The passion in the message here is excellent as is the quality of the video. ( h/t @theeruditefrog )

Thanks to Robb (@changingworship) for highlighting this brilliant and cutting piece by Bill Maher in the US. Be aware that it has swearing in it. Also I feel it will probably make us Christians feel a little uncomfortable – if it’s only the swearing that does that then I applaud you.

The thing is that non-Christians have long been able to better tell how Christians should be behaving than we seem to be. “That’s not a very Christian thing to do”, “I thought you were a Christian?” – that kind of thing. We dismiss it with “I’m not perfect” and “God isn’t finished with me yet” but we need to ask are they right when they make such accusations and also why do they make them in the first place? For some reason they expect more of us than we often expect of ourselves. Maher says: “If you ignore every thing Jesus commanded you to do then you’re not his followers, you’re just fans” and he’s right. Yes we can laugh at the idea of “fundementalist Christians” holding babies under the baptismal water until they talk but let’s be careful not to distance ourselves too far from the message behind it. If the rest of the world has a poor view of Christians and Christianity then there really is only one place to lay the blame: at the feet of the Church – which we keep on telling ourselves is the people and not the building.

Recently I had a conversation with a new Christian (for want of a better term). They expressed a concern that they felt they still weren’t getting it right (after 3 weeks!). After 35 years of being in the same boat all I could say was “join the club”. In the end though we must remember that the message we bring (and should live) is that all fall short of the standard Jesus set and that God loved the entire world so much that he gave his only Son to make up the difference. This does not give us an excuse to stop trying and to live in ways that the person we claim to follow would not have done.

Photo by Slideshow Bruce CC:By

So everybody knows that Harold Camping was wrong, the rapture didn’t happen and I got to watch Doctor Who after all but even so the whole scenario has got me thinking about heaven again. Camping predicted that on Saturday 21 May the process of Heaven coming to earth would begin. He chose to focus on judgement, scaremongering and some kind of divine favouritism (as he has done before) but was he so wrong about Heaven coming to earth?

I think Heaven did come to earth last weekend. It didn’t come with earthquake and rapture but it came. It does every day and we who are aware of it are sometimes guilty of keeping it to ourselves. Allow me to explain.

• Heaven came to earth when people came together in friendship in a world of enemies
• Heaven came to earth when those who were heavy with tears were, for a moment, given a chance to smile without feeling bad about it
• Heaven came to earth when those who are having a rough time were able to share with each other and gain strength from it
• Heaven came to earth when people were able to serve each other without condition or alterior motive
• Heaven came to earth when people sang, prayed, worshipped, laughed, cried, hugged and played together
• Heaven came to earth when candles were lit and memories were shared
• Heaven came to earth when silence was permitted and hands were held
• Heaven came to earth when God was spoken of, remembered and invited
• Heaven came to earth when evil was overcome with good
• Heaven came to earth when doors were open and meals were shared
• Heaven came to earth when generosity overcame selfishness
• Heaven came to earth when the church-stuff was not allowed to interfere with church

Yes I am aware that some of that will have happened outside of church – in fact it has to – but I believe that every good and perfect gift comes from the Father above. Sadly we must also remember that for each of those situations there were times when hell came to earth as well (and too often within churches) but as Christians we have a chance every day to bring Heaven to earth and to bring earth to Heaven.

How about today?

Regular readers of this blog (if there exists such a beast) will know I am quite passionate about the ideas of freedom in church. To be more specific I really dislike the idea of restricting people through draconian copyright from worshipping and journeying with God. Recently I’ve noticed some a increase in some quarters at releasing some of the restrictions usually associated with copyright symbols. Music and other resource books are increasingly appearing with “photocopy permissions”. At face value this sounds wonderful and you’d be forgiven for believing it is generous on the part of the publisher. I’m sure the author/publisher/editor thinks they are being generous too – except they aren’t really. They’re just being confusing.

As an example let’s take a recent resource book I bought. “Free Photocopying included!” shouts the red splash logo on the front cover. “Great!” you think and you begin copying to use in your church. You do this because nobody usually reads the small print when the big print is so unambiguous. The problem here is that the standard copyright terms inside the front cover include the words..

“All rights reserved. It is illegal to reproduce or transmit in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, any part of this copyrighted file without permission in writing from the author” (emphasis mine)

Note that it says “including photocopying” there but hang-on the front cover says I can copy it. The introduction tries to clarify things by mentioning that “This book includes a licence which permits you to photocopy it but – for obvious reasons – for use within your group only”. So that’s clear then. There’s is your permission in writing.

Except it’s still not clear. What is my group, how often can I copy this and what if I am responsible for several “groups”? I know it sounds like I’m being pedantic here but believe me an “Intellectual Property” Lawyer would be even more so. Suppose I use this book for ten years. During that time I need to give copies to several people in two groups. Over time copies get lost, fade or people leave the group. Do I have to get the copies back off the people who leave? How many times can I copy it? If the people I give it to, copy their copies am I responsible or them? How big does the author expect a group to be before they expect me to buy a new book?

“Oh you’re being silly Ryan” I hear you say. “Nobody is really going to care about such trivial details – least of all a Christian author.” Except we’ve had cases where Christian organisations sue other ones because they have similar sounding names. We have Christian CDs with copy protection on them and we’ve had situations where Churches receive threatening letters for putting something they believed to be public domain in their newsletter. Sadly the fact is that if you’re not prepared to sue and you don’t really care then you don’t include the copying restriction text in the first place. A Christian (or any) Author may not intend to sue a copyright infringement but you can bet the publisher will. The publishing industry has even popularised it as a “crime” (it’s not it’s a civil not a legal infringement). And again to my eye it looks more like the Church is intent on copying (if you’ll pardon the pun) the way the rest of the world does this kind of stuff.

A Better way

I know there’ll be arguments of “People have to be paid” and “You can’t get everything for free” coming about now. I’ve heard them and I’ve answered them before. I won’t bother doing so again here but there is a better way to give people the freedom to photocopy without leaving all these legal holes for them to fall into. How about putting a specific licence on the work. One which might say: “You can copy this and pass those copies around. You cannot sell it and you have to say where you got the original”. That’s the essence of the Creative Commons licences. Specifically it’s a Attribution-Non-Commercial one. Some people familiar with CC will balk at my use of NC in there but in this context it works. You can add bits like “It has to be copied unaltered” (No-derivatives) and “You can’t restrict the way anybody uses the copies” (Share-alike) but these licences are specific. They tell you what you can and can’t do and they do so in plain English (or whatever language you prefer). Suddenly all my questions above are answered:

What is my group? group size and number is irrelevant, make as any copes as you need
How often can I copy this? As often as you like – just don’t sell the copies and say where you got it.
What if I am responsible for several “groups”? doesn’t matter
Do I have to get the copies back off the people who leave? no
How many times can I copy it? As many times as you need
If the people I give it to, copy their copies am I responsible or them? neither, it’s fine
How big does the author expect a group to be before they expect me to buy a new book? doesn’t matter

Right now I imagine any authors reading this (if they have got this far) will be shaking their heads and dismissing me and mad. How can I possibly suggest removing their income like this. But I’m not. I can’t think of a Christian book I have read in the last twenty or thirty years that was written or compiled by somebody whose sole job was an author. Most of the authors are involved ins some kind of ministry or job which gives their writing on that subject a certain weight. In short they are already receiving an income, the royalties from books (which is but a small percentage of the price you and I pay) are n top of their salary. But they have expenses? Which can probably be met by the sales of the book anyway quite early on. It’s common to presume that what I am suggesting here will result in fewer book sales because everyone will copy the one book. That’s not borne out by evidence elsewhere. Some authors have seen their book sales increase when they released the text elsewhere under Creative Commons. The thing is this happens now. People photocopies some pages from a book, the recipient likes it and then buys the book. Some people prefer to buy physical books as well. Yes the profit from sales may drop but not as much as you think and mostly that will hit the publishing company not the author.

Nothing will happen

That sounds a bit defeatist but I am not expecting anything much to happen immediately following this post. Firstly I’m not that popular so I doubt many people will read it. Secondly people are not generally inclined to share these days. That’s funny because we all tell our kids too and our faith is based on free gifts that must be shared with others. One day maybe the Church will get this. Certainly a small pocket of it does now but right now, sadly, the Church seems to be quite merrily following the example set by the selfish and greedy parts of the world around us.

If you want to read more on this subject here are some of my blog posts on it:

• Authorised (KJ) version – not so free then
• Christians and copyright: why can’t we share?
• m108, document freedom and the church
• Announcing m108: the next step on freeing the Church
• Taking risks and freeingup worship
• Christianity that doesn’t spread straight from the fridge
• Human rights vs Human responsibility

I’ve seen and heard an awful lot of stuff about tomorrow’s referendum on voting and to be honest a lot of it is the same-old, same-old. The main Yes and No campaigns seem to be more concerned with scaring us about the opposition than promoting their own case. In addition I’ve yet to see anyone describe what might actually happen in each case.  So I’ve decided to have a go at it myself. I’m well aware that this might actually make things more confusing but I think you can handle it – you clever people.

First past the post (FPTP)

This is what we use now.  Here’s a nice diagram of what NoToAV supporters suggest happens with FPTP.

Simple idea:  count the votes and the one with the most wins. That sounds good but it’s not usually what happens. They’ve ignored things like tactical voting (voting against the candidate you don’t want) and the 30-40% of people who don’t vote at all. The end result is that the winner probably has the support of far fewer than half the people they represent (let alone a majority).  Here’s a revised diagram.

The irony here is that with FPTP many people already vote for their second choice (represented by the red and yellow votes above) as they don’t think their first one has a chance (or they are not standing). So when the NoToAV campaign claim AV will let the second choice candidate win, they’re ignoring the fact that the current system does that already.

Alternate Vote (AV)

This is the competition. YesToAV campaigners suggest something like this will happen if we switch.

Another simple idea. You rank the candidates in order of preference and the winner is the one who eventually ends up with at least 51% of support. Except that’s also neatly avoiding some of the realities like the 30-40% of non-voters and the people who only put down one preference. Here’s a diagram showing what would probably happen.

So you see the winner is the one with at least 51% of the remaining votes not all the votes and certainly not all the people they represent. That said there is a greater chance that more voters prefer the winning candidate than with FPTP.

What to do?

I’m not trying to convince you to vote one way or another – make your own mind up but don’t fall for the campaign lines. Read up on both systems and work out which is best for you butdon’t just fall for the campaign leaflets. They are after all very biased.

That said it is difficult to write a piece like this and not have your own preference come through. For the record I do prefer AV over FPTP ( given the option I’d rather STV or another PR was on offer ). My reason is – I think – simple: I live in a very safe seat and AV would give me the chance of showing my preferred candidate that they have my support and yet still allow my preference between the two front runners to make a difference. I can see some of the benefits for FPTP in an ideal world but in truth we don’t live in one of those. What concerns me most is the way that these campaigns have been pushed as if letting the “wrong” system win would mean automatically letting the candidate or party you don’t want in as well. Both sides are claimimg the extreminst groups would have more chance under the other system. This is not true by the way. There’s no evidence to suggest that extremist groups would have a better chance under either system. Most commentators say that changing to AV would not have made much difference to recent elections so why would I want to make a change if it made no difference? I believe that over time AV (or better yet STV) could make a difference. After the election candidates would better know what kind of support they have among the electorate and could campaign and work to increase that support. Rather than grow somewhat complacent each candidate would need to work to gain not only more first preference votes but increase their second preference ones too. In the end that sounds to me like prospective MPs would have to do something I rarely see or hear of: campaign on behalf of consttuents at times other than elections. It could also mean the candidate who is prepared to win the most support locally will win. This sounds better than the red, blue or yellow campaigning we have now.

Having said all of that I am concerned that this referendum coincides with local government elections and yet I have seen no local campaigning at all. It would appear that not one local candidate really wants my vote. Given that state of affairs I am beginning to see why so many people don’t even bother. So above all else this is a call to candidates in any election – don’t presume upon our votes – win them. Convince us. Not with scaremongering or bogey-men but with work and effort. You want me or my neighbours to vote for you, then sh ow us what our vote is worth. Not with leaflets but with action and if you are going to send me leaflest or run billboard campaigns – make them a little more honest rather than marketing material. because if you don’t do those things then you will find an increase in the non-voters.

Update Although I said much of the AV stuff is same-old, same-old it’s nice to find that there are still some refreshing views out there. My friend Kneewax, for example, has a very interesting one with which I wholeheartedly agree.

Now, go work out what that means.

Happy Easter!

We're keeping the logo image despite the name change

Almost 40 days ago I blogged about how some of us on Twitter had inadvertently started a movement. We called this Give up bad coffee for lent or GUBC4L. I later blogged further about the way different churches had taken up the “cause”.

For those who haven’t heard of this there is an important point to make: this is not just about coffee, this is about service. What we’re trying to generate is greater effort in the hospitality shown in our churches. You’ll find more information on the previous two tweets and the others I link to from there so I won’t repeat it all here.

The sharp-eyed among you will have spotted that Lent will soon end and that raises the question of what happens to the L in GUBC4L? Certainly none of those involved want this to stop just because of the Church calendar. Doing hospitality well and to the best of our ability and effort is scriptural.

So continue it will but with a new moniker. GUBC4L becomes Entertaining Angels. Yes it’s a reference to Hebrews 13:2 but let’s not think that the reason for serving people well is only because one of them might be an angel. It’s an important reason but remember we should serve people because they are worth it (just ask God who gave his only Son for them) and because we are representing God to everyone we serve in our Church and our lives. If God did not settle for “that’ll do”, neither should we.

So let the coffee, the cake, the decent posters and loving service continue for we might just be Entertaining Angels.

Get involved

GUBC4L had a twibbon and #GUBC4L hashtag to accompany it. These will become #EntertainingAngels as well. The twibbon service is down right now but I’ll sort that when it comes back. Update 23 April 2011 – the Twibbon service is back up now and I have chamged the name of the campaign to Entertaining Angels.

In the meantime you can join in simply by serving well. If you are on Twitter or Facebook you can add the twibbon to your avatar (profile pic) by following the twibbon link I’ll add later (when the service is back). If you are on Twitter and you do (or encounter) something as part of Entertaining Angels, celebrate it by adding the #EntertainingAngels hashtag to a tweet.

Sometimes I wonder if I understand what trusting in God means.

If you want to reproduce the KJV text in the UK you have to ask the Queen.

This year, Christians are celebrating the 400th anniversary of the first publication of the Authorised or King James version of the Bible. As an example the popular Spring Harvest festival has rightly chosen the Bible as it’s theme for this year’s event. It’s not just Christians either. Certainly here in the UK I have seen and heard of a lot of events and media productions based around the importance of the publication of one of the most popular translations of the Bible. Part of the enduring popularity is down to tradition, part of it will be down to the fact that a lot of Christians consider this to be the “only” version of the Bible and part of it – especially in recent times – will be because it is one of the few recognised translations outside of copyright control. Hey it was published in 1611 so any copyright on it must have expired by now – right?

Freedom in the UK

Not in the UK it seems. I hadn’t realised this before and I am indebted to an identica/twitter friend @artsyhonker for highlighting it. The King James version of the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer are under Crown copyright in the UK. So far so good, the 1988 act brought Crown copyright into line with other copyright holders but both these publications are covered by Royal perogative. This peculiarity means that publishing of these texts in the UK can only occur under licence from the Queen’s Printer. Here’s an extract from the Wikipedia page on the BCP (emphasis mine):

In the United Kingdom, the British Crown holds the rights to the Book of Common Prayer. The rights fall outside the scope of copyright as defined in statute law. Instead, they fall under the purview of the royal prerogative and as such, they are perpetual in subsistence. Publishers are licensed to reproduce the Book of Common Prayer under letters patent. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland the letters patent are held by the Queen’s Printer, and in Scotland by the Scottish Bible Board. The office of Queen’s Printer has been associated with the right to reproduce the Bible for many years, with the earliest known reference coming in 1577. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland the Queen’s Printer is Cambridge University Press. CUP inherited the right of being Queen’s Printer when they took over the firm of Eyre & Spottiswoode in the late 20th century. Eyre & Spottiswoode had been Queen’s Printer since 1901. Other letters patent of similar antiquity grant Cambridge University Press and Oxford University Press the right to produce the Book of Common Prayer independently of the Queen’s Printer.

The terms of the letters patent prohibit those other than the holders, or those authorized by the holders from printing, publishing or importing the Book of Common Prayer into the United Kingdom. The protection that the Book of Common Prayer, and the Authorized version, enjoy is the last remnant of the time when the Crown held a monopoly over all printing and publishing in the United Kingdom.

This protection should not be confused with Crown copyright, or copyright in works of the United Kingdom’s government; that is part of modern UK copyright law. Like other copyrights, Crown copyright is time-limited and potentially enforceable worldwide. The non-copyright Royal Prerogative is perpetual, but applies only to the UK; though many other Royal Prerogatives apply to the other Commonwealth realms, this one does not.

I’d imagine there is – as ever – a grey area with regards what constitutes “publication” and I’m guessing the legislation doesn’t allow for such things as the web but what this means is that in the UK where the King James version was first published, we cannot legally reproduce any of the text without letters patent (a licence).

Freedom

Those who read this blog (both of you) will know that I am particularly fond of writing about freedom, particularly when it comes to resources for Christians to use in worshipping God – and by worship I mean all its forms including just living. It seems I now have to correct something I said a few years ago whereby I referred to the KJV as public domain. Restrictive licencing on any Christian resource saddens me – more so when that resource is the Bible which is intended to free people.

You might be thinking that the Royal prerogative thing is a bit superfluous as the Crown is unlikely to prosecute an individual UK blogger (say) for reproducing ten verses of the KJV on a website. You might be thinking that anybody worth their salt would probably read a more modern translation (with the copyright issues surrounding that). You might be thinking that you can just get a copy from another country (any importer must be licenced also). In short: it’s easy for us to think this doesn’t matter. Except it does matter and it should matter. It should matter to all UK Christians that 400 years after publication such an important text remains under tight publication controls. It should matter that while almost every other government and Crown text will eventually enter the public domain – for all to freely enjoy – two texts intended to bring people into closer fellowship with God will always have restrictions upon them. If a UK church wishes to publish some verses from the KJV in it’s bulletin, it should be able to do so without fear of breaking the law. Being in a situation where “it’s okay because they won’t prosecute” is unhelpful. If nobody will be prosecuted then the law is irrelevant. If we are reserving the law for cases where somebody may print off ten thousand copies then the law is pointless. Copyright exists to create a monopoly for the author (or copyright holder) of the work. If somebody prints 10,000 bibles and sells them who exactly is missing out here? After 400 years won’t the Crown (not the government in this case) have made enough money off the KJV in the past 400 years?

This year – of all years – the Royal prerogative on the KJV and the BCP should be surrendered. Place these texts in the public domain where they should be!

I tend to collect these sorts of one-liners and puns and every now and then I’ll post them here. I claim no ownership on any of these, if you do and you want an acknowledgement just leave a comment.

• The Grim Reaper came for me last night, and I beat him off with a vacuum cleaner. talk about Dyson with death…..
• My neighbour started banging on my door at 2:30am this morning, can you believe that 2:30am? Luckily for him I was still up playing my drums
• I saw a poor old lady fall over today on the ice! I presume she was poor, she only had £1.20 in her purse.
• Went for my routine check up today and everything seemed to be going fine until he put his finger up my bum! I think I need to change dentists
• Why do penguins jump up and down on a first date? Something to break the ice isn’t it?
• A skeleton walks into a bar and orders a beer and a mop
• A man with a salamander on his shoulder. He says “I’ll a pint for me and half for tiny”, the barman asks “Tiny?”. The man nods towards the salamander and says “He’s my newt”
• A man was sheltering under a tree during a big storm. Nothing happened for ages and then three bus shelters flew past at once.
• Bacon and egg walk into a bar and the barman says “Sorry, we don’t serve breakfast”