Half-Formed Imaginations
I think the greatest threat to the future of the church is a failure of our God-given imaginations. The church ought to be the most imaginative place on the planet. Imagination is part of the imago Dei. To have the mind of Christ is to imagine like the one who originally imagined everything that is. No one should be more imaginative than Spirit-filled Christ followers!
C.S. Lewis is the patron saint of whole-brain preachers.
Can you think of anyone in the last century who was more left-brain logical? His theological writings, from Mere Christianity to The Problem of Pain, are as logical as logic can be. But Lewis combined left-brain logic with right-brain creativity. The Chronicles of Narnia series has captured the imagination of children since it was written.
Lewis once referred to himself as the most reluctant convert in all of Christendom. The night before his conversion, Lewis had a long conversation with J.R.R. Tolkien, the novelist who wrote the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Tolkien tried to convince Lewis of the credibility of Christ, but Lewis was full of objections. At one point, Tolkien countered Lewis' objections by saying: Your inability to understand stems from a failure of imagination on your part!
Maybe lack of faith is really a failure of imagination?
In his book, The Celtic Way, Ian Bradley writes about the celebration of the imagination in the Celtic tradition.
Celtic Christianity may offer us a lifeline in the form of an approach to faith which is rooted in imagination. Too many Christians today, brought up on the penny plain prose favoured by Rome and even more by the Reformers, have half-formed imaginations.
God wants to sanctify our imaginations and use them for his purposes!
There are ways of doing church that no one has thought of yet.
There are ways of preaching that no one has thought of yet.
That is some of the inspiration behind the Right-Brain Preaching Seminar.
Fired up about tag-teaming with Nelson Searcy and The Journey Church. We're hosting two seminars on October 19 @ Ebenezers, our coffeehouse on Capitol Hill. Journey is doing a seminar on assimilation. We're doing a seminar on right-brain preaching.
Here's a link if you want to sign-up.
Look forward to doing some kingdom dreaming with you!
C.S. Lewis is the patron saint of whole-brain preachers.
Can you think of anyone in the last century who was more left-brain logical? His theological writings, from Mere Christianity to The Problem of Pain, are as logical as logic can be. But Lewis combined left-brain logic with right-brain creativity. The Chronicles of Narnia series has captured the imagination of children since it was written.
Lewis once referred to himself as the most reluctant convert in all of Christendom. The night before his conversion, Lewis had a long conversation with J.R.R. Tolkien, the novelist who wrote the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Tolkien tried to convince Lewis of the credibility of Christ, but Lewis was full of objections. At one point, Tolkien countered Lewis' objections by saying: Your inability to understand stems from a failure of imagination on your part!
Maybe lack of faith is really a failure of imagination?
In his book, The Celtic Way, Ian Bradley writes about the celebration of the imagination in the Celtic tradition.
Celtic Christianity may offer us a lifeline in the form of an approach to faith which is rooted in imagination. Too many Christians today, brought up on the penny plain prose favoured by Rome and even more by the Reformers, have half-formed imaginations.
God wants to sanctify our imaginations and use them for his purposes!
There are ways of doing church that no one has thought of yet.
There are ways of preaching that no one has thought of yet.
That is some of the inspiration behind the Right-Brain Preaching Seminar.
Fired up about tag-teaming with Nelson Searcy and The Journey Church. We're hosting two seminars on October 19 @ Ebenezers, our coffeehouse on Capitol Hill. Journey is doing a seminar on assimilation. We're doing a seminar on right-brain preaching.
Here's a link if you want to sign-up.
Look forward to doing some kingdom dreaming with you!
2 Comments:
Wow. You are on fire this morning! I love it. Faith is about suspending disbelief and chasing the lion! First definition in the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary:
the act or power of forming a mental image of something not present to the senses or never before wholly perceived in reality.
I believe that faith, brought about by the power of the Spirit, is exactly that exercise of imagination.
It's a challenge to work in a church as someone who values creativity, imagination and trying new things when everyone else would rather just feel comfortable in the slump of this thing they call "church."
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