Groups of four were gathered and given a single styrofoam cup. Everyone was invited to communicate to one another what their hopes for the church might be.
The only catch was that they could only communicate in silence through manipulating the styrofoam cup.
What we discovered during the process…
- The simplicity of the object forced us to think of ideas that we did not have before
- There was an admiration of how people were able to creatively express themselves with the object, gesturing, positioning, tearing, ripping, shaping, and decimating it.
- Those who might not speak up otherwise, were heard
- Because people took turns to manipulate the object, we learned that quite often the reality is that we rarely are offered a clean slate. Much of our work often must be built upon the impact of others before us.
- One group thought outside the box and found my stash of additional cups. Most of us often assume that we can only work with the resources that we have been given, not what we might have ‘access’ to.
- Our community of faith is latent with ideas that have not been expressed until people had an opportunity to communicate through a different medium
I’ve been at IKEA seven times in the last eight days. I’ve found it extremely conducive for my school work, writing, scheming & dreaming. It’s got an excellent $1 breakfast, bottomless coffee or drinks, and a LACK of an internet connection.
I absolutely love having the world at my fingertips, but when it comes to my personal creativity and spiritual formation, the abundance that is offered by the internet doesn’t really help me.
There, I’ve said it. I know my wife will use this against me the rest of my life now.
There’s an interesting poster on the wall at IKEA that describes how their designers always begin by fixing a set low price before designing anything. ie. check out this simple innovation.
They say this forces their designers and engineers to be inventive and creative.
Could it be that our creativity and spirituality have been stifled because we have too much?
Here’s a great video of someone painting with simply ketchup and fries.
Continuing the series on Creativity and Spirituality, the song writers today are the prophets and poets of our time.
I think I’ve spent all my life looking for myself and God within music. My wife can attest to the number of songs I rant about endlessly in where I find faith and song converging.
Here’s just one song that rocks and speaks at the same time.
Some say love is not for sinners I believe that isn’t true ‘Cause when I was finished sinning Love came down and showed me you
And you told me how to get there So I tried to find a way Then I ran into your garden But I tripped out the gate I tripped out the gate
What are you doing to me? I’m so into you And the hardest part is knowing That I’ll never follow through You’re slowly killing me And I wish it wasn’t true Cause I’m so into you
Like a ton of bricks it hit me And woke me from this dream No matter how hard I tried to wash my hands I could never get ‘em clean I could never get ‘em clean
The dude’s clearly writing it to a girl, but do you see how it echoes the story of Christ? It highlights our complete inability to make things ‘right’ even after coming to faith. Faith is this endless journey, and there are parts in it where you ‘trip out the gate’ and find yourself lost in such beauty it’s undeniable.
Other songs people mentioned in our class included songs by K’OS, Rufus Wainwright, Edwin, Coldplay, ruben studdard, and Sarah McLachlan… anyone else got others?
Innovation is a subset of creativity. It is about taking something that exists and transforming it into something new that is equally if not more extraordinary and beautiful.
If you know anything about religious culture, it often has an ‘us’ and ‘them’ mentality. We’re the chosen few and the rest of the world is going to hell. Keep yourselves pure by staying away from the culture.
However over and over again in the Scriptures, it describes Jesus and the people of God engaging the culture. Though what they said and did at times were counter-cultural, they did it in a way that encountered-culture.
In Titus 1:12-13, Paul recites and approves the words of a pagan prophet. The book of Acts describes Paul in Athens quoting and affirming the Greek poets of the time. One would have to imagine that for Paul to do so, he must have been attentive to, studied, and reflected upon the people, the literature and art of his culture.
The Apostle Paul was an innovator.
He was able to look into the world around him. See the traces of God that was there. Re-frame it and translate it back to the culture in a way that allowed them to see the beauty and wonder of God in more rich and profound ways.
One of the assignments was to find a song on the radio (ie. not a ‘Christian” song), where you discover deep spiritual truths of God within… got any?
In Exodus, after wandering the dessert for forty-years, it describes Moses seeing something there he had not ever seen before. He encounters a bush that did not seem to ‘burn up’.
As Moses approaches he discovers God calling out to him from within the bush saying “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground” (Exodus 3:5)
How long had Moses walked through that piece of land, never realizing that it was holy?
Or the better question might be, how long had Moses been staring at that bush to realize that it was not burning up? That it wasn’t some minor forest fire, but that there was something mystical occurring?
In the book of Mark it describes a centurion standing in front of Jesus upon the cross, hearing him cry, and watching him die. After which he comes to the realization that “Surely this man was the son of God!” (Mark 15:39).
The same question applies. How long was the centurion gazing at the cross, before he realized that he was seeing God?
Could it be that God is closer than we think?
If only we took the time to really look?
The Scriptures describe this man named Jacob who after reflecting on a dream and discovers, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it.” (Genesis 28:17).
In our Creativity & Spirituality gatherings, one of our assignments was to take a digital photo or find a photo of something or somewhere we saw a glimpse God in someway. Here’s a collage of some of what came out of it.
Mine was the ‘tank man’ picture. I see God in the regular Joe that has the courage to stand against oppressive forces in the world.
So I found some old unwanted tiles underneath the deck of my friends’ home, left discarded by the previous owner.
I brought them to our creativity and spirituality class and had each student choose a tile. They were extremely grimy so they were each asked to go wash them off. As they cleaned the dirt off of the tiles they were instructed to imagine themselves as the tile being cleansed by the hands of God.
Some tables were put together with a large blue camping tarp laid over it. This again was to stimulate a fresh environment that was also conducive to creative messiness. Dollar store paint and brushes were laid out.
Somewhat inspired by Steve Taylor’s “The out of bounds church“, everyone was asked to silently reflect, imagine, and paint as I read from Genesis 1, while Moby’s track “God moving over the face of the waters” was playing. mp3 of shortened version of God moving over the face of the waters
This is what we created when we put sixteen tiles together…
