Snakes on a Plane, Small Plate, and Churches

In my daily newspaper today, a couple of items jumped out at me with relevance to emergent organic church.

The first was an article about the phenom of the movie Snakes on a Plane (can't wait to see it, gore and all; I love Samuel L. Jackson films and agree with the reviewer who said he is shaping up to be the John Wayne of our times, in that you can always count on him to deliver his role). The article was about "High Concept." The one sentence way of getting across the essence and invitation to the movie, going for blunt rather than for nuance. How would we High Concept our faith, our faith communities? Maybe I will return with some movie-esque titles for progressive churches, and hope you will too. This is the very opposite of the putting up a sign heading into town that says something, for example, like "The Episcopal Church Welcomes You." I think it is also different from putting up a sign that says "Jesus is Lord over this Town" and gives a church name and address. Both of those are low concepts or no concepts.

The other article was about the opening of a new "small plate portion" lounge restaurant, one of the "compi" dining experiences, cushions and all, borrowed from the Japanese, I gather, with a little influence of Spanish tapas thrown in, but not pigeon-holed to any one kind of food, rather a kind of dining experience. The anti-big portion, supersize, etc. Churches take note. (maybe I shouldn't use the phrase pigeon-holed in reference to a dining experience....).