When did God get boring?
I've been thinking about creativity lately. Ever since I had the opportunity to come on staff with Illuminate Magazine, a literary journal we publish here at WWU, I find myself regularly challenged with new and exciting ways in which God chooses to present Himself. Over the years, it's become increasingly impossible for me to find God to be droll. I think, though, that I don't share this voewpoint with a great many people.
If I may; an exploration on how many people view the concept of "worship," specifically the "to God" variety.
One enters a building (be it large or small) and sees two distinct groups of people, one quite genuinely excited to be present, and another largely ambivalent towards the experience as a whole. After moving amongst these groups, one enters into a particular room, in which a ritual takes place. This ritual, whatever it may consist of, is quite similar from week to week. If that description seemed, I don't know, boring (as it did to me), that's because tragically this is the case for many worship services across the nation. Even more tragic, I find that a good deal of people find this same experience to be characteristic of all manner of settings focused on God:
Personal Devotion: Boring
Small Group: Trés Boring
Opportunities for Service: Good for a time, but after a while? Boring (Oh look, a trend!)
Though I have a hard time relating to this experience (as I've simply been blessed with some wonderfully engaging communities), I think at some point anyone involved in a church community has either experienced or heard this lament from someone they know.
The most saddening thing about this predicament is that God's character represents the antithesis of our experience. Here are some things I come up with off the top of my head, examples of God's astounding creativity.
The World
Billions upon billions of unique personalities embodied in people over millennia.
The Tabernacle (take a look at Exodus, that thing is amazing).
My personal favorite: The narrative of scripture as a whole. Sure, it comes in a bunch of different books, but taken together it represents one single love story told over thousands of years. Absolutely beautiful, and fantastically creative.
The thing that strikes me about each of these examples is that God didn't wait for anyone's permission to start being creative. No one came along and said, "Okay God, we (the ever-ominous committee) have decided things need to be spiced up a bit." He just went ahead and did it. I think we could do with a bit of that initiative.
But wait, we wonder, we're not God. How are we supposed to start being creative on that kind of a scale?
I'm not saying that each of us needs to go and make our own planet. In fact, don't do that, I would miss you all. No planet making. What would be good, however, is if each of us stopped waiting for something to come along and tell us how to do things in a new and creative way. If our church is boring, why do we just sit there and take it? God isn't boring, so why should His church be? Let's start being bold and making suggestions on how we can make things better. If we can't stay awake through our own devotional times, why do we keep doing the same thing day in and day out, expecting different results?
I've been thinking a lot on this lately, and I think I'm going to keep thinking on it. I'm going to give this whole "series" thing a try. For the next while, we'll look at the different areas of our life, and try to explore ways we can make them more creative. Maybe this'll work, maybe it won't. But isn't that what being creative is all about, trying something in the hopes that things will be better than they were before? With this in mind, I cordially invite all of you to join me on my journey to reconnect with God's creativity. Let's make worshipping Him interesting again.
With His love and grace,
Taylor
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