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Friday, July 29, 2016

Making Things Up

Remember in Raiders of the Lost Ark when Sallah asks Indy what his plan is, and he says, “I don’t know – I’m making this up as I go?”

Henry Jones, Jr. had goals, but at that point, he had no plan for how to accomplish them.


I can relate.

I don’t have a clue what I’m doing, and haven’t since that fateful day when I became convinced that God was calling me to write, and that he might be asking me to leave my comfortable, secure job to do so. My book, To Do This Right, largely deals with the struggle of someone who dislikes uncertainty (me) coming to terms with not having a plan.

But apparently I’m a glutton for punishment, because I recently started an arts ministry at my church, and I have no clue how to do that, either. I have the vision, sure, but a plan for executing it? Lol.

Wednesday, July 20, 2016

What's the Point?

I recently started an arts ministry at my church. Our slogan: Creative Community for the Glory of God.

Here's how it came about:

I was talking with my pastor, and I mentioned off-hand that I wished there was some sort of community in the church for artists.* To my surprise, he jumped up and took off, leading me on a tour of the church, rhapsodizing about all the hallways that were perfect for displaying art. He suggested that I might be just the person to start an arts ministry there at the church.

That unexpected idea sat on the back burner of my brain for a few months, and I thought, why not? I spent a few weeks jotting down ideas - turns out I had a lot of them. I wrote up a proposal** and sent it off to the pastor.


Before I knew it, I had an arts ministry, and no idea how to get it up and running.

Our first meeting was a complete bust. No one showed up, and no one was there to unlock the meeting room for me, either. A perfect failure to communicate had occurred.

I’d been praying about this ministry, and I’d gotten nothing but green lights from God and my pastor, but there were, and continue to be, a myriad of tiny little, nobody’s-fault roadblocks.^ That night, as I got into my car to drive home, I was filled with joy in a way I’ve never experienced before and can’t describe – it was definitely from God. I drove home singing, utterly comforted in the face of what should have been a discouraging failure.

Fast-forward a few months. We’ve had our first real meeting, and people actually came. Yesterday I was talking with someone about an upcoming event, and they asked me about the purpose of the activity. As I stuttered out a response, I realized I hadn’t thought about my elevator pitch, and in the face of being unable to express the justification, I began to doubt the validity of the activity, myself. Today, I realized two things about that.


First, I remembered that when I first came up with the idea, I could communicate the reasons behind it very clearly. I'd lost sight of that, but for some reason, as I listened to this Sara Groves song, I remembered.




Subsequently, I was struck by an analogy. I had reasons for proposing this event, and they were good, well-thought-out reasons. But I had spent so much time in the trenches of preparation, I’d lost track of that bigger picture.

This happens in life, too. We Christians have reasons for what we believe, and they are good, sound reasons. But we get so caught up in daily life, or the minutiae of doctrine, that when someone asks us a reason for the hope that is in us, we find ourselves unprepared to give them an answer (1 Peter 3:15). We need to remember the big picture of what we really believe.

But how do we keep what really matters at the forefront of our minds in the midst of all the chaos of living?

As a nearly life-long Christian, I can tell you this: You have to spend time with God.

If I want to be close to God, I have to read my Bible, and I have to pray, regularly and sincerely.*^ This is simply a fact, and one I've learned over and over again. As part of my efforts to take my calling to be a Disciple seriously, I recently started memorizing scripture again. I haven't done it in ages, and I found it difficult, just like memorizing a poem for class last year was difficult. Then I remembered that I, like so many others, am great at memorizing words if they're set to music (i.e. songs). So I started making up tunes for the verses I picked. So far, I've learned five verses this way, and I've had fun doing it!


You see, art is great at helping us remember things; it helps us focus our attention on something in a memorable way. And that is what we want to do at Lake Bible Arts. We want to use our gifts to point people to Jesus. We want our creations to remind our brothers and sisters of their great Creator, and we want the beauty of our work to serve as a counterpoint to the darkness of the world. Above all else, we want to present the works of our hands as a pleasing sacrifice to our Lord.

That is the purpose of our arts ministry, and that must be the purpose of every activity we undertake. That is Creative Community for the Glory of God.




*This was actually a really deep-seated longing of my heart.

**I don’t know if I did that because of the organizational genes I got from my dad, or because of the comfort with formality I learned in the Air Force.

^Well, sometimes it's my fault...

*^ People balk at the idea of a daily Bible time, calling it legalism. It’s nothing of the sort. Legalism is believing that in order to go to heaven, you have to do X. Committing to daily time spent in the Word isn’t legalism; it’s logic. How can I expect to know God and live in a way that honors him if I don't know what he’s said to us?


Sunday, July 17, 2016

Chasing Squirrels

I am not a person who enjoys uncertainty. In middle school, when my English teacher assigned us an essay with no page length-, margin-, or font requirements, I was that kid who kept saying, “Yes, but how long should it be?”

I recently attended a ladies’ event at my church. There was socializing, singing, desserts, and a guest speaker named Ashley Larkin, who had us fill out a worksheet about how we operate when we lose sight of God. One of the items was how we distract ourselves. I wrote: YouTube videos, being busy, Facebook, Sudoku. And that’s just the start.

I’m pretty good at distracting myself. When I contemplated writing this post, for instance, I suddenly got the urge to play a computer game. Thankfully, God tapped me on the shoulder a few minutes in and pointed out what I was doing.

I don’t know that I lose sight of God so much as I avoid him. He’s right there – I know it, and I can see him just fine, thanks. He’s been making himself quite conspicuous, really. I can also see the spotlight shining on that thing he wants me to do. But I can think of about five million other things I could do between here and there; I’m pretty much the guy who said, “Suffer me first to go and bury my father” (Luke 9:59 KJV).

It’s not that I don’t know what’s expected of me, in a general sense. But I don’t know the particulars of what, and I certainly don’t know the how. To a certain extent, I’ve been wrestling with this self-inflicted tension since God first called me to write in 2013, but it’s been a huge part of my life in 2016.

This is where Ginny Owens comes in.

For the uninitiated, Ginny Owens is a Christian singer/songwriter. I've been listening to her music since 2005, but it was just a few months ago that I went to her website for the first time. I ended up getting into her blog, which is really good. This week, she posted a gem (which explains the title of my post) about how she overcomes distractions in her life. She ends by inviting readers to share their own “creative ways to conquer distraction.”

Cue conviction - I don't have any methods for conquering distraction.

When I first came to terms with my calling, I was very motivated. My life had quite a bit of structure in it, due to a full-time job, so I just started doing the writing in the evenings after work, and with a great deal of discipline. Even after I left my job to pursue writing more seriously, I remained pretty on-task until I finally self-published my poetry book, To Do This Right. That was a huge goal I’d been working toward for over a year, but once I had accomplished it, I didn’t know what to do next. So I sort of didn’t do anything.

That’s an uncomfortable state to be living in, and I’ve been there for a year and a half. But I've finally set off for that spotlight and the thing it's illuminating; I still don't know how to get there or what I'll find, but I'm going.

Back to that ladies’ event at church: I happened to start writing a poem that night, before I even knew what Ashley would be speaking about. I got two stanzas down, and I’ve been working on it here and there in the intervening days. I finally finished it as I wrote this blog. It starts like this:

      I’ve been obsessed with the silliest dreams –
           the stupidest schemes
           the most harmful things.

So you can see how it’s related. Perhaps I never would have been able to finish it if I hadn’t logged off my computer game and sat down to write this post:

      I’ve finally started to step out in blindness –
           the absence of silence
           reveals lovingkindess.

Here I go stumblin’…


I am not a person who enjoys uncertainty. In middle school, when my English teacher assigned us an essay with no page length-, margin-, or font requirements, I was that kid who kept saying, “Yes, but how long should it be?”

I recently attended a ladies’ event at my church. There was socializing, singing, desserts, and a guest speaker named Ashley Larkin, who had us fill out a worksheet about how we operate when we lose sight of God. One of the items was how we distract ourselves. I wrote: YouTube videos, being busy, Facebook, Sudoku. And that’s just the start.
I’m pretty good at distracting myself. When I contemplated writing this post, for instance, I suddenly got the urge to play a computer game. Thankfully, God tapped me on the shoulder a few minutes in and pointed out what I was doing.

I don’t know that I lose sight of God so much as I avoid him. He’s right there – I know it, and I can see him just fine, thanks. He’s been making himself quite conspicuous, really. I can also see the spotlight shining on that thing he wants me to do. But I can think of about five million other things I could do between here and there; I’m pretty much the guy who said, “Suffer me first to go and bury my father” (Luke 9:59 KJV).
It’s not that I don’t know what’s expected of me, in a general sense. But I don’t know the particulars of what, and I certainly don’t know the how. To a certain extent, I’ve been wrestling with this self-inflicted tension since God first called me to write in 2013, but it’s been a huge part of my life in 2016.
This is where Ginny Owens comes in.

For the uninitiated, Ginny Owens is a Christian singer/songwriter. I've been listening to her music since 2005, but it was just a few months ago that I went to her website for the first time. I ended up getting into her blog, which is really good. This week, she posted a gem (which explains the title of my post) about how she overcomes distractions in her life. She ends by inviting readers to share their own “creative ways to conquer distraction.”
Cue conviction - I don't have any methods for conquering distraction.

When I first came to terms with my calling, I was very motivated. My life had quite a bit of structure in it, due to a full-time job, so I just started doing the writing in the evenings after work, and with a great deal of discipline. Even after I left my job to pursue writing more seriously, I remained pretty on-task until I finally self-published my poetry book, To Do This Right. That was a huge goal I’d been working toward for over a year, but once I had accomplished it, I didn’t know what to do next. So I sort of didn’t do anything.
That’s an uncomfortable state to be living in, and I’ve been there for a year and a half. But I've finally set off for that spotlight and the thing it's illuminating; I still don't know how to get there or what I'll find, but I'm going.

Back to that ladies’ event at church: I happened to start writing a poem that night, before I even knew what Ashley would be speaking about. I got two stanzas down, and I’ve been working on it here and there in the intervening days. I finally finished it as I wrote this blog. It starts like this:
             I’ve been obsessed with the silliest dreams –
                       the stupidest schemes
                       the most harmful things.
So you can see how it’s related. Perhaps I never would have been able to finish it if I hadn’t logged off my computer game and sat down to write this post:
             I’ve finally started to step out in blindness –
                       the absence of silence
                       reveals lovingkindess.

Here I go stumblin’…