BEYOND NOOMA
Rob Bell’s high-spec teaching DVDs have been a revelation for small groups and churches across the world. But are they the Trojan horse for a digital resource
revolution, or an anomaly of quality in a sea of sub-standard multimedia dross?
Martin Saunders investigates.
Do you remember the first time you saw him? All tall and gawkishly handsome; those tight
curls and Jack-Duckworth glasses complemented
by that reassuringly thoughtful voice? Are we
tracking?
My first experience of the Rob Bell phenomenon
came when an American youth worker
played me Luggage, one of the early installments
of his DVD teaching series, Nooma (a mis-spelt
Greek word meaning ‘spirit’ but invoking the
term ‘New Media’). I remember being instantly
impressed by a combination of medium and message – deep theological reflection married with
the sort of visuals I’d usually expect to see coming
out of Hollywood. The clincher – and I feel
the need to write SPOILER WARNING in case
I’ve overestimated the film’s popularity – came in
the final seconds where, to underline Bell’s teaching
point that we never know when we’re in our
final moments, a woman’s car is written off in a
crunching collision with an articulated lorry.
Like many who watched that short film reach
its denouement, I sat back with mouth open
wide. Could it be that real-world production
values had been applied to a Christian resource?
How did they afford it? Who was crazy enough
to sign off on the stunt? What happened to the
lady in the car?
Since then of course, the Nooma series has gone from strength to strength. With a seemingly infinite budget (underwritten by its creator’s status as the church’s preacher du jour) Bell has enlisted the help of everything from seashells to entire orchestras in his pursuit of relevant Bible communication.
Yet while he retains almost universal
popularity way beyond the usual evangelical
demographic (excluding those who are either
really jealous of him or can’t forgive the dodgy one),
there are some possible side-effects to Nooma’s
runaway success.
For a start, has the bar been raised unrealistically
high? When arguably the best communicator
in the church meets a publisher who is prepared
to back him financially, what hope do the
rest of us have of hitting his standard? That’s not
a problem for the sake of healthy competition –
but it might have the effect of creating artificially
high expectations for the multimedia elements
of our youth work.
So can the current crop of multimedia youth
work resources – from either side of the Atlantic – possibly hold a torch to the mighty Bell behemoth?
This article can be found in its entirety in the November 2009 issue of Youthwork magazine. Check out our great subscription offers now!