I wasn’t expecting to try something new today, but my job is rarely predictable.

And so, it came to pass that one of my colleagues (keen to plug the excellent All the World publication that he edits) pointed me towards the Bristol Rovers website and something that he’d found ‘interesting’.

Twenty minutes later, I’d installed the Vine app on my spangly new iPad and had created something that warmed the cockles of his heart (and launched The Salvation Army into the uncharted waters of another social media phenomenon).

Vine is wonderfully simple. Six seconds of looping video is just enough to convey a message in a world that has a rapidly-decreasing attention span.

Here’s my first attempt. What do you think?

https://vine.co/v/hLOPiaIFhOt

 

While the majority of my work for The Salvation Army is for the organisation’s international headquarters, the big topic of discussion in the UK this week has been God’s Cadets – a 90-minute documentary for BBC Four which aired on Tuesday.

The programme followed a group of people who have decided to become Salvation Army officers (church ministers) through their training at William Booth College. Reaction to the broadcast, it’s fair to say, has been mixed. Interestingly, however, the more negative responses appear to have been from Salvationists while those from elsewhere in the Christian spectrum have been generally more positive.

Amid all the criticism about the participants’ flippant remarks and dubious theological understanding, the fact that this was not a Salvation Army recruitment video has been overlooked by some. It was an independent production by True Vision for the BBC, who retained editorial control.

As it happens, I was present at one of the filming sessions. The True Vision crew were at the ‘commissioning’ service in London that saw the cadets progress to fully-fledged Salvation Army officership. My role there was to help with the live webcast of the meeting. Strangely enough, we received complaints about that as well.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of some of the cadets’ comments within the programme, it has been a real conversation starter. Facebook and Twitter were ablaze with comment – good, bad and indifferent. Theology has taken centre-stage in the British media (eg the Daily Telegraph‘s The Pope and The Salvation Army article, which has itself received a reaction).

Perhaps most striking is the response of the UK Salvation Army’s leader, which reveals that – as a direct result of the programme being broadcast – at least one person has become a Christian, another couple has made the non-trivial decision to follow in the cadets’ footsteps and offer themselves up for training, and important conversations have been had about faith, healing and trust.

Whew. That was something of a whirlwind.

I’m pretty sure that after a fortnight of ‘not being at work’ I’m less relaxed than I was when I started.

It’s not been an easy couple of weeks, not least because the girls have been out of routine – something they do tend to struggle with at the moment. There’s been present envy, despite our best attempts to be even-handed while reflecting their own preferences and interests.

It’s also been difficult because I’ve been ill for the majority of the break, culminating in a particular unpleasant bout of something-or-other in the early hours of New Year’s Day. Yeucch.

On a more positive note, we had a very lovely family day on Boxing Day which included a spontaneous Chinese dinner. The girls were delighted to try eating with chopsticks, and they were much more adventurous than usual in trying new food.

We also enjoyed our trip to Cadbury World (or ‘chocolate land’ as elder daughter insists on calling it) and our friends’ wedding was lovely too.