I’m torn in writing this post, partially because I’m not too sure about the title and partially because this particular idea is a tad more difficult than what I’d originally planned on writing.
Mobile phone accessories are everywhere, if you want a new cover, screensaver, personalised ring tone, piece of material to stick to the cover, coloured lights that glow when your phone is ringing, ear pieces, mp3 players, portable keyboards and one of the many varied phone covers then all you have to do is wander online or to the shops and buy one! And phone covers are changable, if my mood swings, or if I change clothes, or if I’m in love I can change it… and I can change it quickly too back and forth until the cover breaks…
Late night tv is now publicising personalised information, just text the name of yourself and of your lover and the company will text you back a love rating, or a romantic poem or even a prediction of the future.
One of the personalised phone rings that the companies have been selling here to users remarkably has just hit the top 10 in the UK, amazing that an image of a half naked frog-like creature wearing biker goggles and making an annoying noise can make the top 10…
Then again, if Hillary Duff can do it… We’re being told to accessorise everything, from our nail colours to our cd racks and our car’s rear view mirror…
Everything is up for grabs, we’re being told to make everything suit “me” make my phone an extension of my personality, make my rings express my musical taste, make the covers express my sub-culture’s dress sense, make the texture of my phone feel like me…
And to a degree, we do the same with our youth ministry and with the bible and with our faith.
Show the world how I feel and who I am by what I wear and what colour my phone is, and as youth workers do we need to be able to see these accessories and build meaning from them? Yet, is this what we should be encouraging? When is a phone “just” a phone?
On one hand I think we’ve made it possible to accessorise everything about our faith, so much so that one can hardly recognise it as “faith” because it looks a lot like the clothes i wear or sounds like the music I listen to. The WWJD Bracelets, Christian Rock, Vegetales, Purpose Driven Life and bumper stickers are ways in which we’ve tried to domesicate our faith, ways in which we’e tried to accessorise it.
And, our youth ministry has encouraged it, “accessorise your faith” we cry out and since everyone else is doing it with everything else young people jump to the task…
Yet, Jesus’ message was not about making our faith accessorised, to be christian wasn’t really about being cool, wasnt really about yourself… So… And… But…
On the other hand we’re trying to encourage a faith that is authentic, something that is owned by the young people who we minister with. How do we provide the tools for people to accessorise their faith, yet not make it into the latest fad, how do we move from a cool phone cover to a personalised, authentic faith?
For me I think theres a difference between changing covers and changing service providers. There’s a difference between changing ring tones and changing how we speak to people on the phone. Accessorising our lives isnt what we’re supposed to be promoting, our lives are much more than a mobile phone, in youth ministry our role is to remind people that they’re known to others and to God not from their accessories, but by the way they live.
Accessorise your life by befriending a stranger.
Perhaps I’m babbling again…
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