This Sunday we say farewell to a lot of folk - many of them lovely African stduents who have enriched our lives greatly whilst they have been with us.  It is humbling to read their 'thank you' emails to me and to us, expressing their gratitude for the welcome they've received and the opportunities we have afforded them.  How do we express what they have given us - beaming smiles, deep spirituality, generous hearts, willing service.

This Sunday we have a "Yoruba Bash" when we will sing once more the songs they've shared with us, I will pray for them (and for a couple of longer-standing folk leaving for a new life in Luxemburg) and we will be saying 'fare thee well'

I am really not a fan of the song 'blessed be the tie that binds' but I have chosen it for Sunday because it expresses something appropriate to this service.

Hopefully many of our home students will be back with us after their summer away, and in a week or so a fresh group of home and overseas students will find their way to this wonderful, crazy-in-a-good-way, open, welcoming, generous church we call home.

Two items from today's BUGB e-news sweep got me thinking.

The first is one that I find funny - but others may find offensive - which is a parody of some overworked worship songs.  Is it funny because it is Christians parodying Christians?  Would people take offence if a mobile phone company had done it...

The other related to the phones for you advert that involved a cartoon winking Jesus and was released around Easter:

Is it actually offensive/blasphemous or is it just cheesy?  Would we get uppity if the same image had been used in the context of a Christian product or event?  Have you ever checked out the 'gadgets for God' section of Ship of Fools?

If I am honest, I think the phone advert was a poor call.  It doesn't offend me, though it would have done in my very pious younger years, but it reflects a failure to appreciate just who Jesus is, at least in the eyes of Christians and, indeed, Muslims.  Jesus endorsing a brand of phone - no, I don't see it somehow.

On the other hand the video coming from within a Christian context is both funny and profound (well relatively) in that it uses humour to challenge something we all know exists but don't have a language to express.

I think that there are kinds of humour that have to come from 'within' to be appropriate, things that insiders can do (however cheesy, naff or inappropriate) and get away with it but outsiders really ought not to attempt.  Is 98 complaints to the ASA a lot?  I've no idea.  I can only assume that the majority of people who saw the advert (I only just found it!) treated it with the level of interest it merited (i.e. none).  And presumably given we don't all have the miraculous deal on an android phone, the 'celebrity' endorsement didn't pay off?!