Tillman the skateboarding bulldog from the iphone commercial. All clips are from January 2007. Tillman was a little over a year old at the time and is a much better skateboarder now.

In London, the ad agency handling T-Mobile’s account wanted to increase youth subscriptions, and felt they could make T-Mobile cool by copying student-organized flash mobs, so for eight weeks they hired four hundred of London’s theater district’s dance troupes to, in the huge Liverpool London train station, dance to music piped in over station’s intercom system.  The dancers had two minutes to get everyone to dance to five different rhythms, some moves requiring years of training to do smoothly.  Here’s the result (link to the You Tube video):

(For those who can’t catch the link for any reason:  the center of a train station filled with travelers crossing the floor as the next trains are being announced.  Suddenly over the same loudspeaker comes the song, ‘Everybody Dance Now’.  In the middle of the crowd, a girl dramatically swings into dance.  In two seconds, twenty people around her join the next dance move.  Soon, fifty.  By the fourth verse, four hundred.  By the fifth verse, a thousand.  By the end of the song, over 2,000 people move to the music.

Do you think people remembered this more than their usual visits to train stations?  Many people said they were there The Day London Danced.

Connected thought:
Chaos theory calls the study of some natural theory ’science of chaos’, but what at first seems like chaos is actually a plan we didn’t initially know.  Does nature really lack order, or do we just not know how the order works?  Is the flash mob at London’s Liverpool station really unplanned?  Of course not, as people know when the see the expert dancers, but they love it and join–quickly.  That’s the spontaneous part.

Spiritually:
In one day, Joseph went from prison supervisor to second-in-command of his day’s most powerful nation, Egypt.  Now, churches and businesses require years of credentials and education.  College drop-out Bill Gates proved you can beat that model.
Fifty days after Peter denied Christ and totally backslid, he led the Church and proclaimed its first message.  Now, a pastor who makes a mistake either is simply dropped, or at best spends a year or more in recovery programs before he may regain respect, but never surpasses his previous authority.
Phillip rode in a chariot with an Ethiopian eunuch.  They saw water and by request Philip immediately baptized the eunuch.  Now, some churches delay baptism until after a six-month course.

God brings people to Spiritual wisdom and leadership–Abraham, nomadic herdsman, interceded with God to save a city; Moses, forsaken court son, murderer and shepherd, had court training in wisdom and literature but no training in leading a revolution and forming a new nation in the desert, yet did this; David herded sheep for years, then killed a giant and in days was leading soldiers; Jeremiah, son of priests but not trained for years to prophesy, carried God’s message to his people–and eventually to Daniel.  Daniel, teenager, stood up for his convictions, was promoted to major responsibility.  God’s Spirit taught people–many times very quickly.

A flash mob can instantly change people.  The world’s quickly-increasing billions need to know Jesus Christ–NOW.  God can upset rigid thinking (e.g, telling Nicodemus he must be ‘born again’) and bring people now to his will.

Later, in Heaven, we’ll know how God worked in our hearts, lives, churches and businesses, in us and through us for other people, changing us and them.

To learn to swim, we get in the water.  To learn to ride a bicycle, we get on it.  Or would you rather learn to ride with someone who learned to drive as Fozzie did–’I took a correspondence course’?

In the church, though some teaching on Spirit baptism benefits people, after that brief instruction, diminishing returns set in:  the longer people teach on ‘how to receive the Holy Spirit’, the more difficulty some people have.  Why?  It’s baptism–sudden.

Jesus, to grow his Church, started with twelve who spent 3 1/2 years with him, sent out 70 more, filled 120 who’d gathered for a week.  Then 3,000 came to Christ in one day.  Welcome to the flash mob.  Barnabas was probably one of those 3000–less experience in Christ than the twelve original apostles had, but sold his land, coordinated Antioch’s new congregation, mentored Paul.

Before we meet people, God met them–formed them wonderfully in the womb, knew them before their birth, and can make our meeting bring both them and us closer to Christ.  People should be born and called into our church, business or organization.  Not having everyone of the same race, tribe, caste, customs might cause discomfort, but we might trade that uniformity for being transformed by the power of Christ’s Spirit, and be his flash mob, like the Day of Pentecost.  Charisma magazine says nearly 1 billion Pentecostals trace their roots to the flash mob at Azusa Street.

This article differs from, but owes much to, and I am grateful for, Richard Gazowsky’s ‘Flash Mob:  The Holy Spirit’s Method of Training’.

Future shock? Shift forward into higher gear for great success in a world of awesome potential:

Turn sound on and click ‘absolutely beautiful.’  It’s a road trip across the USA, with locations of pictures in lower right.

Absolutely beautiful!!!

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