Becky is one problem. The church has to deal with our fear of Becky, but her existence reveals a much deeper problem: We don’t know what makes Christian art Christian.

A Quick Story:

April 1, 2012 was the launch of my congregation, The Vine. A friend of mine once told me, “If you ever start or re-launch a church do everything you may do someday on the first day.” That’s precisely what we did.

We had women speak and pray, used lots of multimedia, and our band, 31st and Vine, played a feature song, U2’s “Where The Streets Have No Name.” In our view, the message is central in every worship service. Everything we do is focused on that week’s big idea. The particular elements of a service are simply illustrations and we’ll do whatever we need to – or can think of – in order to connect. If a preacher can speak words from a song as a sermon illustration, how much better is the actual song?

Our philosophy notwithstanding, some folks were upset that we played a U2 song. We haven’t seen them at worship since. I expected that and it’s fine. There are plenty of churches in central Texas and no one’s soul is in jeopardy.

The objection was that the music wasn’t Christian. I disagreed. Again, that’s okay. I disagree with many people I love and respect and they disagree with me. But the existence of the disagreement highlights an emerging issue in Christian culture: We don’t know what makes Christian art Christian – if anything, in fact does.

Our instinct is to say, “Yes we do.” And I get that. Because we have Christian radio and musicians, Christian painters, comedians, sand artists, speakers, jugglers, wrestlers, and bookstores; it’s easy to believe their existence means we have a definition of it.

But we really don’t know what makes Christian art Christian. Continue Reading…

Your biggest temptation is to be boring.

Dull. Average. Unremarkable….

It’s your biggest temptation because it’s so easy to do. All that is required of you is to do the same things you do everyday. It becomes reflexive, rote, meaningless.

Life, for the most part is boring. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Wake the kids, take the kids, pick-up the kids. We drive the same streets to the same place to do the same work with the same people. This is what it means to be “everyday.”

The problem with the everyday is that we do it everyday. Our friends have their own versions of “everyday,” too. There is so much of the everyday to every day that after a while we begin to think it’s normal.

But then, we see. We notice that someone, somewhere has a different, more exciting version of their everyday and we wish we could have it. We wish that we were as clever, as adventurous, as daring, as bold. While part of us finds inspiration in witnessing how wonderful their everyday might be, the bigger part of us resents it.

Last week, The Wall Street Journal printed an article entitled “Are We All Braggarts Now?” by Elizabeth Bernstein. Bernstein posits that social media – Facebook, Twitter, Google+, et al. have made us a nation of braggers. For example, Bernstein highlights what are fairly typical Facebook statuses:

•     Best gift ever from the best husband ever.
•     Swam 30 minutes at a very fast time despite the large amount of Chardonnay served to me on the plane last night.
•     Got my first royalty check for my book!
•     Sunset sail. Turned into a moonlight sail. Shooting stars everywhere…Perfect.

Continue Reading…