Feb 09 2009
Introduction
Imagining Church:
Seeing Hope in a World of Change
I sat in the family room near the big bay window as I worked on another pencil sketch. I squirmed atop the mohair chaise lounge that itched against my bare back. Leaning forward helped to alleviate the discomfort but made it more difficult to hold the paper on my lap. I would lean back again with my feet perched on the edge of the couch, creating a makeshift easel with my knees until the skin on my back began to crawl once more. Most of the other eight-year-old boys I knew were outside riding bikes or playing games. I was content to rock back and forth on that itchy old piece of furniture, capturing the images floating in my head and transferring them to paper. I would run to my parents to unveil my masterpieces. They loved everything I showed them, which only fueled my desire to draw all the more.
That same year someone outside the family discovered this budding Picasso. One of my mother’s friends dropped by for afternoon coffee as I busied myself at the kitchen table with a paint-by-number kit of a sailboat cast against a choppy sea. Never much for following directions, I ignored the little numbers inside each squiggly space and opted instead to paint it the way I saw it in my head. It was messy and, I would have to say, not my best work, but my mother’s friend, an art teacher, was impressed enough to convince my parents to sign me up for painting lessons. Once a week for a year I toted my art supplies three blocks to her basement studio where, with a half dozen other students, I learned the fine art of oil painting. No numbers or squiggly lines to ignore, just a blank canvas waiting to be touched by genius. I loved those lessons. Forty years later, most of the paintings from this early period still hang in the homes of my relatives across the country. The sailboat painting adorns the wall of my ninety-one-year-old grandmother’s room at a nursing home. Adjacent to it hangs my third oil painting—a rendering of long-stemmed daisies in a brass pitcher. Of all the things my Nana took from her home to bring to this place, she included my paintings. I am thrilled to know they continue to bring her joy. Though I haven’t worked in oils since that time, I can still close my eyes and imagine the pungent smell of linseed oil and paint thinner. When I completed my lessons and began painting at home, I discovered, with my parents’ help, the mediums of watercolor and acrylic. They were less smelly and messy and didn’t take nearly as long to dry, which meant I could paint faster.
I think most people can identify certain activities that help them experience the nearness of God—reading, walking along a wooded path, working a craft, meandering on the beach, serving a neighbor in need, volunteering to help the homeless, golfing on a beautiful spring morning, biking, studying Scripture, toiling in the garden, practicing spiritual disciplines, or even writing a book—these things have the potential to help us become more open to the simple presence of God. Almost any kind of artistic endeavor does that for me. It has since I was very young.
As far back as I can remember, I never had any doubt that God existed, was watching over me, loved me, and wanted me to do what was right. I am not sure it was any more complex than that. Faith was a simple, unquestioned part of my life. It seemed to become more complicated when I entered college as a religion major and then moved on to seminary to experience more heady things like higher criticism, apologetics, church dogma, and deep theological constructs. All of this capped off by six semesters of Greek and Hebrew. While these were all incredibly worthwhile experiences, somehow in the midst of them God seemed to become more distant from me. No longer a simple presence in my life, God became something to be analyzed, intellectualized, and argued over. God went from being someone I related to, in a very childlike manner to be sure, to something I thought about, picked apart, and scrutinized in a very impersonal way. I understand that all this higher learning was a necessary part of my training to be a pastor and that it was helping me think more critically about God, the church, the world, and myself. But the childlike and more heartfelt images I had of God seemed to be fading away from me, and I found that distressing. I can see now that these educational experiences were broadening the images I previously had of God and simultaneously the images I had of myself. I was learning how much imagination is a key part of spiritual growth and maturation.
From the Latin imago, to imagine means to create a mental image of something that isn’t there. Seeing something and duplicating it on paper or canvas has always been easy for me as an artist. For this reason I favor landscapes and seascapes over more contemporary abstract forms of art. But, as I have been trying to stretch myself artistically these past few years, my paintings are taking on a much more imaginative style. The colors I am choosing are much more vibrant. I am adding things that weren’t in the photos I have taken of my subject matter and changing things to suit how I would like them to be. I am exercising more of my imagination.
Imagination is one of the great gifts bestowed on us by our Creator. We are by nature imaginative people. When we sit at our favorite restaurant and peruse the menu, we look at the list of entrees, read some of the ingredients and imagine how delightful the dish will be. Our mouths may even begin to water in anticipation. As we wake up in the morning and prepare for the day, we may find ourselves imagining how we are going to lead an important meeting, work through a conflict with a coworker, or ask the boss for a promotion. When we are away from our spouses, children, or friends for any length of time, we may find ourselves imagining the kinds of things we might do when we are reunited to express how much we love them.
I recently finished a book where the author writes about spiritual friendships and neighborliness. I found myself imagining the kind of neighbor I would like to be to the people living around us. We moved into this community a little less than a year ago and it has been difficult getting to know folks because we all live such busy lives. A quick hello is the sorry extent of most of our conversations. Anyway, I have been imagining the kind of neighbor I would really like to be—one who takes a real interest in others beyond saying hello, who takes the time to get to know them by their first name, who is available to help them when they need it. I shared this with Kim a few nights ago and expressed it as something I have been praying about. Today an opportunity came to exercise my imagination into action. The neighbors who rent the home immediately behind ours got way behind in mowing their lawn. This is our rainy season in central Florida and we have to mow our lawns twice a week to keep up with the growth. For whatever reason, our neighbors haven’t mowed their lawn in well over a month. The grass was almost four feet tall. I began to think that the house was empty and that was the reason for the neglect. But at lunchtime today Kim noticed our neighbor struggling to get a lawnmower through his yard. He would take two steps and the mower would choke and die. Pulling the clumped grass from under the mower he would start it up once more, take two steps, and it would die again. My son Jake and I went over to him and offered our help. I told him Jake was trying to save money for a car and would be glad to mow his lawn on a regular basis for a very reasonable fee. He hired Jake to help him and I decided to assist them with our mower. In less than an hour we had his lawn under control again. Our neighbor was extremely grateful. It wasn’t until we were finished and I was soaking in our pool that it hit me—I had become the neighbor I imagined myself to be.
When we can imagine—form a mental image of something that is not there—and work toward making it become a reality we are cocreators with God. The new church Kim and I are helping our denomination start will begin meeting for weekly worship in just a few months. I find myself in quieter moments closing my eyes and imagining how the people who come on Sunday mornings to worship will relate to each other. I imagine them milling around the room greeting each other with hugs and handshakes. I imagine a room full of people who are open, welcoming, and accepting of everyone. No one is sitting by himself or herself or standing alone in a corner. I hear lots of laughter and I see bright genuine smiles. I see and hear authentic love in action. I am using the gift of imagination to form a strong mental image of something that does not yet exist. I know the power of that imagination will color how I and members of my staff will plan worship, establish an environment with lighting and music, work on the flow of the room, and even decide what kinds of refreshments we will serve. Imagination is a godly and powerful thing.
For me to effectively serve God in and through the church requires abundant imagination and creativity. I am grateful, by God’s grace, to know that the fruitfulness of my ministry does not depend on my having all the resources and wherewithal to do anything significant for God. At best I am called to step into the flow of God’s activity and, using the gifts he has given me, cooperate in his work. For me this necessarily includes regular occasions for quiet prayer when I take time to imagine how God is working and see myself in partnership with him.
Kim and I had a seminary professor, Dr. Munson, who used to say of preaching and teaching, “If you can’t see it, neither will anyone else.” Until I imagine, until I have a picture in mind of what I believe the church is and ought to be, it will be darn near impossible for me to help anyone else imagine church. If I can’t see it, neither will they.
Imagining church, we believe, is a shared experience. I used to think that my role as a pastoral leader was to discern God’s vision, God’s imagination of the church, and tender it to everyone else. People, I believed, would be waiting for me to come down whatever mountain I had been on to deliver the word from God. Eyes popping, mouths salivating, hearts pounding, they would be awash in anticipation for the picture of what God imagines for us. Silly me!
Our new congregation was only one year into its journey when I decided to gather our leaders for a Saturday morning event designed to cast my vision for the church. My intent was to indoctrinate this first tier of leadership in the ways of my carefully thought-out five-year plan for ministry. “They’re going to be so impressed with this!” I remember thinking to myself. “This will convince the yet unconvinced that this is a worthy project to invest themselves in.” I had neatly ordered notebooks for each participant, replete with slick four-color inserts in the front. I arranged the tables in the room so they formed a giant U shape. I would stand in the opening of the U so as to see and be seen by each person. The notebooks were placed neatly on the tables alongside a brand new pen. Every table had a pitcher of water and a bowl of assorted candies. It was a professional setup! Gradually people straggled in and found their seats. At exactly ten o’clock I greeted the group and opened with prayer. A few latecomers arrived, filling in the holes around the tables. I stopped and greeted the group again. Soon two more people arrived. I paused while they found their seats. Feeling a little flustered by this staggered start I took a long, deep breath and began again. I invited everyone to open the notebooks and follow along as I reviewed each section, beginning with our vision statement. I asked everyone to read it aloud with me. They did and without much energy. I encouraged them to do it again with a little more enthusiasm. They obliged. I pressed on dissecting the statement phrase by phrase for added emphasis, offering quick commentary about why I felt each phrase was particularly important. They weren’t seeing it and I could see they weren’t seeing it. I found myself kicking into salesman mode espousing all the reasons I felt it was a good vision and right for our church. They didn’t seem to be buying it. I tried harder—which for an extroverted feeler means—talk about it more and more and more until they are convinced. They weren’t. I eventually stopped to ask for questions. There were none. I had explained the vision so thoroughly that in so doing had sucked all the life completely out of it. In the end the group remained uninspired and, honestly, I was beginning to feel that way too.
What went wrong? In retrospect probably a lot of things. For starters I didn’t give people time to introduce themselves to each other. I was so focused on giving them the right information that I neglected to think about how they might be formed relationally by this experience. My wife would tell me that my presentation style was so heavily auditory that I ignored the needs of the more visual and kinesthetic-style learners. Another mistake I tend to make, even now when I lead discussions, is I answer questions that haven’t even been asked. In short, information overload. But I think the real crux of the problem was simply this—I never invited them to share whatever God-inspired picture they had of our church. Because my approach didn’t appeal to their prayerful and playful imaginations, they were left to consider only my monochromatic snapshot of the church.
Sadly, this kind of encounter gets repeated too often in our churches. I could say that church leaders tend to the business of the church much in the same way the corporations some of our members belong to care for their business. The truth is that many of these “secular” businesses conduct themselves with far more imagination and creativity than our churches. And we are the ones who claim relationship with the Master Designer, Chief Architect, and Greatest Creator there ever was or ever will be!
Through the pages of this book, Kim and I won’t be asking you to color inside the lines we have drawn or buy into our ideas of what the church is or should be. We will invite you to use your imagination to consider how God is at work in your present ministry context and open yourself anew to the Spirit of God—the Divine Artist—who is ready to fuel your desire to be the creative artist you are meant to be for the sake of the church. You won’t have to squirm on a mohair couch or form an easel with your knees. The tools you need are already in your head and heart. So, let’s begin!