Relevance, Creativity, and God

I recently read a quote.

"God wants us to take art seriously and understand that everytime the Church creates something, it reflects on Him personally."       - Josh Loveless 

I have to say first off- that over the past  few years, I have seen a reformation in creativity in the Church.  Churches are taking creativity and making it their own, and I am so glad.  

But until then, and still in a majority of places- there isn't creativity as much as there is Copy and Paste.  See something, like something, copy something. Sometimes we give the "if it isn't broke- don't fix it" excuse.  And that works, if the copy matches standards with the original. More often than not it doesn't.  

Back when I was a youth pastor, I wanted lights in my youth room to create a "stage area".  I found a light set that was handbuilt in a closet, and set it up in a way that was meant to mimic what I had seen before.  If turned out horrible.  I put painted flood lights in them, and sat them right behind me on my guitar amp pointed directly into the eyes of students.  Looking back now, I am mortified!  But I saw something in culture that I lazily thought would be cool and "create an atmosphere", and did it poorly.  The even worse part was the the room we were in had so much potential for original creativity that I couldn't see because I was too focused on copying something else.

I'm sure you have heard a parody Christian song sometime in your life, you know- Top 40 hits with the lyrics changed to Christian themed.  I don't mean the next statement in a mean way- but when did the church become like a dad making lame jokes to his teenage kids?

Now, I also want to say- the Gospel will always be relevant.  The story of God is always relevant.  This challenge of relevancy is not on God's part- it is us.  It is the church that has slacked in staying relevant, following the wind as the speeding car of culture passes by.

We need to step it up.  Yes, notice I said WE, not the church, not you.  We are all in this together.


God wants our best.  He doesn't demand perfection from us.  He simply wants the best we can do.  So let's stop lazily stealing ideas and being even lazier in our execution of them.  We can do better than taking a poorly made lighting rig set up on a guitar amp.

Our God is the ultimate Creator.  He created everything.  Culture gets their inspiration from God.  Whether they admit it or not- it comes from God's creation.  So why are we, God's people, copying culture, taking secondhand ideas when we serve The Creator?

Let's create something new.  Let's take a risk on something original.  Let's make the ultimate Creator proud!