Man I love people that have a sense of humor. People take themselves too serious sometimes. I came across a story about a campaign taking place in a suburb of Chicago. (notice, they are rethinking their approach, but the message is still STOP)
“I thought it might make people smile and take notice,” Mayor Dave Heilmann said as he launched the campaign Friday. “You’ve got people on their cell phones, their BlackBerries and iPods while driving. Those are all distractions. Hopefully, when they see a sign they’re not expecting it might make them stop.”
And that got me thinking again…
Why don’t we take that same creativity and put it to use in the church? How many cars stream past our churches on Sunday and never think twice about stopping and seeing what it’s all about. We’re so worried about petty differences and what color the new carpet will be that we’ve stopped truly caring about reaching people. Granted, I know that there are many churches who are truly reaching out with the life giving message of Jesus Christ, but for the most part – we’re missing the reality of what Jesus called us to do, and who He called us to be.
If you know me, you know that one of my big beefs with the church right now is that so many pastors and preachers and trying to make the Message (The Word of God) relevant. They forget that it’s not the message that needs changing, but it’s our approach – how we communicate that message. The Word of God is ALWAYS relevant, it speaks to every issue in our lives, but we don’t want to admit to the fact that WE might be the ones who aren’t relevant.
As a pastor and communicator, the one thing I always try to communicate is that I’m no better than anyone else, I’m human, I sin (often) and I wrestle with the same things that everyone else does. When I first moved out to Phoenix, I heard from people in the community “you aren’t a typical pastor” and at first I took offense to that, but as I spent some time thinking about what they were really saying I realized what a compliment that was.
We serve a creative God, we are creations of a creative God. Within each one of us lies that spark of creativity, and it just needs a little breath to fan it into flames. I pray today you’ll color outside the lines a little, open your eyes as you’re driving around – and realize just how creative our God is. (that’ll preach!)
Click on the thumbnails to see the larger pics.
