Terribly Poetic

We had a busy weekend, with a house full. Our friend Kailey came to visit for the weekend from Hay River, NT and my in-laws come from Barrhead, AB. We have had a great thanksgiving with family. While my mom is in BC visiting my sisters and more importantly our neice, Taylor, my dad was able to take time off from harvesting and come enjoy a great thanksgiving meal.. (thanks honey) Libby has recently decided that she wants to help mommy in the kitchen. She loves to climb up onto a chair and “help” mom. She got her first taste of a turkey dinner, and I wish I could report that she loved it, but alas, my daughter isn’t into that type of food yet. Someday soon she will be loving mash potatoes and gravy just like her father. After all, she is mennonite!

On another note…please continue to pray for our Dimension Four, we started this week with only two volunteers, however, more notably we had zero kids show up. The start of D4 this year has been very frustrating and stressful on myself. Please pray for God’s wisdom as I lead this group.

So this post is my frustration with people….in the beginning of June when my garage was ready to be used as a drop-in center(complete with pool table, fridge, tv’s, etc) I began to plan for a guys poker night. I was very excited as renovations, packing, unpacking all made it nearly impossible to plan a poker night, which I had been having at our old house. So when I sent out the email I was rather excited…however, I had one guy respond…everyone else was busy…off to camp. I figured to myself that it was bad timing and I would wait till after summer. Then at the end of August I sent out another email…now I had been working on the house and garage even more and I was ready to hangout in there even more…what happened…everyone busy again…so I cancelled it for the second time.
So we are now catch up to today…currently I am planning a poker night for this Saturday, which I changed from last week, so this Saturday will mark the fourth time I have try to invite people to my new garage, house to hang out. Right now I have three people…wow, that’s triple the previous attempts, but still short of a good group of people. The emails I am getting back are…I’m busy…I have a hockey draft(hockey, people still follow that…geeezzzz), I have to wash my hair, my wife won’t let me…(I forgot to mention that since we can play poker and pool in the garage, that spouses are welcome to come hangout with my wife and the other wives), I don’t know how to play poker (i’ll be more than happy to teach you, I’ll even lend you many hours of poker on tv if you want to watch and learn at your leisure).
If you haven’t figured it out….I am frustrated with people and there busy schedules. Come on, I have a busy schedule, a family, a job, make time for me, the little guy. How far in advance do I have to book these things anyways, who do I have to call to make it happen? Please give me the name of your secretary and I will call to book an appointment if necessary. I have better luck booking Gymblast® for 70-80 schools then I do booking a poker night for 6-10 people.

Sorry you all had to be here for that…tomorrow…I will hopefully have calmed myself….
Maybe I should just return to that place of solitude at Ranger Lake. Didn’t have any problems booking anything there.

Well, I just thought I would inform the 4 people who read this that I will be leaving on Holidays tomorrow to BC. With the drop-in centre in my garage I haven’t been able to take much holidays over the summer. We are very excited to be going to Abbotsford to visit my family, and especially to be able to see Libby play with her cousin, Taylor. Should be good times. We hope to get some good R&R before we kick off into the busy fall season. Please pray for us as we are traveling very early in the morning and Libby is going to be stuffed up from a cold for her first plane ride. Be back soon.

It seems in our churches and communities that we like to have everything manageable. This is mentioned in a post by nakedpastor called If It’s Not Measurable It’s Not Manageable – “We want our communities to be manageable. The only way they can be manageable is if every bit is known and measured. This is why it is so tempting to categorize people, to slot people in their “gifting”
I like how he talks about how when we have a measuring line that we can then use that to determine when someone measures up and where they are on the value line. This is the thinking in the business world but shouldn’t be the thinking in churches and communities…so why do I see it so prevalent? It reminds me of my own job….just recently we went through a “Strengths Finder” test to determine the strengths of the office and where our gifts are to be utilized. While I did see some of the value in this exercise (such as see the overall strengths and weakness of our team), I can help but think of this in terms of business. It then reminds me of the many times I have heard the statement, “We need to do thinks more like a business,” or “This isn’t how a business who do it.” And I am not faultless either, I know I have made similar statements myself. The questions we need to be asking our…if we are a looked at ourselves as a community, and a family, how would we do things differently. How much more would we be encouraging each other, and not using the tape measure to determine value. How much more would we all be listen to the hearts of people around us. Just some thoughts…

David Hayward over at nakedpastor had some great thoughts on how we in society and as a church can often use the motto, “The ends justify the means” to succeed. Here is an excerpt.

“Which got me thinking about another great human achievement, the Pyramids of Egypt, which, although arguable, were built from slave labour. Which got me thinking about so many other things that we enjoy today that have been produced directly from imposed cruelty and human suffering. Which got me thinking about so much of the church today.”
Read the rest here

Being in ministry I think sometimes this can also be shown in the lives of pastors and those of us in fulltime ministry. We are “required” to work long hours and be “on call” 24hrs a day. The damages of this aren’t always as noticeable, but it can have a huge effect on the family.

We have become irrelevant.



Many contemporary Christians tend to make one of three errors when dealing with art: One, we declare anything that doesn’t explicitly proselytize, anything that depicts brokenness without redemption to be depraved or unworthy of Christian notice. Or two, we decide that the secular world really does have better art, so we copy it, boldly and without apology or thought into our own creativity. Or three, we try so hard to be relevant that we adopt the attitude and worldview of the culture that surrounds us—instead of being the proverbial salt and light, we end up as dust with nothing to offer in the way of hope, because there is only a perfunctory difference between those of us who claim to follow Christ and those who don’t.



The first position emerges from a utilitarian view of art: if the lyrics don’t say “God” or “Jesus” somewhere in the song, the writer can’t really be following Christ. If the film doesn’t portray the apocalypse or a Bible story, producing it is a waste of money. And heaven forbid we depict real suffering or anything that’s not rated PG. In this view, the quality of the art doesn’t matter. What matters is being family-friendly and getting people “saved”—never mind that this tactic turns art into propaganda and produces work of dubious effectiveness in terms of reaching outside the Christian subculture.





Don’t misunderstand—there is a place for explicitly Christian art and age-appropriate material, and many of the masterpieces do focus on biblical themes. But to assume that all art must conform to this model is frustrating to artists who have an allegiance to Christ yet want to produce work that speaks to the entirety of the human experience. And it deadens the critical thinking capacity of people in the Church, deadens their ability to see and experience part of the nature of God. It also leaves many hurting, unable to ask for help or even admit their failings—what they see in the Church is happy music and people with seemingly perfect lives. Once a new creation in Christ, suffering and pain disappear, right? Wrong. Let’s be honest and admit it.



The second position acknowledges the deficiencies of the first. Tired of seeing the Church so out of touch with society, it attempts to bring society into the church. “Do you like Radiohead? How about OutKast? We do too! See, we’re cool, we’re relevant.” In an attempt to be “hip,” designers borrow the logos of existing brands, replacing company names with Christian phrases and emblazon the results on T-shirts, PowerPoint presentations and church bulletins. Bored with the current palette of praise songs (admittedly these are often another exercise in uncreative musicianship), the worship team brings U2 into the sanctuary. (Even if they are Christians, the point is that this maneuver is still borrowing a band from secular culture and dressing it up in church trappings, similar to what much praise music does.) This approach reeks of laziness and a disregard for creativity, one of the aspects in which humanity is imbued with the nature of God.



Tolkien and Lewis speak of man as sub-creator—the ultimate Creator is God, but man creates in a smaller way, using existing creation to make something new. But instead of investing the time and energy to come up with original material or original thought, or even using the rich material from ages past, Christians here become poor imitators, offering no real commentary on the human experience and why Christ might be relevant to it.



The last position is born out of frustration with the first (and sometimes the second). Tired of being marginalized in the Church and afraid they won’t be accepted in either a secular or religious world, artists disassociate themselves from the label and praxis of Christianity because their work is unacceptable by church standards—and in the mainstream, “Christian art” translates into “bad art.” Few empathize with this position on the fringe of two worlds, so they drift. Cynical from their past experiences with hierarchy and legalism, followers of Christ become reluctant to define their beliefs at all, leaving only spirituality with a vaguely Christian twist. In an effort to sound intelligent in a world that mocks supernatural belief, Christians downplay doctrine and theology.



While there are many things to be learned from tradition and the ways of the high church, the Celts and whatever group happens to be in vogue, these beautiful, artistic expressions of faith should point toward something higher than themselves, should point to God Himself as a specific, personal entity rather than an enigmatic deity or ambiguous spirituality. Without Jesus on the cross, His death and resurrection, God entering history in a specific, historical period, Christianity simply doesn’t exist. Without Jesus, we’re left with a religion that may feel good, but is powerless to save, to transform, to make new.



What we need is art made with excellence—art that reflects the joy, suffering, pain, brokenness, hope in the world around us, even art grounded in a Christian worldview—and a Church that supports it. This art may come from Christians, but we should recognize that it may also come from people who do not know Christ. In its essence, art is the expression of human emotion; true art reminds us that this temporal existence is not the end, that there is something greater, something this world cannot satisfy. It cannot help but call us to God if we only follow its calling. In this way, art is a connection, a connection deeper than mere brushstrokes on a canvas or images on film.



Thomas Hallstrom writes, “Jesus told stories. Some were good and some were dark. Some ended with redemption and some ended with confusing questions. But He wasn’t afraid to tell stories that might turn people away. Many times people walked away after hearing the story, never to return (the rich young ruler who was told to sell all he owned). Other times, the story led the listener to an experience with the living God.” Art does not need to be didactic to be effective. In fact, as soon as it becomes didactic it often loses its effectiveness. It fails to communicate. The purpose of art is not necessarily to provide the answers—it’s much more powerful to ask the questions and allow an audience to seek the answers themselves. Jesus promised that those who seek will find, and we should trust him. He meant it when he said it.



If our art isn’t relevant to the entirety of our experience, the fullness of our lives—good, bad, scared, profane—then it cannot be relevant to the people around us. It will not be relevant to our culture. We need this art, need it desperately. In expressing our creativity, this piece of us that is also a piece of the character of God, we share in His nature. And that can only draw us closer to the One in whom our hope remains.



-Originally posted by Dawn Xiana Moon at Relevant Magazine