There is a terrible rumor flying around out there about us artists, and I think it is time that we confront it head on. I say this because too many of artists have believed it and have been using it in masochistic rituals against the very core of our beings. Over enough time believing this lie will, at the very least, leave us creatively crippled and at the worst will destroy our spirits, the part of us that makes us amazing and wonderful creations of a creative God.
The lie is simple. Artists are lazy. Now, I have to admit that there are few posers out there who have adopted the title as artist to justify their tendency to do as little as possible and live on other people’s couches and eat from their refrigerator. However, simply adopting the title does not mean one deserves the title. True artists are anything but lazy. The problem is much of our progress is difficult to measure in standard terms.
We are seen sitting staring at dust motes in the sun, following the patterns in the carpet, or getting lost in a movie. To the outside observer all of these things can be considered lazy, pointless even. What you can’t see, is the sifting process going on in our brains. If you don’t believe me ask an artist to tell you what they see in the film you watch together. Most people will tell you about the plot and the scenery or that really great actions sequence, we will tell you about the symbols and color pops, the way shots were framed, the use of music to set the tone, or the theological implications if such a thing were true.
A true artist never gets a moment alone, our heads and hearts are filled with images and ideas that like hungry children are begging for our attention. I cannot remember a time when I did not have the next painting forming and shaping itself in my mind, a character in a book not yet written pleading to have their nose described and defined by my words, or some great void of inspiration begging to filled. They are always there, when I am driving, brushing my teeth, and trying to sleep.
And like children, I tell them they can wait. I tell them I will see to their needs in a little while, and like children, they know when they are being placated so I can have moment’s peace. So many of us develop methods of coping. For me it is pacing, I pace with determination and purpose. So much so that if you were to study the padding beneath the living room carpet you would find distinct levels of compression indicating my paths.
Adding to the chaos is the number of voices, if you are or love a creative person you know that we have a million and one great ideas. We have to figure out which ones should be ignored and which ones should be embraced and nurtured. I have rejected a reoccurring idea to dye myself purple, writing random bits of poetry on the walls of my home, and welding a sea horse like apparatus to the hood of my car. I would like to say I rejected these ideas because I realized their impracticality, but the truth is I have yet to find the right shade of purple, my landlord wouldn’t appreciate the graffiti, and I don’t know how to weld.
So I have to figure out what I can do with the tools at hand, and getting to that idea requires tremendous concentration and focus – hence the pacing. Sometimes, I have to take more drastic measures to scatter the ideas enough to pick a single one from the foray. This means Air Supply has to be blasted from the stereo and I must sing loudly and off key until the proper level of tranquility has been reached. And the really sad thing is, I don’t even like Air Supply.
Then and only then, can I begin to work. Now, I call this work, others would probably call it a series of false starts. As with this blog post which was started and deleted four times to date. To the average on looker it could appear as a wasted effort and an abuse of time, but I know that all of this starting, stopping, creating and destroying is a part of the process. It’s the winnowing of the words and images that I am trying to capture. It is working out the impurities and refining the molten ideas of my heart. There are no short cuts. It is a simple surrender to something that others may not understand or value.
I think this is why so many artists must work in seclusion. We need the freedom to file our nails, and stare at our faces in the mirror before putting pen in hand, brush to canvas, or finger tip to key. The weight of scrutiny is just too much to shoulder when you are already laden with so many sensations both tangible and esoteric. We don’t need to worry about appearing strange or odd to a perplexed audience. I also think this is why there are so few famous women artists, but that is a post for another time.
Creation is labor intensive. It always has been. Even God declared the need for a rest after his endeavors. Not that he needed one, but he knew that we would need a space in time to silence all the demands of the creative process. He understood that taking a moment to consider dust motes would allow us to rest in the greatness of a God who created even these insignificant bits of wonder.
Showing posts with label character. Show all posts
Showing posts with label character. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Don’t Flinch – Part 2
In the last post I retold the story of the Woman at the Well from my perspective. As I said, I love this story because I know it all too well.
Once upon a time, I was well versed in the faith of my family and culture. I knew the proper forms of worship, the hope of the return of the Messiah, and I thought I knew all the right Bible answers. But once upon a time, I got married to a man who renounced his faith shortly after the ceremony and our marriage crumbled into a game of survivor. One I had to win if I was going to save my children and myself. I got out and tried to make a life for me and my girls, but it was a rough go.
Many people could not grasp how a good Christian girl could get a divorce or how I could wind up married to such a man that would make divorce the only option. I must not have prayed enough or I wasn’t submissive enough. There was sin in my life or I didn’t have enough faith. Not many were brave enough to speak these words aloud, but they didn’t have to. It was there in their eyes, in their offers to pray with me, and in the quiet way they would ignore the ugly facts of my existence.
I learned you don’t go to the well in the morning. Everyone was there ready with that pitying but condemning look. The whispers were low, but not low enough. So I learned to avoid the crowds, draw into myself, take comfort where I could find it, even in a few relationships that were less than holy.
When I would meet a new Christian, someone who did not know my story, I learned to tell it with a note of defiance and an unspoken dare to condemn if they must, but get it over with. I learned to accept the fact I was too far gone to be of any use to God or his people. Like the Samaritan woman I had too many strikes against me.
Worship was hard, my faith seemed as stagnant and dead as the water in that seep of a well but it was all I had. So I learned to make do. Fake it. Act like it was enough, all the while I was dying.
I hated the Holy Flinch, that involuntary reaction that good Christian people have when they are in the presence of sinners. The one we are taught is a gauge of our holiness. Oh, we are taught to hate the sin but love the sinner, but too often we fail to recognize there is no sin separate apart from the person. So often the sin has become the definition of who they are – as in, “Oh, you mean the divorced woman who sits in the back at church.” We begin to shy away from that person, as if their sin was going to rub off on us, like God wouldn’t like it if we came home smelling of divorce. Our kindness is marked with that boundary of “I will give you this, but don’t come any closer.” In the end, that type of kindness is crippling to the receiver.
My perception of God began to shift over time. I mean, if his people flinched then surely he flinched. And if he flinched, it had to mean one of two things, my sin was that great or he was that small. Either way, it meant there was no hope for me. I was lost, endlessly and miserably lost, and there was not a God who loved me enough or was great enough to save me from my reality. My façade was crumbling and my faith was a tattered rag too full of holes and too worn to be warm in the coldness of life.
But then came the day, when I went to the well and stared into its depths and wondered why even bother to lower the bucket. I would just be thirsty again, why prolong the inevitable? So I sat waiting my demise, wondering how long it would take to kill off those last vestiges of faith, and he showed up. I didn’t believe him at first. My ability to hope, to dream of great things for myself and my girls was dead, but somewhere in the deepest part of who I was I knew that when the Messiah came he would explain everything. And when he sat beside me on the edge of that well, that is exactly what he did.
He explained how there is plan and purpose for us all. He told me how there is not one moment of my heartache and pain that would be wasted. He told me he was big enough and great enough to redeem it all to his glory. He said his holiness could never be sullied by my sin and shame. He shared how his heart’s desire was to resurrect all this world had killed within me, and called me back to life. He shared a drink with a disreputable woman who had given up hope, until he saw me and didn’t flinch.
Once upon a time, I was well versed in the faith of my family and culture. I knew the proper forms of worship, the hope of the return of the Messiah, and I thought I knew all the right Bible answers. But once upon a time, I got married to a man who renounced his faith shortly after the ceremony and our marriage crumbled into a game of survivor. One I had to win if I was going to save my children and myself. I got out and tried to make a life for me and my girls, but it was a rough go.
Many people could not grasp how a good Christian girl could get a divorce or how I could wind up married to such a man that would make divorce the only option. I must not have prayed enough or I wasn’t submissive enough. There was sin in my life or I didn’t have enough faith. Not many were brave enough to speak these words aloud, but they didn’t have to. It was there in their eyes, in their offers to pray with me, and in the quiet way they would ignore the ugly facts of my existence.
I learned you don’t go to the well in the morning. Everyone was there ready with that pitying but condemning look. The whispers were low, but not low enough. So I learned to avoid the crowds, draw into myself, take comfort where I could find it, even in a few relationships that were less than holy.
When I would meet a new Christian, someone who did not know my story, I learned to tell it with a note of defiance and an unspoken dare to condemn if they must, but get it over with. I learned to accept the fact I was too far gone to be of any use to God or his people. Like the Samaritan woman I had too many strikes against me.
Worship was hard, my faith seemed as stagnant and dead as the water in that seep of a well but it was all I had. So I learned to make do. Fake it. Act like it was enough, all the while I was dying.
I hated the Holy Flinch, that involuntary reaction that good Christian people have when they are in the presence of sinners. The one we are taught is a gauge of our holiness. Oh, we are taught to hate the sin but love the sinner, but too often we fail to recognize there is no sin separate apart from the person. So often the sin has become the definition of who they are – as in, “Oh, you mean the divorced woman who sits in the back at church.” We begin to shy away from that person, as if their sin was going to rub off on us, like God wouldn’t like it if we came home smelling of divorce. Our kindness is marked with that boundary of “I will give you this, but don’t come any closer.” In the end, that type of kindness is crippling to the receiver.
My perception of God began to shift over time. I mean, if his people flinched then surely he flinched. And if he flinched, it had to mean one of two things, my sin was that great or he was that small. Either way, it meant there was no hope for me. I was lost, endlessly and miserably lost, and there was not a God who loved me enough or was great enough to save me from my reality. My façade was crumbling and my faith was a tattered rag too full of holes and too worn to be warm in the coldness of life.
But then came the day, when I went to the well and stared into its depths and wondered why even bother to lower the bucket. I would just be thirsty again, why prolong the inevitable? So I sat waiting my demise, wondering how long it would take to kill off those last vestiges of faith, and he showed up. I didn’t believe him at first. My ability to hope, to dream of great things for myself and my girls was dead, but somewhere in the deepest part of who I was I knew that when the Messiah came he would explain everything. And when he sat beside me on the edge of that well, that is exactly what he did.
He explained how there is plan and purpose for us all. He told me how there is not one moment of my heartache and pain that would be wasted. He told me he was big enough and great enough to redeem it all to his glory. He said his holiness could never be sullied by my sin and shame. He shared how his heart’s desire was to resurrect all this world had killed within me, and called me back to life. He shared a drink with a disreputable woman who had given up hope, until he saw me and didn’t flinch.
Monday, March 8, 2010
Sex !!! Now that I have your attention. . .
Recently the topic of many of my conversations has been about sex, from discussions with friends to my brother texting me to complain about how the subject was handled on Christian radio. It seems there are a whole lot of people out there trying to formulate a Christian perspective on the topic, and a whole lot of them are confused. Sex is one of those topics many good Christians shy away from, treating it as if it were the toxic by-product of our existence. Somewhere along the line many of us seem to have forgotten that God created sex, and what’s more He even created the means to have sex.
What I find both amusing and frustrating (depending on my mood) when discussing sex with a fellow Christian is that we often make the “don’t”s the center of our conversation. Don’t do that. Don’t do this. And by no means should you ever even think of that. I’ll let you fill in the blanks, whatever you can think of, it has probably made the list. The reason this is so frustrating is that when our vision becomes this myopic we tend to forget what we should really be talking about – personhood.
My sexuality is part of who I am as a person. There is no divorcing my intellectual skill, emotions, or world view from the fact that I am a woman. It is part of how I was created. It is hardwired into every bit of my DNA, and there is no escaping or denying the defining elements of my sexuality. The same holds true for each of us. Just listen to the descriptions we give of each other, “She was a blond.” “The man in the red shirt.” “The boy with the ball.” “The girl in pink.” Each one betrays our sexuality, and there is nothing wrong with that. It is simply an acknowledgment of how God created us.
So why are we so embarrassed by the topic? Since when did sex become a four letter word, and when did shame enter into the equation? (Yeah, I know the whole Garden and Snake thing, but could we be giving that old serpent just a little too much control over our live?) Don’t get me wrong, sex is an intensely private and intimate act, but when we focus on the act instead upon the person we forget the most important aspect of the conversation.
It is no coincidence that God chose to use the metaphor of marriage to describe His relationship with His people, and no, it was not some gross oversight that allowed Song of Songs to be included in His Bible. It is our sexuality as a part of who we are as person that sets the tone for how we have relationship. It is our biology that allows us to physically take part in intimacy. God figured this one out all by Himself, and He is bold in His speech about His desire to be intimate with His people.
I have this crazy theory wherein I believe that knowing God as a person leads to healthy perspectives and choices regarding sex. Sure some of us need some guidance on what is and is not appropriate, and we need it put in concrete forms, but what if a person was able to see themselves the way God sees them? What if young women were able to realize that God made them beautiful for a purpose and presented their beauty in manner that showed pride and reverence for the one who made them? Do you really think we would have to measure the length of skirts at summer camp? What if young men understood that God has empowered them to protect and revere the beauty that God placed in young women? Do you think they just might want to be the men God created them to be?
Okay, sure, not everyone is going to get the concept, but what about those of who do? Shouldn’t we be teaching the ones who look to us for guidance to deepen their relationship with God and not just harp on how they are going to get it wrong? Should those in leadership be reaffirming the value of who our brothers and sisters are, and God’s desire to have relationship with them? Maybe if we stopped talking about sex in a way that brings shame for how we were made these young people (and some of us older ones, too) could realize that their sexuality has value. Because it is the things of value that we fight to defend, that we only share with those who are able to appreciate its value.
I have to wonder if our culture’s casual approach to sex stems less from ignorance of what is right and wrong, and more from the degrading manner in which we present it. And make no mistake, we as Christians degrade sex every time we present it as something shameful. We degrade ourselves when we approach our sexuality as a source of shame. In this we contradict God by declaring that His creation is no longer good and placing our judgment above His, and act that causes me to tremble in fear of our arrogance.
You see, a lot of people have figured it out, even if they lack the words to articulate it. If my sexuality is bad then I as a person am bad. People often live up to our expectations of them, and our culture is doing precisely that. Maybe it is time we stopped striving so hard to teach everyone the rules and work a little harder at reminding that God values their sexuality. He created it for a purpose, and He delights in who we are as His creation. He loves us enough to seek relationship with all aspects of who are as a person, and He is not scared of physicality. Maybe then we could empower people to reclaim the value of all of their personhood, and show them beauty of a relationship that redeems the whole of who we are.
What I find both amusing and frustrating (depending on my mood) when discussing sex with a fellow Christian is that we often make the “don’t”s the center of our conversation. Don’t do that. Don’t do this. And by no means should you ever even think of that. I’ll let you fill in the blanks, whatever you can think of, it has probably made the list. The reason this is so frustrating is that when our vision becomes this myopic we tend to forget what we should really be talking about – personhood.
My sexuality is part of who I am as a person. There is no divorcing my intellectual skill, emotions, or world view from the fact that I am a woman. It is part of how I was created. It is hardwired into every bit of my DNA, and there is no escaping or denying the defining elements of my sexuality. The same holds true for each of us. Just listen to the descriptions we give of each other, “She was a blond.” “The man in the red shirt.” “The boy with the ball.” “The girl in pink.” Each one betrays our sexuality, and there is nothing wrong with that. It is simply an acknowledgment of how God created us.
So why are we so embarrassed by the topic? Since when did sex become a four letter word, and when did shame enter into the equation? (Yeah, I know the whole Garden and Snake thing, but could we be giving that old serpent just a little too much control over our live?) Don’t get me wrong, sex is an intensely private and intimate act, but when we focus on the act instead upon the person we forget the most important aspect of the conversation.
It is no coincidence that God chose to use the metaphor of marriage to describe His relationship with His people, and no, it was not some gross oversight that allowed Song of Songs to be included in His Bible. It is our sexuality as a part of who we are as person that sets the tone for how we have relationship. It is our biology that allows us to physically take part in intimacy. God figured this one out all by Himself, and He is bold in His speech about His desire to be intimate with His people.
I have this crazy theory wherein I believe that knowing God as a person leads to healthy perspectives and choices regarding sex. Sure some of us need some guidance on what is and is not appropriate, and we need it put in concrete forms, but what if a person was able to see themselves the way God sees them? What if young women were able to realize that God made them beautiful for a purpose and presented their beauty in manner that showed pride and reverence for the one who made them? Do you really think we would have to measure the length of skirts at summer camp? What if young men understood that God has empowered them to protect and revere the beauty that God placed in young women? Do you think they just might want to be the men God created them to be?
Okay, sure, not everyone is going to get the concept, but what about those of who do? Shouldn’t we be teaching the ones who look to us for guidance to deepen their relationship with God and not just harp on how they are going to get it wrong? Should those in leadership be reaffirming the value of who our brothers and sisters are, and God’s desire to have relationship with them? Maybe if we stopped talking about sex in a way that brings shame for how we were made these young people (and some of us older ones, too) could realize that their sexuality has value. Because it is the things of value that we fight to defend, that we only share with those who are able to appreciate its value.
I have to wonder if our culture’s casual approach to sex stems less from ignorance of what is right and wrong, and more from the degrading manner in which we present it. And make no mistake, we as Christians degrade sex every time we present it as something shameful. We degrade ourselves when we approach our sexuality as a source of shame. In this we contradict God by declaring that His creation is no longer good and placing our judgment above His, and act that causes me to tremble in fear of our arrogance.
You see, a lot of people have figured it out, even if they lack the words to articulate it. If my sexuality is bad then I as a person am bad. People often live up to our expectations of them, and our culture is doing precisely that. Maybe it is time we stopped striving so hard to teach everyone the rules and work a little harder at reminding that God values their sexuality. He created it for a purpose, and He delights in who we are as His creation. He loves us enough to seek relationship with all aspects of who are as a person, and He is not scared of physicality. Maybe then we could empower people to reclaim the value of all of their personhood, and show them beauty of a relationship that redeems the whole of who we are.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Go ahead, make my day.
You can only teach yourself. You can only learn the technique of learning. –Clint Eastwood
The memorization and regurgitation of facts has become our working definition of learning. As children we are placed in class rooms where our teacher writes a series of words or numbers upon a board, we copy them, and then we recite them when called upon. Seldom do the words connect with our real lives or have any bearing upon our reality. As children we know this. We question when will we ever need to know the value of pie, the dates of the French Revolution, or even the chemical composition of chewing gum (bubble gum is a whole other matter). The good adults in our lives assure us that we will need this information one day and we should be good students and learn what the teacher says.
As adults we then become the ones who perpetuate the myth when our children are the ones asking the question. We tell them that they will one day need to know this information, and we secretly wonder when exactly did we ever need to know what we were taught in school. Of course if we are good parents we never voice this thought out loud, because we don’t want our children to grow up to be idiots.
The thing is even in the midst of what may now seem to have been pointless exercises in obscure facts, we did learn something. We learned our idea of education, of what it means to be taught. We know that if someone is teaching us something they are to communicate certain facts on the topic which we in turn should be able to recite if called upon. We learned that education often has little to do with our real lives, that educators do not teach life lessons as much as they teach us abstractions and principles that we have a hard time integrating in our day to day activities.
Unfortunately, somewhere we adopted this model into our Biblical teaching as well. We turned Bible study into Bible trivia, and Church stopped being a place where went to experience God with other believers and became a place where we learned about God. We studied God, Jesus, and the Bible like we are going to have a test next Friday, so bring your notes. We got points for attendance, memorizing the right verses, and being able to give the proper answer when called upon.
The problem is we forgot that life is the test. You can’t cram for this one, and like it or not being able to quote the proper verse doesn’t get you a one hundred. Somewhere along the way Christianity stopped being relational and became something that happens after opening prayer but before the fried chicken. Being a good Christian became more about how many Sunday mornings you actually made it to a building and less about loving your neighbor. We turned it into an exercise and not a walk.
Maybe this is why we have a hard time with the transition from the class room of the church to real life. We don’t know how to make our faith a part of our life. Maybe when we started referring to the church as a place with class rooms and teachers, instead of as a body of believers and a family that we lost sight of the fact it is about more than knowing the right answer. Maybe when God became a school teacher and not a father, we forgot that he loves us and doesn’t just give us a grade.
Maybe this why so many people have become disillusioned with Christianity. We have presented it like a list of facts to memorize, and life is a problem to be solved. Maybe when we started teaching Christianity as an abstraction and principles instead of as a way of life, we forgot how to make the shift from information to understanding. Maybe when we stopped teaching people the technique of learning and told them the answers we bypassed an important step in our faith. We skipped the beauty and joy discovery through experience and learning.
We don’t grade relationships by the number of facts we know about another person. We don’t rank friendships by another’s ability to rattle off random thing we may have said. We don’t keep score with people we really love by totaling up their right answers to our questions. We gauge the depth by how well they understand us, by how much they affect our lives and vice versa. Everything else is a byproduct of the time we spend experiencing their presence. And we should all know that knowing about a person is not the same as knowing someone.
It is in the experience that we learn to know someone, that we learn how to learn about them. We discover how to ask a question, how to read their expression, or hear what they are saying beyond the words.
So study, read your Bible, gather with other believers, but do it so that you can experience the one who made you. Do it so that you can learn about this God who loves you more than you can imagine, but remember he isn’t an algebra problem. We don’t get to solve him, figure him out, or define him. That is not our job, our privilege is to know and experience him in this life, in this reality. The disciplines teach us how to draw near to God, being there teaches us how to learn from him.
The memorization and regurgitation of facts has become our working definition of learning. As children we are placed in class rooms where our teacher writes a series of words or numbers upon a board, we copy them, and then we recite them when called upon. Seldom do the words connect with our real lives or have any bearing upon our reality. As children we know this. We question when will we ever need to know the value of pie, the dates of the French Revolution, or even the chemical composition of chewing gum (bubble gum is a whole other matter). The good adults in our lives assure us that we will need this information one day and we should be good students and learn what the teacher says.
As adults we then become the ones who perpetuate the myth when our children are the ones asking the question. We tell them that they will one day need to know this information, and we secretly wonder when exactly did we ever need to know what we were taught in school. Of course if we are good parents we never voice this thought out loud, because we don’t want our children to grow up to be idiots.
The thing is even in the midst of what may now seem to have been pointless exercises in obscure facts, we did learn something. We learned our idea of education, of what it means to be taught. We know that if someone is teaching us something they are to communicate certain facts on the topic which we in turn should be able to recite if called upon. We learned that education often has little to do with our real lives, that educators do not teach life lessons as much as they teach us abstractions and principles that we have a hard time integrating in our day to day activities.
Unfortunately, somewhere we adopted this model into our Biblical teaching as well. We turned Bible study into Bible trivia, and Church stopped being a place where went to experience God with other believers and became a place where we learned about God. We studied God, Jesus, and the Bible like we are going to have a test next Friday, so bring your notes. We got points for attendance, memorizing the right verses, and being able to give the proper answer when called upon.
The problem is we forgot that life is the test. You can’t cram for this one, and like it or not being able to quote the proper verse doesn’t get you a one hundred. Somewhere along the way Christianity stopped being relational and became something that happens after opening prayer but before the fried chicken. Being a good Christian became more about how many Sunday mornings you actually made it to a building and less about loving your neighbor. We turned it into an exercise and not a walk.
Maybe this is why we have a hard time with the transition from the class room of the church to real life. We don’t know how to make our faith a part of our life. Maybe when we started referring to the church as a place with class rooms and teachers, instead of as a body of believers and a family that we lost sight of the fact it is about more than knowing the right answer. Maybe when God became a school teacher and not a father, we forgot that he loves us and doesn’t just give us a grade.
Maybe this why so many people have become disillusioned with Christianity. We have presented it like a list of facts to memorize, and life is a problem to be solved. Maybe when we started teaching Christianity as an abstraction and principles instead of as a way of life, we forgot how to make the shift from information to understanding. Maybe when we stopped teaching people the technique of learning and told them the answers we bypassed an important step in our faith. We skipped the beauty and joy discovery through experience and learning.
We don’t grade relationships by the number of facts we know about another person. We don’t rank friendships by another’s ability to rattle off random thing we may have said. We don’t keep score with people we really love by totaling up their right answers to our questions. We gauge the depth by how well they understand us, by how much they affect our lives and vice versa. Everything else is a byproduct of the time we spend experiencing their presence. And we should all know that knowing about a person is not the same as knowing someone.
It is in the experience that we learn to know someone, that we learn how to learn about them. We discover how to ask a question, how to read their expression, or hear what they are saying beyond the words.
So study, read your Bible, gather with other believers, but do it so that you can experience the one who made you. Do it so that you can learn about this God who loves you more than you can imagine, but remember he isn’t an algebra problem. We don’t get to solve him, figure him out, or define him. That is not our job, our privilege is to know and experience him in this life, in this reality. The disciplines teach us how to draw near to God, being there teaches us how to learn from him.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
The Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Questions – The Scary Answers
The fourth question people ask us is “What church are you with?”
Pagus itself is not with a particular church but the individual members are active within their respective bodies.
We have had several amazing churches that have been incredibly supportive of what we are doing. These churches have donated facilities, technology, or one of the many other things we need to make this happen.
The decision not to be officially affiliated with one particular church was intentional. We never wanted anyone to say, “I can’t go to that because it is for the members of that particular church.” Our events are designed to be as inclusive as possible while not compromising our responsibility to present the Word with integrity.
The decision to remain autonomous, in some respects, was a scary one. It meant that people cannot quickly or comfortably label who we are, and for that reason some chose not participate in Pagus events. However, I would encourage anyone who would like to know more about our core beliefs to contact us. We would be happy to answer any questions you might have, but allow me to address some of the basics.
We believe in God the Father, Creator and Sustainer of the Earth. We believe that Jesus is the preexistent Son and was a man born of a virgin 2000 years ago, and through the power of his life, death, and resurrection he freed us from the power of sin and death. We believe that the Holy Spirit resides within and empowers all who have accepted the free gift of salvation, and the Church is the expression of his continued power to transform lives. The Bible is the Holy and divinely inspired word of God, the revelation of his heart and character to his body. It teaches, comforts, convicts, and surprises all who study it. And Jesus is coming again to claim his bride.
Really, I should probably just insert the Apostle’s Creed here, but I think you get the idea.
The fifth question usually goes like this-
“If you are not under the authority of church leadership, who keeps you accountable?”
Well, while Pagus is not officially accountable to any one church, it does not mean there is no accountability. First and foremost, we are accountable to each other. We all seek the counsel of the others to confess our sins, struggles, and fears. If we have a doubt on a particular teaching, we talk it out, look it up, and research it.
In fact, hours each week are spent in individual study and discussion over everything we present. Most of the teachings are the result of years of study and experience. Nathan and I pace the floor while having marathon phone conversations about upcoming events, Barbie texts me with really odd Bible questions, and we constantly ask each other – “Where is that in scripture?”
It is difficult to find the words that convey how acutely aware each member of the team is of this terrible and amazing responsibility without sounding arrogant. The weight of it shakes us to the core, and every so often we find that one of us is asking “Who am I that I should do this?”, “Am I qualified?”, or “What if I mess this up?” These are good questions to ask, and we remind ourselves that God once used a donkey, so . . .
Added to this, we have many friends who devoted their lives to ministry, or simply lived lives that have demonstrated a maturity of faith. We use them shamelessly, and we rely on their wisdom and discernment to help keep us on track.
The sixth question –
“Why don’t you just start a church?”
Not even an option. I am tempted to say never will be an option, but you know how God and that whole “never” thing goes. Many a person has woke up in Zimbabwe because they had the audacity to say, “God, I will do anything, but I will never go to Zimbabwe.” And poof, the next week God calls them to the mission fields in Zimbabwe.
The thing about starting a church is usually all we do is reshuffle Christians to a new building. We really don’t want to do that, but we can help equip the church. Our desire is to teach, encourage, and facilitate. We don’t have to have a church to do that.
By offering events that open to many different churches, it gives members of different congregations a chance to share ideas, discuss their differences, learn from each other, and just maybe help us become more unified by our shared relationship with God – instead of by what building we sit in on Sunday morning. And my Bible leaves me with the impression that the whole unity thing is pretty important to God.
Obviously, this is just the cliff notes on these issues, and the answers are deeper than can be expressed in a few paragraphs. The only real way to know who we are and why we do what we do is to get to know us. Come to an event, email us, look us up on Facebook, or even call. We are always happy to talk about Pagus, God, our faith, - come to think of it, most of us will talk to just about anyone about anything.
Pagus itself is not with a particular church but the individual members are active within their respective bodies.
We have had several amazing churches that have been incredibly supportive of what we are doing. These churches have donated facilities, technology, or one of the many other things we need to make this happen.
The decision not to be officially affiliated with one particular church was intentional. We never wanted anyone to say, “I can’t go to that because it is for the members of that particular church.” Our events are designed to be as inclusive as possible while not compromising our responsibility to present the Word with integrity.
The decision to remain autonomous, in some respects, was a scary one. It meant that people cannot quickly or comfortably label who we are, and for that reason some chose not participate in Pagus events. However, I would encourage anyone who would like to know more about our core beliefs to contact us. We would be happy to answer any questions you might have, but allow me to address some of the basics.
We believe in God the Father, Creator and Sustainer of the Earth. We believe that Jesus is the preexistent Son and was a man born of a virgin 2000 years ago, and through the power of his life, death, and resurrection he freed us from the power of sin and death. We believe that the Holy Spirit resides within and empowers all who have accepted the free gift of salvation, and the Church is the expression of his continued power to transform lives. The Bible is the Holy and divinely inspired word of God, the revelation of his heart and character to his body. It teaches, comforts, convicts, and surprises all who study it. And Jesus is coming again to claim his bride.
Really, I should probably just insert the Apostle’s Creed here, but I think you get the idea.
The fifth question usually goes like this-
“If you are not under the authority of church leadership, who keeps you accountable?”
Well, while Pagus is not officially accountable to any one church, it does not mean there is no accountability. First and foremost, we are accountable to each other. We all seek the counsel of the others to confess our sins, struggles, and fears. If we have a doubt on a particular teaching, we talk it out, look it up, and research it.
In fact, hours each week are spent in individual study and discussion over everything we present. Most of the teachings are the result of years of study and experience. Nathan and I pace the floor while having marathon phone conversations about upcoming events, Barbie texts me with really odd Bible questions, and we constantly ask each other – “Where is that in scripture?”
It is difficult to find the words that convey how acutely aware each member of the team is of this terrible and amazing responsibility without sounding arrogant. The weight of it shakes us to the core, and every so often we find that one of us is asking “Who am I that I should do this?”, “Am I qualified?”, or “What if I mess this up?” These are good questions to ask, and we remind ourselves that God once used a donkey, so . . .
Added to this, we have many friends who devoted their lives to ministry, or simply lived lives that have demonstrated a maturity of faith. We use them shamelessly, and we rely on their wisdom and discernment to help keep us on track.
The sixth question –
“Why don’t you just start a church?”
Not even an option. I am tempted to say never will be an option, but you know how God and that whole “never” thing goes. Many a person has woke up in Zimbabwe because they had the audacity to say, “God, I will do anything, but I will never go to Zimbabwe.” And poof, the next week God calls them to the mission fields in Zimbabwe.
The thing about starting a church is usually all we do is reshuffle Christians to a new building. We really don’t want to do that, but we can help equip the church. Our desire is to teach, encourage, and facilitate. We don’t have to have a church to do that.
By offering events that open to many different churches, it gives members of different congregations a chance to share ideas, discuss their differences, learn from each other, and just maybe help us become more unified by our shared relationship with God – instead of by what building we sit in on Sunday morning. And my Bible leaves me with the impression that the whole unity thing is pretty important to God.
Obviously, this is just the cliff notes on these issues, and the answers are deeper than can be expressed in a few paragraphs. The only real way to know who we are and why we do what we do is to get to know us. Come to an event, email us, look us up on Facebook, or even call. We are always happy to talk about Pagus, God, our faith, - come to think of it, most of us will talk to just about anyone about anything.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Hello, my name is Lionel
My LTS (Long Term Spouse) and I enjoy watching the British Comedy "As Time Goes By". The show contains basic relationship and family comedy; no smutty jokes or innuendos. The main characters, Lionel and Jean are an older couple who are each single after losing a spouse due to divorce and death. They previously had dated just before Lionel left for the Korean War. They are re-united by accident and date for several months before marrying.
While recently watching an episode, the interaction between Jean and Lionel caused me to ask my LTS why we so enjoyed the show. Her reply startled me: "Maybe we are a tad like Jean and Lionel".
Where is this crazy blogger going with this and how does this apply to the Christian life? Let me see if I can bridge the two spheres together. My LTS and I identify with the characters of Jean and Lionel because of their actions and reactions to life. They may have had bad things happen in their life, but it has not prevented them from enjoying the events occurring now.
Should Christians be identifiable by their character and behavior? How about their action and reaction when life occurs and the result-of-bovine-digestion hits the fan? Does the world identify us as Christians when life happens? Do we try, on a daily basis, to be seen as being a tad like Jesus?
There are days I have to answer a definite no to being identifiable as a Christian. The "stuff" has hit the fan and I don't feel very Christ-like. At times like these I';m very thankful to have One who can wipe off the "stuff" and help me to remember to be identified with Christ.
While recently watching an episode, the interaction between Jean and Lionel caused me to ask my LTS why we so enjoyed the show. Her reply startled me: "Maybe we are a tad like Jean and Lionel".
Where is this crazy blogger going with this and how does this apply to the Christian life? Let me see if I can bridge the two spheres together. My LTS and I identify with the characters of Jean and Lionel because of their actions and reactions to life. They may have had bad things happen in their life, but it has not prevented them from enjoying the events occurring now.
Should Christians be identifiable by their character and behavior? How about their action and reaction when life occurs and the result-of-bovine-digestion hits the fan? Does the world identify us as Christians when life happens? Do we try, on a daily basis, to be seen as being a tad like Jesus?
There are days I have to answer a definite no to being identifiable as a Christian. The "stuff" has hit the fan and I don't feel very Christ-like. At times like these I';m very thankful to have One who can wipe off the "stuff" and help me to remember to be identified with Christ.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)