I saw this video and immediately thought, “Why don’t I see this kind of innovation and creativity in the Church?”. How is it that we know the Creator personally, but tend to kill creativity and innovative, out-of-the-box thinking?
What qualities would a church culture have to possess in order for this kind of thing to come from it in a way that is impregnated with worship and the gospel?
It could be the beverage……Heineken produces a different level of creativity than coffee. LOL
Why don't we see this kind of creativity in the Church? Well, we do in some places, but not enough!!
I think it is because we Christians fall into one of 2 categories (or both!):
A. We are legalistic – If something out of our comfort zone is done, we think, "There's no way that can bring glory to God." Loud and rockin' electric guitars? That's devil music, man. Rap? Isn't that from the dark sides of the ghetto? Hip-hop dance? Well, on MTV it looks sexual so there's no way we can bring that into the Church! That's the way some of us think. We think church is a place for quiet, reserved, proper, and sweet. So we get offended when we see otherwise. But not allowing the rough, loud, gutsy art in church is legalistic and religious.
B. We are copycats – We're too caught up with being popular so all we ever do is copy what's already popular and trendy. We want to be cool and do all the cool songs and styles that everyone else is doing because we know that it will be acceptable to everyone. So we don't take risks. We don't try new things. We don't get out of the box because that might require not being in the "in" crowd.
I think the key is to release the artists in the Church. Artists need freedom to create – we don't thrive with someone standing over our shoulders going, "Do it this way, don't do it that way." We need pastors who tell us to go for it. And we need to be congregations that allow the creative people to go for it! Sure, it might get a little messy sometimes. But it's nothing a little shepherding can't fix.
Thanks, Ben, for believing in us creative people and for telling us to go for it at KCC.
good points. I think sometimes we think "relevance" means that we copy culture (and usually the most shallow elements of our culture) and then try to sanitize it. What we always end up with when we do that is a cheap knock-off. It becomes like shopping at the $1 Store where everything looks like the original, but when you get close you realize it's cheap, plastic junk with no real value despite it's low price.
I mean, do we REALLY think that doing a sermon series called "LOST, are you found?" styled to look like the TV show is creative and relevant? I remember when Survivor was so huge and every church in town did a sermon series using all kinds of different variations on the Survivor theme. I throw up a little bit in my mouth every time I think about it.
What made films like The Matrix and Memento so great? They were original. They were genre defying/defining. U2 – Joshua Tree… Nirvana… on and on. What if we quit copying Hillsongs and Chris Tomlin? What if we defy current genres and define new ones? Why not.
I know this one is old, but it caught my attention. It is for this very reason that I don't play on worship teams anymore. It seems that being like a cd is more important than being yourself and doing what you do. Then you take others who do what they do, and put it together to make something new and meaningful. Instead, worship just turns into copying the latest fads and making the members of the team contort themselves until they meet the expectations of others. MAJOR BURN OUT! Too many times Christians are trying to offer an alternative. I don't want an alternative, I want the answer.