We know them as the artists in the church, the painters, the musicians, the writers, the graphic designers. They are typically the ones who stand out in the pews of our churches for their odd style choices or expressions of praise and worship. Maybe you see them in the sound booths or behind a guitar on the music team. They are easy to spot, but not always easy to get along with.
By nature, creative individuals have a tendency to seek individualism over conformity. In the world, this may work out well and even bring great success, however, in the Church, when conforming to the image of Christ is a must, and unity with the Body is required, how does a creative reconcile these contradictory things? These are the questions I hoped would be answered in The Gospel Coalition’s recorded session from their 2018 West Coast Conference. The talk is entitled, “Is the Church where Creativity Goes to Die?” Check it out here. This event was a talk including two big names in evangelical circles, J. Ryan Lister and Thomas Terry. Lister is an author and associate professor of theology at Western Seminary. Terry, a name more well-known among the creative folk, is the founder and proprietor of Humble Beast as well as an elder of a church in Portland. After listening to this talk a few times over, what I found was concerning on a level that deeply grieved my spirit. For background purposes, I would encourage you to take a listen to the talk linked above, however, this session is not one I would recommend for any Scriptural insight. In between furrowed brows and inquisitive looks, I found myself whirring around at the statements being made by two people in positions of influence in evangelicalism today. It was this poor handling of the topic that sparked a desire in me to study more on the issue. I have personally struggled in recent years to reconcile my love of creative expression with my love for God’s people. After reflection on this talk, my own experience, and Scripture’s authoritative guidance on the issue, I have decided to offer a brief few points to consider on the topic of creatives and the Church. I pray these considerations would be helpful.
This is the same train of thought that leads to emotional manipulation in Gospel presentation. The idea is that if we could just hype up the perfect scenario, we could conjure a response from the hearer that the plain Gospel itself could not. There is a lot of talk in this session about the church not viewing the Gospel as big enough to reach creatives, but it seems in their approach that they themselves are the ones guilty of this offense. To be clear, the issue of creatives and the church comes down to the place of creativity in a weekly worship service, not the Gospel’s far-reaching ability as these men have made it seem. In the eyes of many evangelicals, church services need to cater to the world in order for the church to reach the world. The content of the Gospel is no longer relevant enough--we have to package it in a way that is palatable to the culture. While it may be a silly illustration, I have often thought of this issue from the perspective of owning a dog. When a dog is sick and needs medicine, his owner may need to disguise the medicine by slipping it into the dog’s food. We often treat the Gospel in this way to unbelievers. The problem is that our creativity may get them to tolerate God, but never worship Him. No dog can be tricked into worshipping his medicine. It is understandable that preaching the Gospel in a world that hates God is a lofty task. We may be tempted to find ways to control the situation, leaving the supernatural work of God out of the equation. Ironically, many of the same churches that teach about miraculous healings and signs also neglect the fact that someone coming to saving faith in Christ is a miracle. They will work extremely hard to take God’s work out of the Gospel, relying on their own ability to create the perfect environment for an emotional altar call. What these men in this session fail to acknowledge is that salvation is nothing we can conjure, and being dead in sin is certainly nothing our creativity can overcome. To be raised from death to life is not a work of man, it is a work of God. Scripture speaks of man’s depravity and the Gospel’s power in these ways: “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” (1 Cor. 2:14) “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.” (John 6:44) “For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” (Rom. 8:7-8) “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” (Heb. 4:12) “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” (Rom. 10:17) “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” (Rom. 1:16) 2. Being a “creative” cannot be an identity. The main issue with creatives is not on the creative level, but rather the spiritual level. A person who refuses to be separated from art for the sake of the body of Christ is a white-knucked idolator. However, as this post from The Gospel Coalition makes clear, people identify as a “creative,” as if it is an inseparable part of their being. If the church does not accept how a creative wants to freely express himself or herself, the church is somehow not accepting of the person. Scripture is clear about our identity being found in Christ: “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Gal. 2:20) To be charitable, Terry may not have intended to speak of being a “creative” as an identity. Nonetheless, it is important to note that placing the label of “creative” before the label “Christian” is a major sign that priorities need to be examined. 3. Is creativity a spiritual gift or mere talent? It is a common trend in well-meaning encouragement to label things as Scripture does not. We, too often, use “gift” flippantly as if synonymous with “talent.” Part of this may be due to pragmatics (i.e. an attempt to utilize the talents of church members for an upcoming event), but this misconception leads to much bigger issues. First of all, if someone is good at public speaking or making speeches, this does not make them gifted at preaching. A simple look at Steven Furtick of Elevation church shows that charisma and eloquence cannot make up for a lack of Biblical discernment and accurate interpretation of Scripture, two things sound preachers should possess. Instead of hearing the Word of God, congregations hear spiritual pep-talks unguided by Scripture. It is an unfortunate problem in evangelicalism today in which unqualified people become leaders in churches simply by calling their talents “gifts from God”. “It is my spiritual gift” has become a type of trump card to fulfill whatever role one’s heart desires in the church. In Lister and Terry’s talk for The Gospel Coalition, there is a clear inconsistency in their definition of a spiritual gift, which is not without consequence or confusion. They claim that creativity is both a gift, yet also a requirement for pastors who desire to shepherd the creatives in their congregations. If this were to be true, there are many questions. Firstly, in this instance, would a pastor then be required to exercise a spiritual gift of creativity, or is this simply speaking of talent? Side note: Whatever the case, the implication from this talk is that in order to adequately disciple the flock, a pastor must appeal to his creative audience. While Lister and Terry may claim Paul to be a poet, therefore necessitating creativity in pastors, there is no clear Biblical grounds for this kind of assertion (1 Cor. 2:1). Pragmatism may suggest this conclusion, but it does not come from Scripture, and even threatens its sufficiency. Our model for the church is to come from a careful understanding of Scripture, not clumsy definitions and desperate pragmatism. While this may seem too specific an example, it is important to make the distinction between gifts and talents for the sake of the order of the church. One of the biblical definitions of a spiritual gift is something used for the edification of the Body (1 Cor. 12). Even though every spiritual gift may not be listed in Scripture, we can rule out talents that would glorify or edify self. Paul, in addressing the Corinthian church on spiritual gifts, even makes the point that speaking in tongues is not meant to be a private prayer language, as some today may suggest, because that would not be edifying to the body (1 Cor. 14:1-5). In an effort to discover and use our gifts in the church, we should be much more hesitant to slap “spiritual gift” on talents and interests. The consequences of hasty labeling leave room for great error in our ecclesiology. 4. You are not entitled to your creativity. If talks like this are indeed the barometer for Christian thought on this topic, there needs to be a further discussion on the self-centeredness of evangelical theology. In other words, not everything is about you. What I am not saying is that feelings and emotions do not matter--believers should come alongside one another to help bear with one another in their weaknesses, including emotionally. We should always be patient with the struggles of others in the Church and help them in their battle against sin. However, this gentle handling of emotions turns to coddling when there is no calling out of sin. If we are not careful, emotions can lead us to twist Scripture to justify sin. We will start to believe the lie that maybe we are uncomfortable emotionally because the plain reading of the text is not so plain after all. Pretty soon, we have deconstructed the text until we have justified our sins, giving us a false sense of comfort in something the Word of God never says. This kind of interpretation of Scripture is used heavily in this talk from TGC as well as the methodology of churches all around the United States. The church service is being abused for self-indulgence rather than self-sacrifice all in the name of Scripture. We rip verses alluding to the creativity of God in creation out of context and throw them into whatever context we like. Without a framework for interpreting the Bible accurately, we can make the Bible say anything we want it to say. And here, we see a prime example. When the Bible tells us to count our brothers and sisters as more important than ourselves, we tell the Bible that we are entitled to what makes us happy, despite what others think....because God is creative. What many evangelicals fail to understand in the local church today, is that we are not entitled to what makes us happy. Be it creativity, pub crawls with the boys, or meat sacrificed to idols, our freedom in Christ is actually slavery to our brothers and sisters (Gal. 5:13; 1 Cor. 10:23; Rom. 14). The point of the local church is not to accommodate for all of the ways each member desires to express himself or herself. The local church is about God. It may seem like an obvious point, but based on the attitudes of church members/seekers and talks like TGC’s, it should be a red flag that there is “distrust” and “tension” in churches when they ask people to lay down their desires. Church is not the place to get a “fix,” and if that causes a rift between you and the body of Christ, the problem is not with the body, it is with the stubborn selfishness of the individual. This talk highlights the problem that giving people a space to express themselves individually in a church service is messy. Anyone who has done any amount of ministry on a stage understands the temptation to bask in the glory of one’s abilities. We are all well-aware of the reality of temptation to pride, yet this seems to be one of those sins we are slow to care about in the context of the church service. Every Sunday, platforms meant to be used to lead the congregation in unified worship to God, are being defiled with the stench of self-servitude in the name of creativity. As the talk astutely points out, “God doesn’t want or need our art.” Yet, because it makes us happy, who cares what God wants from us? We are doing our...best? Voddie Bauchum, at a recent conference on the Sufficiency of Scripture, cleverly explains this kind of “normative principle” to which many churches today ascribe. He tells the story of a man who loves his wife and loves watches. So, in showing his love for his wife, he gets her the thing he loves: a watch. The wife is less than enthused. The point is that if we love God and want to please him, we should not make a service dedicated to HIS worship about us and our preferences. 5. Creatives need discipleship. This is not just a point about creatives, but it seemed necessary to make the point that creatives are not a special case that need Scripture taught in any special way. If the Word of God is as sufficient as it says it is, why would it not speak to creative people? Many pastors and mature believers in the Church feel they are ill-equipped to help the saints in their own congregations. Sessions like this one are partly to blame. Pastors are hearing a never-ending list of “twenty billion things you need to know about *insert cultural problem here*.” It is no wonder that pastors do not feel equipped for the work of shepherding their flocks! Pastors need to know what the Word of God says. They need to devote their time studying how to exegete Scripture, not the culture. As is the case with any and every individual in the local church, creatives need to be discipled, and the best way to do this is to teach them the Word. A creative will learn how to differentiate selfish ambition from using their talents to glorify God by studying and being convicted by Scripture. The Word of God is creative enough to hold their attention; it does not need a creative pastor to be effective. Concluding thoughts… It is my desire that the Church not be deceived by false ideologies. While this talk may seem harmless, this is merely one example of a system of thinking, a worldview, that does not come from Scripture. I would encourage every one of my readers to evaluate everything to the Word of God. It is through the Word that we understand that creativity needs to die for the sake of the Body of Christ. On our own time we can be creatives, just like on their own time others can be golfers, chess-players, or carpenters. A worship service should be about God, and it should be our pleasure to lay down our paint brushes to sing a song in unison with the Bride to Him. After all, is he not deserving?
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
Archives
April 2020
Categories |