Transforming Church

The bible displays another grand and sweeping image for humanity. In that we are people of creativity and change, we share the Spirit of the Creator. When God speaks and says: “look, I am making all things new…,” life itself is held up as a constantly changing gift of the Creator that will be, in a new heaven and new earth, profoundly full and rich. God will not rest until that vision is reality.

Religion, as opposed to faith, is all about rules and constraints. The root word, religio, in Latin, defines a life of being bound to duty, obligation, past covenants, and customs, all done to honor the Deity. Faith, in great biblical stories, is about a willingness to follow God to new places, not knowing the outcome of the end. So Abram and Sarah, as they begin their journey, and the same for Jesus, Paul, and so many others.

In uncertain times, people often look to the church to provide what religion offers: a place of unchanging refuge in the midst of an unpredictable world. The result is, that in the mainline denominations, fully 80% of congregations are either on a plateau or in decline. Leaders who serve these congregations have a rather simple choice to make. Either, support and serve the institution, as chaplain and pallbearer, or risk creating a vision of new possibilities that will invariably cause discomfort and vibrations in the system.

Jesus was creativity incarnate. Despite the fact that he is often used today to champion religion and its exclusionary ways, the Jesus of the bible, seems to have lived most of his days confronting the keepers of religion, and by speaking out for the poor and marginalized, painting a vision of God’s kingdom where people mattered more than rules, and the outcast was invited to share in the feast of God’s grace. Jesus was a creative force in his words and his actions, even at the risk of giving his life for his vision of a God who loved people, no matter their status, nor the brokenness of their lives.

Can the same be said of the congregations and the churches of our time? In the vast diversity of American Christianity, of how many leaders and congregations can it be said they are transparent to the creativity of God? Open to the outcast? Willing to give the bulk of their time and energy for “the least of these”? How many of us model our lives and faith on a Spirit-filled creativity that will not accept the world as it is, and risk dreaming of a church that gives its life in service as Jesus did?

In the next few months, I want to walk through some of the ways of thinking about God in a postmodern world. Some of our leading teachers are suggesting that the best way to know God is to see God as pure creativity. Increasingly, there is an understanding that all people are born to be creative, each, of course, in the unique why she is wired, and the unique way in which he relates to other people and lives in the web of relationships where God has planted her.

There are some wonderful resources to help each of us tap into our creativity. There is for all of us, in the rhythms of life, space to find those times of rest and renewal, but, also, those times of dreaming and doing a new thing.

For now, some questions for you to muse about at the beginning of the journey: Think of your metaphors and images for God. Are they static or dynamic? Is yours a God who never changes, or One who changes each moment another part of his creation breaks out in newness?

Do you believe that Jesus is the same, yesterday, today and tomorrow? If one were to visit your congregation, what images of God would the visitor experience?

And finally, what new thing have you experienced God doing in your life this week?

Next issue: Some post-modern images of God as Creativity.