Filed under: Finding God in the Ordinary | Tags: art, church, creativity, faith
Came across this great article today from Collide Magazine from an interview with Donald Miller. I agree with it, do you?
Donald Miller on Artists, Metaphor, and the Church
Scott McClellan – Originally posted Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Photo Credit: Jeremy Cowart Photography
I wrote a feature for our September/October 2009 issue called, “Donald Miller: Storyteller,” in which I discuss an interview I did with Miller and his new book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. In preparing for that interview (conducted at the end of March) I came across a talk Miller gave at Willow Creek’s arts conference, “Creativity and Art, Why You Matter as an Artist.” I was immediately intrigued by what Miller might have to say on the subject, so I asked him about the role of artists in the Church. That section of our conversation didn’t make it into the print article, but I felt compelled to share it with you. Though short, I hope you find it validating and thought-provoking.
COLLIDE: What is your view on the importance of the artist’s role in the Church?
Donald Miller: It’s complicated. I think I’m not convinced the gospel can be arrived at through rational thought. I don’t think much of anything can be arrived at through rational thought that’s of great import. And all of life is performance art. It’s God’s performance art to sort of make poetic grunts back at him and say, “I’m like light, I’m like love, I’m like sheep to shepherd, I’m like king to subject.” Those are dynamics that are created by Him in order to educate us about who He is.
And so God uses art to do that, and so I feel like the Christian artist, like the secular artist, has this opportunity to point to greater truths. And the gospel exists in a realm of greater truth than what we can arrive at with a calculator. Does that make sense?
COLLIDE: Yeah, absolutely. You rattled off a few metaphors there – sheep to shepherd – and it occurs to me that we reduced that to sermon illustrations like, We’re like a precocious kid in Sunday School who said this, and that’s metaphor in large pockets of the Church. But the artist really explores metaphor and narrative far beyond the spoken word.
Miller: Yeah, and if you look at the writings of Moses you have narrative, narrative, and then he breaks into parallelism. He breaks into ancient Hebrew poetry. Job is almost fully a poem. Song of Songs is an opera heavily influenced by Solomon who’s interested in the Orient. You have artwork through the whole thing. I think Revelation is pretty trippy. I don’t know that there are any bullet points in the whole book, are there? There may be a few in building the temple.
COLLIDE: Maybe “Six things the Lord detests,” something like that.
Miller: The Ten Commandments.
COLLIDE: The fruit of the Spirit, maybe. More the exception than the norm, certainly.
Miller: Yeah, exactly, and even the fruit of the Spirit is an artistic metaphor.
So there you have it. To dig deeper into the idea of metaphor in the Bible, I believe Eugene Peterson had some things to say along those lines in his book Eat This Book: The Art of Spiritual Reading. Also, be sure to check out Miller’s A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. He doesn’t necessarily teach on metaphor, but the book is a brilliant example of its proper use. Finally, check out “Donald Miller: Storyteller” in the September/October 2009 issue of COLLIDE.
Scott McClellan is the editor of COLLIDE. Original Article is here
This is a challenge I got from a designer friend of mine Tim McMahan posted on his blog a few months back. I’ve been feeling lately like I need a jolt of creativity, so I thought I’d try it out. It was a good, fun challenge. Let me know if you try it, too.
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To Do This
1 – Go to Wikipedia. Hit “random”
or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.
2 – Go to Quotations Page and select “random quotations”
or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four or five words of the very last quote on the page is the title of your first album.
3 – Go to Flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”
or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
4 – Use Photoshop or similar to put it all together.
5 – Post it to FB with this text in the “caption” or “comment” and TAG the friends you want to join in.
(If you spend more than 5 minutes, you’re doing it wrong.)
((why couldn’t all of our school project’s have been cool like this?))
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Here’s my randomly generated, creatively branded Band Name and Album Cover:
Filed under: Ordinary Life | Tags: blogs, Calvary, creativity, design, friends
A blog carries with it a sense of personal branding. It’s like you’re saying, “this is a part of who I am, what I’m about, what I represent, and what I’m interested in sharing with everyone else.” It’s a piece of how you present yourself as a brand to whomever happens to stumble upon it. The design you choose can speak just as much about who you are as the words you write.
One of my fellow pastors at Calvary, Ryan Guard, has a great blog. He just needed a good graphic that tied in a little bit to his personality. A couple weeks ago when he made the switch to using WordPress, he sent out a plea for help for a better graphic look. I thought I’d hook him up with some simple jpeg goodness. This was the first idea that popped in my head and fortunately Ryan liked it, too. What do you think?
I wish I could get the same inspiration to make up a custom graphic for my own blog. But, I’ve got nothing. So, I’ll just stick with the cool rocks and water for now. Maybe someday creativity will strike and I can be a little more intentional about my own personal branding…
Filed under: Ordinary Life | Tags: Calvary, church, communications, creativity, friends, work, worship
Once a month, a bunch of us from Calvary get together off campus to brainstorm what we’re going to do each Sunday for our alternative worship service called Elevation. We’ve been doing this for almost 3 years now.
We just had our most recent meeting on Thursday, where we covered the rest of our current series on Nehemiah, and our Christmas series on Luke 2:21-38 called “Heaven Came Down.” I’m really excited about how our Nehemiah series is coming together and I’m equally looking forward to the unique take on Christmas, focusing on the characters of Simeon and Anna.
These meetings are always a good mixture of spiritual insight, creative juices and just plain fun. I felt extra sarcastic for some reason on Thursday, but I really do love these times and especially all these people pictured below.
After lunch, we began looking way ahead to 2009 and a series we’re going to do on the parables of Jesus. As a creative and fun experience, my communication team and I led everyone on a sheep hunt where we reenacted the parable of the lost sheep. It was over way too quick and it was mostly just a silly excuse to get everyone outside for a group photo.
The only downside of the meeting is I think someone was there who made me sick. I started feeling bad that afternoon and it’s only gotten worse. Here’s hoping I can make it through the weekend. I can’t afford to be out of commission.
Filed under: Extraordinary Life | Tags: Calvary, church, creativity, production
7 days x ( 1000 kids + 500 volunteers+3 Mad Scientists) = VBS 2008
We’ve been preparing at Calvary for the epic awesomeness that is VBS. This year we’re doing the Power Lab with all sorts of cool gadgets, trippy lighting, colorful orbs, and explosive experiments. Matt Davis is the creative genius who oversees all this chaos.
These three mad scientists will be teaching the kids about the power of Jesus all week. We’ve got a couple of segue scooters for them to get around on and plenty of stuff for them to blow up. Should be a lot of fun. We’ve had a great crew pulling together video segments about them for each day. There’s even a special segment we’ll show on Wednesday night when Calvary takes over the Discover Science Center.
Of course, one of the coolest things so far was getting a Delorean – tricked out with all the Back to the Future props – into the lobby of the Worship Center. Ryan Roehl, our multi-talented tech guy at Calvary, engineered a ramp so it could drive straight through the center doors with about an inch to spare on each side. Thanks to Victor for the photos.
It’s quite a production, but totally worth it when you see how huge of an impact this one week has on so many people’s lives. I’m glad that I get to help. If you’re free next week – it’s not to late to sign up…
I was getting tired of the look of my blog.
So, I tweaked it out a little.
I think I like it now.
What do you think?
I’ve been having some good conversations lately about the idea of excellence vs. perfection. When is it “good enough?” I think we can too often fall into the trap of striving for perfection to the point that we never really get anything done. We don’t want to be lazy and just do the bare minimum to check things off our lists, but we also don’t want to stifle creativity, innovation and production for fear of something not being absolutely perfect.
For example, we have a huge missions conference each year at Calvary and there has been an ongoing tension in regards to having it all just right. It seems like it has to be a certain way or it just won’t work. This has led to a lot of hard conversations and some compromises on both sides as we all feel the pressure to get it done in time without sacrificing the original vision.
I’ve been working on a website for a few months on and off, waiting for content and a green light from those in charge. They keep wanting it to be just right and they’re missing out on opportunities for a positive image because of it.
I have a friend who has been doing some production work lately for a large church and he was shocked to see how much they criticize every little detail and spend a ton of money to make things shine with that perfect sparkle. I think he’s wondering if he can adjust to, and thrive in, that sort of environment.
Then, I saw “Be Kind, Rewind” this week. It was far from perfect. There were huge inconsistencies in both the plot and the characters. But, it managed to capture a certain magic of the creative spirit.
Is there a balance we can reach? Especially as a creative person contributing to the Kingdom, I hope I can always have the discernment to know when to keep pushing towards excellence and to know when something is “good enough.”
