Last week I was honored to present at class on creativity and worship at Pepperdine Bible Lectures. I’d hoped to make my slide – complete with the videos, music, etc…available for my blog subscribers. I created the presentation in a good program – Keynote – but Slideshare requires I turn in into a bad program – PowerPoint – so I haven’t been able to do it the way I wanted.
My apologies.
If you have Keynote you can download the full presentation here.
There’s nothing the church does so wonderfully and terribly as singing.
If you’ve spent more than 10-minutes inside an American worship service, you already know how important singing is. Regardless of the worship style of your congregation, the music is important, and usually done well. Music has power. It transforms moments and has the power to embed memories and stir emotions. We are moved by the singing and music in ways little else can or does. For most of us, the music and singing of our congregation is one of the major reasons we picked it.
And that’s the problem.
In the mid-20th century, some traveling and nationally know preachers decided that a “personal Savior” was the carrot-and-stick that would motivate non-believers to come to faith. It worked. For the last 50 years, the sales pitch for faith in Jesus has been a personal one. “If YOU were to die today, where would you spend eternity? If YOU ask Jesus into YOUR heart….If YOU accept Jesus as your personal Savior” and all of that. A measure of individualistic focus is right and good. After all, I live in a world where I cannot make faith decisions for other people. And as a good Anabaptist I would choose not to even if I could. Nevertheless, it’s nearly impossible to imagine that such a singular focus could result in much other than a self-centered faith. After all, we got into this for personal reasons.
The Christian way of being mean is telling those we’ve offended that we’re “speaking the truth in love”.
Misappropriating this little gem from Ephesians 4 is popular because it allows us to be rude, condescending, and hurtful to non-Christians while simultaneously allowing us to hold on to our own privilege and self-righteousness.
I think tension is good.
It’s not fun. Or easy. Or even comfortable, but it’s good.
Think of your thumb – to use the most commonly used metaphor. The reason your hand works so effectively is because of your opposable thumbs. Your thumb allows you to grip, grab, and strangle – should you be so inclined…and homicidal. Your life would be much more of a struggle, and much less productive, without the tension your thumb creates.
The same is true when it comes to church, change, holding onto necessary and important traditions, and moving forward in other important ways. We (the church) would ultimately be less productive and useful without tension.
Why do I bring this up?
Because from time to time, the church – on the local, denominational, or universal level – has to hash things out. We have unresolved issues – women, sexuality, Neo-Calvinism, the role of leadership, politics, evangelism, etc… that we need to come to terms and deal with. And while there are many folks who would prefer the church to paper over discordant topics, if we don’t deal with them publicly and passionately, the church will never become what God intends. This is why we need tension.
Who wouldn’t love being in Malibu, CA for a week?
That’s where I am and I’m having a love/hate relationship with it. While being here is great, there’s a lot back home I miss.
Today, I’m teaching at Pepperdine Bible Lectures. I’m sharing some thoughts about church and creativity. Though I’m not naturally a creative guy, I love being around creative people and shepherding creative projects in church life. That being the case, I’m teaching about creativity in worship called, “Designing Wonder.”
