sustain:if:able kiwi

finding voice attracts media coverage

I didn’t blog about this, but in early September I was asked to deliver an address at the annual Australasian Religious Press Association (ARPA) conference. Given that I share, with one of my daughters, an ARPA silver medal, for a review of another medium, I was delighted to be able to personally meet and thank these wise and discerning folk!

For the occasion, I decided to play with theme of Finding voice. I began by discussing The Kings Speech, and applying it to the church today.

And sometimes it feels like the church shouts. That’s it finds voice but in a way that sound loud, brash, ugly. That simply alienates people. So, sure we have voice, but it’s actually not helping.

Other times it feels like the church is stammering. Not really sure what to stay. And sure, we have voice, but it’s just embarrassing.

Other times it feels like the church is no more than background noise. That our voice is no different from any other voice of any other group. So sure, we have voice. But it’s nothing distinctive, or wise, or winsome.

So King’s speech invites us to think about finding voice. What it means for us to speak?

I drew on Stephen Webb’s Divine Voice, The: Christian Proclamation and the Theology of Sound and then did some storytelling about people finding voice. It was a talk that I wrestled with for quite some days, but seemed to gel in the end in a way that I was pleased with.

Anyhow, the talk seems to have attracted some media interest. Christianity Today (Australia) has an article here, titled – Providing a voice – Telling the Story and naming some of the stories I told – Brooke Fraser, Parihaka, Paul Kelly.

And very excited one of my students brought me in another article in the paper based October edition of Melbourne Anglican, although I can’t seem to be online. It gives a fairly fair summary of what I said, focused not so much on the stories, but on the theological themes I tried to develop, around finding voice and a theology of sound.