From the outset, Cold Comfort Farm shifts your paradigms about what is normal and what isn't. Flora, played by Kate Beckinsale, is a pampered, spoiled young woman who is used to getting her own way. Her decadent eccentricity seems almost quaint; but when her own money runs out and she finds that she has to go live with country relatives, the true meaning of the word eccentric is revealed. Cold Comfort Farm is a kind of Amish Addam's family. Weird and weirder co-exist in somewhat peaceful tension until Flora shows up. Rather than being daunted by her new setting, Flora sets out to transform the limited lives of her country cousins; and in so doing, she comes to understand that life is more than just looking after oneself.

This delightful British romp is a powerful parable about leading others to and through change. The subtle message of leadership is that it isn't so much about getting people to act the way you want them to, but about helping people discover who they really are -- uniquely gifted, graced, and glorious. Often, it takes an outsider to help us see where we're stuck. Futurist Joel Barker, in his Paradigm Principles video, suggests that it is almost always someone from the outside who sets a paradigm shift in motion. Cold Comfort Farm proves the point with a quirky story.

Anyone who has ever experienced the past as preventing them from moving into the future will warm to the tale of Cold Comfort Farm. The entire family exists under the cloud of some long-forgotten incident (what the family matriarch Aunt Ada "saw in the shed") that blocks them from any kind of future. Flora, listening through the cloud to the deepest yearnings of the residents of the farm, helps each person to discover his or her personal vision for life. She enables all the farm residents to pursue the lives they always wanted.

Cold Comfort Farm is a beautiful, if strange, little film that gives hope. For church leaders who struggle with a past that holds them in place rather than giving them a strong foundation for the future, for people who are reluctant to move through change, for folks who have forgotten how to learn, and for situations that seem hopeless, this video has a wonderful message. Chock full of illustrations of many key Quest principles, Cold Comfort Farm is an ideal film to watch and discuss with a small group. The video is available for rental, priced to purchase, and easy to obtain.

Dan R. Dick is a former staff member of the General Board of Discipleship.

(originally posted May 20, 1999)

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