A couple weeks ago I preached a message working through Van Gogh’s art and the inbreaking of the Kingdom of God. It was a really fun one, partly inspired by this book.
My favorite bit was on Van Gogh’s famous Starry Night painting. Van Gogh was really intentional with his colors using blue for mystery and the infinite, and yellow for divine sacred love.
You can see how he had a real sense of earth being a reflection of heaven. The yellow holy light is laced across the fields and echoed in every little home, except one… the church.
It’s as if to say that hints of the divine are everywhere you look in all creation, but ironically Van Gogh didn’t feel that it was in the church (He was a pastor/missionary before seriously painting).
What do you think? Do you see truth in it today? How might the church regain it’s glow?
Peter Rollins has been the latest provoking button pusher for me. He looks and talks like a complete drunk on redbull, but he’s got some profound thoughts. I don’t know if this list of resources will grow as large as my Rob Bell listing, but here we go.
Here’s his wikipedia bio
Peter Rollins (born Belfast, 31st March 1973) is the founder and co-ordinator of the experimental collective Ikon. Ikon describes itself as iconic, apocalyptic, heretical, emerging and failing and engages in what it calls theodrama and ‘transformance art’.
Rollins is also a freelance philosophy lecturer, public speaker and writer who specialises in various aspects of continental philosophy, phenomenology and emerging churchtheology. He is currently a research associate with Trinity College Dublin.
If sharing Christ is a matter of communicating information, then Christians are in a lot of trouble.
It still boggles my mind that pastors can spend 30+ hours preparing for to articulate a half hour message each week.
I’m positive that no one wants to die simply knowing a lot of stuff, yet so many of us (Christians in particular) seem to often live as if we do. * Note the amount of money and time we spend on conferences, books, and other information acquiring vehicles.
Chris Anderson argues in his latest book “Free” that the future of business is free with the costs of a vast array of products rapidly declining to zero. In particular he cites how “information wants to be free”. You can get the book free here.
And information is free today. At least any insight that involves connecting to the Living God. The gospel ‘message’ is a google search away from just about anyone in the west. Whether they care to know is a whole different story.
I think what people desire today is formation, not information. Information is the easier option to deliver and receive. It can also easily deceive us into thinking we’re accumulating building-blocks to a stronger faith and life, when we’re not.
Information is a piece of the puzzle, but we’re doing ourselves, and others, a disservice when we’re fire-hosing data.
I often read the Scriptures scriptures and wonder if the people in ancient times had some other type of DNA allowing them to simply hear and believe, or discover and act. Or, maybe those we could respond the same today as well, if we weren’t so inundated with information.
What would your faith gathering look like if it didn’t center around the transmission of information?
I’m all for disrupting the status quo, but what is it in us that seems to need to rebel against those closest to us?
Like the teenager that finds herself powerless to change the system, and lives in defiance to her parents; a new order of Christians seem overly hell-bent on undermining the institutional church… and I’m often one of them.
What conflicts are you involved with today that are completely unnecessary?
I’ve got one free Thesis Framework license ($87 usd value) to give away. If you don’t know what it is, it’s a highly flexible and SEO (search engine optimized) wordpress framework / theme that helps power SolarCrash. I’ve already got a ‘developers’ license, so one lucky reader can also benefit from all that Thesis has to offer.
Just leave a comment and subscribe to this blog (enter your email in the box on the right) and I’ll randomly pick an entry in a few days.
And yes, I’ll start regularly blogging again here soon.
Wifi was severely limited Limited at the conference so no live blogging – plus I didn’t bring my laptop around with me for the first time in my life… the iPod touch did just fine.
This isn’t really a recap, I can’t sum up my thoughts well at the moment, other than it was very good.
Two images that stuck with me… below is the bucket of cash collected for a pastor who was fired in the middle of the conference – just for attending it.
This is a biking video that was shown that I think depicts the beauty that can be created with just about any art-form taken seriously, including preaching.
This is my annual call for help with projects I’m working on.
Artists – music, spoken word, drama, dance, visual arts, writing, sculpting, fashion, AV, graphic design, experience design, other random interesting talents, etc.
Leaders – creative folks with a love for the city of Toronto and a passion to see goodness spring up everywhere – visionaries, community developers, event organizers, board directors, etc.
Supporters – planning, logistics, finance, networking, research, ideating, etc.
Coders - we’re looking to expand our team of geeks for social good – below are the specifics we’re hoping for
- Experience with mySQL/PHP web application development - Abillity to quickly learn and work with 3rd party API’s, collaboration tools, and the latest web technologies - Familiarity with the Symfony framework, Facebook Clatform/Connect would be an asset
and /or
- UX/UI design experience – ability to translate PSD’s to CSS/HTML - Work with and create original designs and eye-candy – typography, Photoshop, Illustrator, etc. - jQuery/Javascript/AJAX would be highly valuable
If you or someone you know might be interested – let’s get connected!
