Willow Arts Conference (or: On Excellence)
June 19th, 2006I spent Thursday and Friday at the Willow Creek Arts Conference. (Afterward, Dave and I visited the Art Institute of Chicago. He has some great pics on his blog.) I’ve never been to Willow before, and I was really impressed. Sure, their campus is huge and beautiful, but I was even more impressed by visiting a church that is doing things excellently in the technical and artistic realms—a church that intentionally values artists and the arts. For a while it made me wish I had ginormous technical and artistic budgets so I could do big expensive things and entice lots of talented people to get involved… but when I came to my senses I felt uber-sheepish for believing, even for a minute, that excellence is directly proportional to budget size.
After thinking about it, I have two things to say about this.
First: While excellence is not dependent on budgets, a local church’s overall level of commitment to communicating effectively and excellently with all kinds of people is reflected in the resources (time, attention, people, money, etc.) they are willing to put into promoting artistic excellence. For example, it’s expensive but worth it to hire a qualified staff member who is dedicated to overseeing and promoting visual arts and visual communication in the church. (This would greatly benefit the reaching and teaching of highly visual (image-centric) people whose eyes really are the windows to their soul. By the way, those people now comprise a formidible—and growing—percentage of the population, which is a topic for another post.) (Sorry for all the parentheses in this paragraph.)
Second: while a lot of us might be doing things more excellently if we had budgets the size of a small country and a veritable army of professional-level volunteers, I think often this is just an excuse for failing to be as content and profitable as I should be with what I have been given. An incisive, well-acted drama or a meaningful, skillfully-created painting can be excellent regardless of the budget provided. In the “parable of the talents”, Jesus was just as happy with the $2,000,000-doubling steward as he was with the $5,000,000-doubling steward. They both increased what they had been given by using it wisely, offered it all back to their master, and were rewarded identically.
I suppose my point is that excellence itself is a direction, not a destination, and is not dependent on the extensiveness of our resources. This isn’t a new revelation, of course. it’s just a reminder, mostly to myself, that God-honoring excellence is based on 1) giving my best to God as an act of worship, and 2) striving balencedly (?) for continued growth toward a better best. That’s half the issue. But there are times when the intensity of excellence (for lack of a better term) has the potential to be far greater, yet is hindered by lack of resources. There is potential excellence that can blaze at great intensity for the kingdom of God if it is realized, and usually it takes resources and sacrifice for the intensity of that excellence to increase.
Hmm. When this post started, I was just going to write about my kitchen. Apparently something else needed to be let out of my head.
Thoughts? Comments?
T~
I read your musings and then began reading Worship by the Book, edited by D.A. Carson and came across this quote. I don’t share it to correct your perspective, because I feel like I know you heart. I share it to throw a little fuel on the fire of this posting.
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Although there are things that can be done to enhance corporate worship, there is a profound sense in which excellent worship cannot be attained merely by pursuing excellent worship. In the same way that according to Jesus, you cannot find yourself until you lose yourself, so also you cannt find excellent corporate worship until you stop trying to find excellent corporate worship and pursue God himself. Despite the protestations, one sometimes wonders if we are beginning to worship worship rather than worship God. As a brother put it to me, it’s a bit like those who begin by admiring the sunset and soon begin to admire themselves admiring the sunset. (pp. 30-31)
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~b
While it’s true to a degree, what he says, Carson in general likes to position himself against pretty much anything that challenges the established way of things. There are alot of pastors out there who are very satisfied with their plodding, unimaginitive and often unsuccesful ministries to the lost because of this kind of thinking; they like to spiritualize their lack of excellence and lack of cultural sensitivity and define it is “more authentic” worship because its boundaries are loose or because there are low(or no) “production values.” Or because “people are more important than production,’ which is not a lie but a distortion of principle used, again, to justify a lack of concern for things such as artistic expression. Excellence-focused ministry and people-focused ministry are not antonymns. Further, when we do things not only well but with a mind for what will be effective in getting the world’s attention (yes, our worhsip should be getting the world’s attention), we are often better placed to succceed in reaching people. To be fair, you have to have both. Churches that focus on excellence in worship but do not have a heart for God do not succeed in the long-run. But another unfair assertion that many people who stand against churches like Willow make is that these churches must not really care about people. Willow would not have grown the way it has if the leadership and the people were not consumed with reaching and ministering to the lost.
So yes, don’t “worship worship,” but don’t spiritualize sloppiness or failure either. Doing things “low key” does not guarantee intimacy or spiritual tingles, and doing things poorly (with relation to what you’ve got) is sinful.