Creativity and Fear

I recently heard an interview that has captivated my thoughts for over a week now.  It was an interview with the writer Elizabeth Gilbert (not the one from House on the Prairie).  Elizabeth Gilbert wrote the wildly best selling novel, "Eat, Pray, Love" which was later turned into a major motion picture - featuring Julia Roberts (which as usual, did not hold a candle to the incredible book).  "Eat, Pray, Love" sold over 10 million copies, and is one of the most popular works of fiction written in the last 50 years.

Even though the book, "Eat, Pray, Love" does not deal with any overtly Christian themes, I have quoted from it many times in my sermons through the years.  My favorite scene in the book is at the beginning when a couple are arguing and things aren't working out, and the main character, a young woman goes to the bathroom, and while she is kneeling by the toilet says a prayer [paraphrased], "Dear God, I don't know if you exist, I'm pretty sure you don't, and I am just talking to myself right now.  But I feel a need to talk to you now.  I am lost and I have no idea what I am doing..."  After the prayer, the main character goes on an Odyssey of self understanding and growth.

Among Gilbert's recent insights are the fact that she probably might never write another book that is quite as successful or well reviewed as "Eat, Pray, Love".  And so, she muses, I have the option of just starting to drink every morning at around 9:00AM, or move to the country to "raise Corgies" or to return to that thing which has brought me the most amount of love in my life - writing.

But it is Gilbert's ideas about:

Creativity and Fear

which are the subject of my blog this morning.  Gilbert says that as a writer, fear has always been a regular companion of hers.  Each day she sits at her computer and writes, and often says to herself, "This will be an awful book, just awful....in fact, it may not only be awful, but the worst book that has ever been written", "I might be the worst writer that has ever lived", "my career will most likely end in failure" - But she keeps on writing.  Because writing is her core love, it is her vocation, it is why she was placed on the planet, it is the thing that she loves to do even more than she loves herself, she must continue to do it.

Gilbert has come to terms with the fact that:

Creativity and Fear

are actually siblings.  They are brother and sister.  They live with one another all the time.  You cannot find a creative person anywhere in any genre (art, music, food, architecture, writing, poetry...) that does not experience a regular amount of fear.  And so, whenever Gilbert begins a book, she knows that if she wants creativity in the book, which all good books must have, she must also have fear.  Fear comes along for the ride.  Fear sits in the backseat, as creativity sits in the front seat.

In my own life, I have experienced the conjoined quality of creativity and fear.  My seven year old daughter asked me yesterday if I ever got nervous when I had to stand up in front of a church and give a message.  I said, "Yes, all the time".  Each new church that I have started has been an expression of creativity, and along with it comes a regular amount of fear.  "Maybe this won't work", "Maybe we won't get the money we need to keep this thing going", "Maybe my ministry will end in a flaming ball of fire, actually worse, maybe like the universe it will end with a whimper (J. Alfred Proofrock...TS Eliot....)"

Creativity and Fear

I find it interesting that arguably the most creative person ever to live - God - also talks about fear more than almost any other subject.  The same God that set the planets in motion, and that separated light from darkness, and water from dry land - creativity - must also have experienced fear.  God tells us - creative human beings - not to be afraid around 365 times in the Bible.  To Abraham and Sarah, beings that God placed creative life inside of, God said, "Do not be afraid".  To the disciples who think they see a ghost upon the lake of Galilee, Jesus said, "Do not be afraid".  To the women at the tomb on Easter Sunday, Jesus said, "Do not be afraid."

Perhaps God Himself knows the double bind of this life.  If you want to be creative, if you are creative, if you are human, then fear will be a part of your life.  But we should not be afraid.  For God is with us...

All For Now,

GB









  

There's the church!

Each morning, I drive my two daughters to school from our home in Oxnard, to their school in Camarillo - about 30 minutes away.  To get there, we take Highway 101, which is the major thoroughfare that the Edwards Movie Theater is on.  On Sunday mornings, Mission Street Church, the new church that we started less than a year ago, meets in the Edwards Movie Theater.  And each morning it is the same, as we pass the Edwards Movie Theater, both of our daughters yell at the top of their lungs...

There's the church!!!!!

I'm afraid it's unalterable.  My two daughters' associations with church will always be a movie theater - pink neon lights, movie marquis, the buttery-salty smell of popcorn, and comfortable chairs with cup holders.  For them, church is a movie theater, and the energy inside of it.  They love running in the huge atrium lobby and shouting out loud as their voices echo on the vaulted ceiling in the entry way.  They adore watching Veggie Tales in their Children's Program on a 100 foot screen.  They love the bright colors of the movie banners, and the glitzy layout of the candy counter.

There's the church!!!!

When they say this, I beam on the inside with pride.  What it means is that for the rest of their lives, my two daughter's associations with church and God and religion in general will be not with a hallowed sanctuary of mystery.  They will not think of church people as different than the people they meet with throughout the week in other settings.  They will not associate church with a certain way to dress or perceive the world.  Nor will it be with a particular mode of behavior or moral code.  Neither will they associate church with a group of insiders or power brokers who wield control over the hearts and minds of their congregants.

In a very real way, they will see church as very much a part of the world that we live in.  Church will not be a separate entity but a connected manifestation of God's love for the world that is so fallen.  They will understand in a very real way that Christ came into the world to live in the world.  Christ was not separate from the world but took the world into himself, even as he hung on the cross.  There's not an "us" and "them" when it comes to Christians and non-Christians.  We are all God's people.  Christ came to be in the world, to save the world.

There's the church!!!

And maybe their associations with church will not end with a movie theater.  Maybe when they pass a fast food restaurant, they will say:

There's the church!!!

Maybe when they go to college some day, and stroll the University campus they will say:

There's the church!!!!

Maybe when they go shopping in a gargantuan shopping mall, where people are spending money that they don't have, and making purchases that they don't need, they will say:

There's the church!!!

When I was a kid, we used to sing a song in Sunday school, that you are surely familiar with:  "I am the church, you are the church, we are the church together.  All who follow Jesus all across the world, yes, we're the church together."

Pass the popcorn!!
There's the church!!!

All For Now,

GB

David and Goliath

Many of the Bible's stories don't ring true.  While they are often accounts of incredible feats of bravery, miraculous intervention, God's total sovereignty, it is sometimes hard to believe that they actually happened.  Whether it be a talking donkey, a fish that swallows a human whole, a coin found in the mouth of a trout, water turned into wine or a grown man walking on water, these stories just seem so far from the realities of our own world, that they seem like things of fiction.  I don't mean to suggest that these events didn't occur, it's just that it is hard to believe them sometimes.

However, a sports tournament that took place this past week in the United States points to the probability that one of the Bible's miracles actually happened.  In Queens New York, the site of the US Open Tennis Tournament, on a humid blue tarmac tennis court, a match between the world's greatest tennis player ever, Serena Williams, and a come from nowhere player from Taranto, Italy, Roberta Vinci, was nothing less than a modern day story of:

David and Goliath

Now, before I begin the comparison, I want to say that Serena Williams is an incredible individual with a wonderful heart.  She has received mounds of unfair criticism throughout her career.  So, any comparison I make of Serena with Goliath in this blog is purely about strength and ability, and not any other moral or character besmirching quality.

First, to Serena.  She is simply the best women's player ever to hold a tennis racket.  She is one of the few players ever, male or female, to have held all four major singles titles simultaneously.  She has 21 gland slam titles.  Serena simply plays at a level heretofore unheard of in women's tennis.  During her tennis match with Roberta Vinci, Serena actually clocked an ace serve at 127 miles per hour.  Prior to her loss to Roberta, she was set to win the vaunted calendar Grand Slam (three major titles in one year).

Now to Roberta Vinci.  Before her win against Serena last week, Roberta was ranked 43rd in the world.  The daughter of an accountant and a housewife, she was born in rural Italy - Taranto.  The odds of her winning against Serena, by some estimates were 300-1, and by others 657-1.  While Serena regularly hit serves to Roberta at over 120 miles per hour, Roberta's more ordinary serve was around 79 miles per hour.  Her advance to the finals at the US Open (a game which she actually lost) was her first major grand slam final.

But it was Roberta's post-game interview after beating Serena which sent shivers of appreciation down the spines of all the viewers; [In broken English with an Italian accent] "I try to enjoy it...I try not to think about Serena...I didn't expect that I win...I just think 'put the ball in the court....don't think about Serena'".

David and Goliath

I wonder if on a windy, wilderness battlefield in the foothills of Western Israel, in about the year 1,000 BC, David didn't say the same thing about his foe; "I try to enjoy it...I try not to think about Goliath...I don't expect to win...I just think..put the rock on the forehead....don't think about Goliath."

David slew the giant, and Roberta (an equally mundane name for a champion) slew the giant of tennis.  From time to time, now and then, the Bible proves that it's stories, though hard to believe, are true.

All For Now,

GB

People Know What They Want

Every week it's the same.  At about 9:30 when worship begins at Mission Street, I look out on the congregation that are meeting in the movie theater, and there are only a handful of people there.  On a holiday weekend like last weekend, the numbers can be in the low digits at the beginning of service.

Then, all of a sudden, magically and as if tele-transportation, room will fill up.  Usually by the time the second song begins at the start of the worship set, I look out and I see that the room is almost totally full.  Where did they all come from?  Why did they come 15 minutes into the service, rather than at the beginning of church?

I have actually witnessed this same phenomenon in so many of the churches that I have lead that I have come to expect it.  People arrive about 15 minutes into the start of worship, rather than coming right at the beginning.  As I have thought about this interesting dynamic, there are several reasons that come to mind.

First, Sundays are hectic times for families, and traffic can, even in California, be a bit unpredictable. Loading everyone into the car can be a challenge.

Second, sometimes the welcoming team gauntlet in a church can be daunting.  Especially when you are feeling a bit tender or depressed, the last thing you want is to encounter a zillion people before church.  If a person knows that they have to make their way through three greeters, a smiling hand shaking pastor, and then another set of greeters at the front door, they may say to themselves, "What I really want is to worship God, not be glad handed on the front step, so I will come late."

Sometimes people like the anonymity of coming late to a  church service.  There is a certain joy in being able to just slip in late and leave a little early.  I will never forget one man who came to the movie theater in Paso Robles for worship.  He would arrive just before the message, and he would leave just after the message.  He sat in the darkest corner of the church, so that no one could see him. I will never know his name, but I will also never forget him.  From that man's experience I developed a theory about outreach - Anonymity is the key to evangelism, not friendliness.

But as I have observed people coming late to church for many years, I have come up with another basic theory.

People Know What They Want

A person coming on Sunday knows that, most of all, they want a personal connection with God.  They want one on one time with God.  They want:

*  A message that is concrete, clear, meaningful and helps them in their lives
*  A time to connect one on one with God in prayer/song
*  A communion time that is a personal connection between them and God

What they don't want:

*  To meet a lot of strangers who seem overly friendly
*  To drink mediocre coffee
*  To sing praise choruses or hymns from a choir that sometimes seem redundant
*  To hear a lot of announcements
*  To be told by a congregant, "I haven't seen you in a while, everything ok?"
*  To have to sign up for an activity that makes their already busy week more busy
*  To sign a welcome pad or a card

People Know What They Want

This isn't to say that worship music isn't important.  It's also not to say that announcements and welcome cards don't play an important roll.  Also, people need community with one another, it's just that that can't be manufactured in any kind of artificial way.

If you are leading a church where people tend to come late to worship, I encourage you to see it as a good thing.  Don't beat people up for coming later.  Don't change the time of worship to meet their needs.  They are coming for the important parts of worship - parts that are important and helpful for their lives.  And hey, at least they are finding something real in your church

All For Now,

GB