John Paul and Paul or Peter

As an aspect of my role at National Church Life Survey is I scan every Christian publication produced in Australia for references to our data. Well, it feels like EVERY publication...sometimes it hard work flicking over pages of activities to do with church life that I don't correlate with 'life' at all.

Anyway, it has been interesting reading the Catholic papers at this time. As a thru-and-thru Baptist girl, I haven't known what to do with the Pope really. I'm assuming a lot of non-Catholics are in my situation. I've been reading his writing for discrepencies between our beliefs and I was surprised to find very few. I was struggling to find any reference to Mary in favour of Christ. His message was strongly exhorting people to commit to Christlikeness.

I love the two pictures below. I think they can tell you alot about his man. There's still a thought bouncing 'round my head though - if the apostle Paul or 'The Rock' Peter was to turn up, how would we explain the modern church to them? Would they be as a 3 year old with the quizzical responses of "why?" to every statement or would they understand? Whether it be the multi-media, wowser, smoke-and-lights of Hillsong or the multi-lingual, cloaks and jewellery, bells-and-smells of the Vatican...or anything in between. I think if we showed them these pics they'd be assured we haven't strayed as far as first thought.