I just came from an exhilirating meeting about a new project aiming to address the issues of following Jesus and dealing with climate change. It's an interesting challenge because there aren't many ready champions of the cause. There are lots of environmentalists who don't think they see God, and there are surprising numbers of Christians awaiting a rapture call away from the stinking planet. I believe God made the world good, and gave us the job of looking after it and each other. I think God is about life and creativity, while mucking around with death and self destruction are part of our own movement away from God. I also believe that God is faithful and consistent, so we need to do the changing here. Convincing people to refresh their ideas at a cost of some inconvenient life change is an enormous challenge.

The group I met had the idea to produce a film and distribute it. I'm not a film maker, so I brought two along from Handy Cloud Productions. The idea was that they could make some material for DVD and online, and I could later help to distribute it with some social networking. But as we talked about it, the challenges became more clearly overwhelming. There weren't scripts anywhere near fixed up. The idea and approach were very much up for debate. There was little to no available budget. And they would very much like something ready in two months. Turns out, I was in my natural environment.

How do you get a message clearly to millions of people with different views? What if the message you want to communicate isn't just a nice, interesting one (e.g. a new film out on Friday) but a vital, life changing one, like a warning on the risk of drugs?

Governments have struggled forever to control drug taking, and now the government is struggling with control over messages about drugs. While head of the drugs advisory council, Professor David Nutt outlined scientific evidence on the relative risks of drugs, this didn't fit the government's desired message. It's no surprise - scientists and government have different responsibilities and might reach different conclusions. Even if ecstasy is less harmful than alcohol, there are good reasons why the government would want to regulate ecstasy more heavily - for one, it's easy for someone to make a tablet and claim it's ecstasy when it's really something else. Police and others will also have views on the anti-social effects of drugs, even if they don't kill people. There are lots of factors to consider, and it's not Prof Nutt's job to do that. Neither is it government's job to dictate what the scientific contribution to the advice should be. This should be obvious, but for some reason there is a vicious row going on about it. What can we learn from this?

If you want to impress someone, quote some hard figure statistics. But if you want to build relationships on trust, don't do what I just saw in a TV ad for a pregnancy test...

At first thought, I could only imagine one thing someone would want from a First Response pregnancy test - an accurate result, right? They even put TWO in each box - presumably not because you'll have a friend who wants one too, or you'll want to save one for later, but because people will do the test twice to be certain. Despite an obvious doubling of the cost, they're not having a problem selling two at a time because it is so important for a pregnancy test to be right. So how accurate is it?

I'm about to start work with a radio station which has a problem. Their listeners love them (and listen lots). Unfortunately, the number of listeners has been shrinking for some years now. The station won't have a future if that continues, but changing the music will probably annoy the current listeners, turning fans away. So how can we fix it?

It's not an easy question to answer without understanding the broadcast area, the listeners and the potential new listeners better. So getting out and meeting these people is at the top of the "to do" list, as is lots of listening to the people who have been running the station. I'm anticipating a lively debate over the value of one other strategic piece of work I'm preparing - music research.