I have an amusing tale to tell.
I was having a coffee outside Mars Hill Cafe in Parramatta Saturday night with fellow bloggers Paul Teusner (Fishers, Surfers and Casters) and Lindsay Cullen (Random Murmurings) when we were interrupted by a dozen girls dancing in not so fluffy Santa’s helper outfits.
It was a warm enough evening as we dipped into the coffee and conversations on blogging, emerging church, Lindsay’s move and how Paul was going with his research on Emerging Church Bloggers in Australia, and as you can imagine we were loath to have our attention drawn away from such deep discussion, but upon Paul being reassured this was all for a charitable cause, being sacrificially minded Christians, we joined in the Christmas cheer with the other patrons.
A CD was bought for $15 by one of us and all was smiles, when up came a cry, “Oh my Lord, they’re the Family, I’ve just supported the Family, I’ll be excommunicated!”
We all read the CD label and brochure and I spake, indeed, we had been flirty fished. We’ll not me, I didn’t buy anything, it wasn’t me, or at least that’s my excuse, I’m sticking to it.
Just goes to show, we don’t always get to choose when we encounter New Religious Movements, and even I get caught unawares sometimes. The irony of the location, given it’s not called Mars Hill by accident, should not be lost on the astute.
It was amusing … but then again …
Curious Christian 
LOL… I bet Linz was in his element 😀 Say hello from me next time you see him… and tell him to leave those young ladies alone or I’ll tell Sue!
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I’m beginning to see how ‘satire’ does so well in your tag cloud, Mr. Stone!
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So how flirty were they really?
I thought they’d dropped that since Mo popped his clogs.
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To be honest Steve, they weren’t that flirty. If a regular church youth group had been doing the same thing I would hardly have batted an eyelid. I might have wondered how they managed to be so uniformly bubbly and good looking, but that’s about it.
But it made me wonder, if you were trying to get as far away from a “hooker for Jesus” past as possible, would sending out a troop of dancing girls to work the street be the first thing that came to your mind? Makes me wonder just how thoroughly they have dealt with their past.
And on a more self reflective note, it made me wonder, to what extent are entertainment driven churches crossing that same bridge when they stack their front of house line up all with beautiful people?
I wouldn’t want to make too much of this, as you’ve gathered my tongue was firmly in cheek when writing the above post, but yeah it does make me wonder a bit. And I had to just laugh at myself in being caught so flat footed in what turned out to be an interreligious encounter.
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Nigel, speaking of satire, Easter will be coming along soon. We really must start working on next years conspiracy theory 😀
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Mark, as a matter of fact Lindsay did mention he knew you from his time in the UK during the course of our conversation. He’s recently moved out my way so I have invited him to our next Thin Places gathering in Jan/Feb.
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Matt,
I knew them as the Children of God, before they really got into the “flirty fishing” kick, and we used to invite them to come and teach our Sunday School, and they were just gentle Jesus freaks.
But that was a generation ago.
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Matt,
I knew them as the Children of God, before they really got into the “flirty fishing” kick, and we used to invite them to come and teach our Sunday School, and they were just gentle Jesus freaks.
But that was a generation ago.
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