My Second Thought....

In case you are wondering, it took some time to gather “my second thought”. For the past few weeks it has been sitting in my brain incomplete longing to come to fruition. It has now reached maturity and evolved to the point where it is bursting forth anticipating an exposure to the world on this here blog. This "second thought" was birthed while I was training at work where I was forced to watch the “Fish Philosophy” movie. Now, I have seen this short flick many times so (as you can imagine) I wasn’t filled with much joy and excitement over it. In fact, I was honestly contemplating closing my eyes to take a short nap. But if I did this I would not only garner the attention of my trainer, I would also wake up her sleeping child (6 months old) in the back corner. So, I stayed awake and to my surprise I learned something new. However, it had nothing to do with “choosing my attitude”, “playing”, “being there”, and “making there day” all of which are equally important and communicated through the “Fish” movie as it chronicles the lives of the workers at The World Famous Pikes Place Fish Market in Seattle, Washington.

What I leaned was this: creativity matters! In the segment on “play” in the movie one of the workers can be quoted as saying. “If you copy us you are stuck…The fact that you are copying us, doing what we are doing, signifies that you are stuck and lack creativity…. (paraphrased a bit)” Wow, what a statement; what a statement full of implications and insight for the church today. This is why - there are those in the church who copy and duplicate a structure or program from another church in hopes that it reproduces and garners the same result in their present situation. Let me share an example to illustrate what I am talking about.

Church A in Portland desires to expand and increase one of its programs. In so doing, they research and read about church B in Sacramento that has been successful doing what Portland longs to do. Because church A has a result oriented approach (yes, this even happens in the church) they simply COPY the structure and program from church B in Sacramento. In COPYING everything from the church in Sacramento the church in Portland neglects laying the necessary foundation that is critical to such a program. (This critical information could be demographic information, specific cultural patterns, church members, church member patters, ethnic information, and the like.) Church A is also acknowledging that they lack creativity and the intestinal fortitude to get on their knees to seek God’s answers and ways instead of other mans successful (or failed) attempts. In such a situation, the answer is not to COPY another church but, it is to seek God’s guidance as he (through the power of the Holy Spirit) provides fresh and divine insight, releasing a new found creativity to reach the world we live in.

In closing, I want to leave you with the following quote because it is this quote that completed my "second thought", bringing me to the point of sharing this with you. In his book Surprised by Hope, N.T. Wright mentions the following as he explains what the connection should be between hope, the church, and creativity.

"The church, because it is the family that believes in hope for new creation, should be the place in every town and village where new creativity bursts forth for the whole community, pointing to the hope that, like all beauty, always comes as a surprise."