s judgement, about Jesus Christ… I’m tempted to say this is true of a lot of Christians too, probably myself sometimes…