Creativity in Church Spaces

Thank you LORD. I love it when other people are feeling the same call of the Lord that I am feeling. Thanks to mattofact.com for this awesome post!

mattofact.com

How are you transforming your space into something that turns people toward a posture of worship? Are you called to rebuild the creative walls of the Church? Man, that calling resonates with me. The Church largely has built spaces for function and less for definition, but what’s emerged is a canvas to play with. Bending light is a high calling. The journey of being creative with our spaces and using them for something other than a place to sit in, is a journey that is transformational and demands our interactions with others. Watch this video from my friend and someone I highly admire for his creativity and leadership, Luke McElroy of Salt Nashville for insight into his manifesto for the Salt movement.

 

Take my unsolicited recommendation to consider attending Salt Nashville this year.

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Puny god…

There’s this awesome scene from The Avengers where The Incredible Hulk is battling Loki, a supervillain, a mythological Norse god. Loki demands Hulk’s worship and hulk is not having it. See the clip for yourself here.

I think this is the problem of a lot of Christians, particularly as we try to serve God and this is the dilemma for creative Christians like us… We serve a “puny god.”

Now please don’t think me a blasphemer or a heretic. Our God, the one true God, is mighty beyond comprehension, the supreme power in the universe. He’s not the problem. We are.

You see we act like He needs us. We act like the success and failure of His mission rests on our shoulders. That’s a lot of pressure and it’s not the truth. A god that depends on us is a puny god indeed. No, God does not need us. Something much more powerful is in place here. God desires us. God loves us. God wants us to join Him in His mission not because He needs our help, but because He desires to be with us, to give our lives meaning and purpose in Him. He desires to grow us into the image of Christ. He is not a dependent, puny god, nor is He a demanding, ruthless task master, He is a loving Father who desires and loves and lavishes joy and blessings on His children.

A verse that often gets quoted here is about to be quoted again. Philippians 1:6 “…being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” Look at it closely. God began the good work in us. We know that, the gifts the talents and the calling all come from Him. Who carries it on to completion? Again it’s God. Who completes it? I know I am sounding like a broken record, but once again it’s God. I all depends on God, a God who is not puny but mighty. The pressure is off. We merely join Him in the work, faithfully living out His call. Out of that work and that life we find joy. If it feels like immense pressure, maybe you need to reexamine your picture of God,

He doesn’t need you… He desires you. Revel in that and live.