It's the answer spoken by...

... If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

It's the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen, by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different, that their voices could be that difference.

It's the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled. Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of individuals or a collection of red states and blue states.

We are, and always will be, the United States of America.

President-Elect Barack Obama

It struck me that Obama's acceptance speech was delivered in public place to a culturally diverse group of people... the people he spoke of above. Whereas McCain's speech was delivered in a private hotel/club to a select group of culturally uniform people.

This is the change that inspires me. This is the future.

U*P*D*A*T*E

Standing in a crowd of several hundred Republicans, bathed in autumn sunshine, somewhere in-between Toledo and Cleveland last week, I realised why the Republicans were failing to get their message across.

I was - to paraphrase former US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld - in "Old America".

The crowd around me was predominantly middle-aged, or elderly. Those people were born in a different era.

By contrast "Barack Obama's America" appears to its supporters a diverse, forward-looking place.

What next for the Republicans? by Matthew Price

Been meditating on this... and can see parallels with the church. Does your church reflect your community? Is your church "old" world or "new" world? Thoughts?