Yesterday Prime Minister David Cameron tried to relaunch ‘the big society’. This concept has taken a bit of a hammering over the past couple of weeks, and it is easy to be cynical. Regular readers will know that I try to avoid making party political points, but as a Christian, the big society seems a bit of a no-brainer – after all, it is what we do! Even in my little church we have a parents & toddlers group, children’s work and youth work, a group that works with the elderly and another that works with adults with special needs. And that is not to mention all the unstructured ‘community work’ that goes on in a church, of mutual care and support.
I understand why political opponents of the Tories should jump on apparent inconsistencies in the big society program, but it seems to me that many of those involved behind the scenes in this initiative are motivated more by their faith than by party politics or ideology. One such is Nat Wei, who has been taking a hammering from the media. It isn’t edifying, but take a look at the extraordinarily bitchy comments made about Lord Wei at the end of this report on him in London’s Evening Standard. Apparently some people are just too hard bitten to believe that someone like Wei might be motivated by an unusually high commitment to helping the disadvantaged, and possess unusually high abilities which qualify him for the role.
The main problem in communicating the big society has been precisely that – communication; a problem that Cameron tried to overcome yesterday. For some reason, the ideas he’s been wanting to get across have just not been ‘sticky’. Perhaps it requires someone more politically neutral to do this communicating, otherwise it too easily starts to look party political. Either way, without a greater degree of stickiness, the big society will never get off the ground.
Those of us who are church leaders face similar challenges to David Cameron. Often things that we feel passionately about, and we believe to be of fundamental importance, produce only indifference or cynicism in our audience. Under such circumstances it is always a comfort to be reminded that Jesus’ message was often far from sticky too – at times it was more like Teflon, with the disenchanted crowds slipping away from him.
The key thing is that we stay true ourselves to those things that have real value. In the end we need to stick to Jesus, because he has the words of eternal life (John 6:68).
1 comments:
Agree that there have definitely been communication problems.
Also, the concept has been launched in the midst of the biggest public spending cuts in decades, which makes the project easy to dismiss as public services on the cheap.
For a move that seeks to empower the grass roots, the top-down approach of the initiative, fronted predominantly by millionaires, is one the the Big Society's enduring paradoxes.
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