Photos from The First Sunday of Advent

Birth, Photos: Rita Hadley

Dancers: Alyssa Hadley, Christiana Hadley, Nirell Hadley, Lydia Mullins, Laura Beth Gathman

We Got the Grant!

I can't believe it, but the Calvin Institute for Christian Worship has given us a "Worship Renewal" grant to fund our "Fueling Creative Convergence Project."

The aim of the project is to ask questions and begin to find answers through collaboration. These are the goals of the project:

- To create an effective worship planning procedure which results in worship gatherings that include multiple voices, allow for the history and tradition of the worshiping community to be honored while allowing flexibility and freedom for the inclusion of creative elements to create new traditions and experiences.
- To better understand the ways in which the artist enters into worship and incorporate these into our worship services.
- To find the ways in which the artist may serve the congregation without being "used by" the congregation.
-To help the congregation understand how to have a Christ honoring relationship with the artist.

Here is the summary that was written for the proposal:
Imagine an initiative which infuses worship with creative expectation through deep integration of the exploration of the artist's role in the worshiping community. Suppose a church gave a collaborative leadership role to believing artists in worship planning to gain a deeper understanding of both the contribution and worship needs of the artist.

We have been given $13,000 to work on the project earmarked for several great opportunities including: Artist's in residence, creation of works, an intensive class offered to our team and communities on worship through the John Leland Center, Hosting a local conference for artists and church leaders to explore our findings and share new ideas and experiences.

Most importantly, we will embark on a journey to explore how to plan and worship together in an authentic, organic way which builds community rather than preference divisions. The project begins May 2008 and will continue through June of 2009. At the end of the project we will be invited to share our findings at a national conference of other grant winners.

Thank you so much to those of you who contributed to the grant proposal!! If you are at all interested in participating in the implementation of this project please let me know. You can read the Fueling Creative Convergence Project proposal here.

Andy Crouch Is Feeling Useless

Last week Todd and I met Elise Edwards (the fabulous designer of Convergence's renovations) at the Transforming Culture Symposium in Austin Texas. The gathering consisted of artists, pastors and academics exploring questions surrounding the role of the artist in church and the responsibility of the pastor/church to the artist. The plenary speakers included Jeremy Begbie (Institute for Theology, Imagination and the Arts), John Witvliet (Calvin Institute of Christian Worship), Barbara Nicolosi (Act I Screenwriters), Eugene Peterson (The Message Bible), Andy Crouch (Christian Vision Project, Christianity Today), and David Taylor (arts pastor).

The plenary sessions were really excellent and some good conversation emerged around a number of topics - including whether it is even possible to talk about "transforming culture." (We are purchasing the DVDs of the plenary sessions for this symposium and the IAM Exchange and plan to make these available if you would like to see for yourself.)

Some of the impressions/ things to chew on that I walked away with were:
From Andy Crouch
-"Culture cannot be reduced to utility" i.e. the value of art is not based on its usefulness. Rather it is something which is valuable in and of itself. Or, said differently - it is not useful only when it points to something else or can augment something else (a.k.a.) a sermon.
-BUT - even more important is the recognition that worship is actually a "useless" thing as well. Coming together to worship or consider God does not necessarily achieve something or produce something. We do it because the act of doing it is worthwhile regardless of any outcome. Or as a Marva Dawn puts it in her book on worship by the same title: it is a "Royal Waste of Time."
-One more fantastic quote on the role of art in religious communities: "There is too much that is good and right with the world to be constrained to the bounds of religious utility."

The interesting thing about this discussion was not so much the implications on art, but rather a reminder to me about worship and prayer. The Bible talks about these things as worthwhile because it is right to do them. Reducing the questions of whether or not prayer "works" or "did I feel worshipful?" as practically irrelevent. We practice prayer and praise, painting and singing, acting and storytelling because it is good and right to do so in the eyes of God.

We don't have to worry about effecting some end. To quote Crouch again: "We don't need to convince God to be useful to us and God does not need us to be be useful to him."

The act of creating, the act of worship, the act of prayer and praise is worthwhile or useful not in its product or results, but in the act itself. We create because we are creators, we worship because we are worshipers, we pray because we are prayers, we praise because we are praisers.

And finally, this frees us as churches to take on our role as possibly the only institution in our culture which can be the "champions of the 'un-useful."
-"Without a belief in the worth of the 'un-useful' who will champion and value those people deemed by our society 'un-useful?"

And who will encourage us to live lives filled with concern for the "other" when this doesn't "do" much for us?

Just feeling very challenged about our role....