The other day I was struck by a great idea, an idea that may be the answer to the increasing secularisation and dropping church attendences. We live in the era of celebrity, infact you can't turn your television on without being bombarded by B-list celebrities dancing, cooking or just doing nothing in the name of reality television. Surely the church needs to tap into this present fashion. What the church needs is to no longer ignore such oppertunities but to be more open-minded and embrace them. What better way to get people interested in church than inviting along a christian celebrity? And surely if we were but to point out to the world how many christian celebrities there are people would want to copy them and soon we'd have a full-blown revival on our hands! Afterall who's really interested in the prescence of God when you can have the prescence of a celebrity at your church?
STOPBy this stage of the article I hope you're begining to think I've lost the plot. Sadly what i've written in the section above is seems to be the viewpoint of some christians today. And even if your church isn't on the tour of any christian celebrity at the moment doesn't mean its a problem you can ignore. Often in our evangelistic literature or even our witnessing we can try to persuade on the basis that some well-known figure, past or present, shares our faith. There is further danger in glorifying a christian megastar who openly disobeys the 4th commandment. By raising them as an example we are saying that you can opt out of obeying God's law and place a stumbling block in the way of others.
I'm not saying that famous people who are christians should hide their faith, generally they are not the ones at fault, it is other christians placing them on a pedestool. Neither am I saying that churches to which a celebrity belongs should not use tham at all. If Stuart Elliot (Northern Ireland footballer) or Linvoy Primus (Portsmouth FC) were to become a member of Dromore RPC I'm sure when we run our football Holiday Bible Club during the summer we would advertise that he would be helping coaching but to run a special meeting "Come hear [insert celeb] talk about their faith" surely is lowering Christianity to a level of a celebrity-endorsed perfume!
Christians are called to use their gifts, not their image. Whilst many seem to think having a celebrity speak at a church meeting is a great idea, in reality what we need at our churches is not the prescence of Jason Robinson, Jonathan Edwards (triple jumper would usually be of preference to anything that was said by the great American preacher) or Andrew Trimble but the prescence of God in our midst.
The Holy Spirit changes people's lives, not famous christians. 
Celebrity Jonathan Edwards vs The Real Jonathan EdwardsOther News Sorry this is the first post in a rather long time. Life's been rather hectic of late and I've had to juggle essays with international football (watching not playing). Posting should be more regular in the future.
Rumour has it that the report of the EP weekend written for DMFWS by moi may appear in the messenger in the near future. The more funny bits however had to be censored.
And finally, Oxo have announced plans to introduced a new cube inspired by the England football team. It's white with a red cross on it, they are calling it "The Laughing Stock".
