Becoming pretentious to reach the pretentious?

I’m just doing some research into some of the artistic endeavors that are going on in Sheffield at the moment and I came across this explanation of one groups ‘mission’:

Central to our work is initiating dynamic relations between groups of people whose motive or ethos we see, in some way, aligning to ours. Much of our work involves direct communication towards unspecified outcomes; an endeavor which continually directs us as artists and circumnavigates typified modes of production. Our work aims to investigate the nuances of and the fissures within the hyper-expansion of what might be labeled community art. Through the initiation of temporary structures of communal production we are working towards mapping out a constellation of projects which intersect such issues as self organisation and resistance. Central to our work is the negotiation of our interpretations of home and the global, and the part that our built environment plays in our appropriation of these.

Now, my guess is they could have said all of that in about 2 lines that most people would have then been able to understand.

But this is the language a number of artists use. It’s very philosophical and high sounding, and perhaps illustrates an attempt to engage with the world at a deeper level.

My Gospel Community is seeking to reach people in this artistic community. Should we then adopt such language in order to engage with them?

East Side Project

On Monday I became a supported elder at our church TCH Sharrow Vale. This means I have more time given over to thinking, planning and developing the work here.

So it was very exciting that at the first elders meeting I was chairing we talked about an ‘East Side Project’.

In most cities in the UK, the east side of the city is the most deprived, both in secular terms and also gospel terms. The secular reason is that the prevailing wind in the UK is from west to east, which then blows all the nasty factory fumes across to the east side of the city. Hence the rich people move upwind to the nice clean part of the city.