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Note: The personal essay below is most of this podcast episode. You may either listen or read. Your choice!
As I’ve attempted to move toward a more regular pattern of writing, I’ve decided to change the name of this Substack newsletter and also change the name and essentially re-launch my podcast. Both will now be called “Faithfully Creative.”
My aim is to stay on the same trajectory that I’ve been on—writing and speaking about creativity, imagination, faith, spirituality, theology, God. The banner of “Faithfully Creative” is broad enough to encompass all of this, but hopefully it will provide a bit of focus as well.
Before I lay out some specifics, I have a small confession, and then a bit of a personal story.
First, the confession…
As I look back on my life, a lot of the time I have been reluctantly creative. It may not seem like that to the outsider looking in. But the outsider can’t really see fully in, can they? They can’t see my hesitancy, fear, my almost-devotion to second-guessing.
I’ve been in this world long enough to know know that imposter syndrome is real and won’t ever fully go away. I also know that I do better when I lean into creativity. I am more fully alive when I engage in creative practice. I am most myself when I have regular occasions to explore something new.
This confession is reason enough to call this newsletter and associated podcast “Faithfully Creative.” The name is aspirational for me. I want to be less reluctant and more faithful toward the creative call.
I promised you a story…
I was a very shy kid and teenager. I certainly never would have wanted to be on a stage and yet when I look back I am surprised by the stages I ended up on.
My entire grade nine english class had to be in the play. Our teacher, Ms. Peterson, wrote it with some help from William Shakespeare. It was called “The Shakespearean Spell,” and it had two modern-day narrators who provided the thread that strung together scenes from various Bard plays that featured the supernatural.
We, of course, had the witches from Macbeth and Hamlet’s ghost. A Midsummer Night’s Dream provided comic relief. I can still remember my friend having to play the part of Bottom and kind of loving it, especially the scene where he got affectionate attention from Titania. I ended up having two roles from different plays. Other than my horror at having to perform in front of actual people, I was basically okay being Hamlet. I wasn’t as thrilled to play Oberon who is dubbed “king of the fairies.” I was shocked that my fellow mid-1990s teen thespians didn’t make more innapropriate jokes than they did.
After the rousing success of the grade nine play, a few of my friends got the acting bug. At least I think they did ,because in grade ten and eleven they went about pressuring the same english teacher to let us do more.
We did a read through of “The Lady’s Not for Burning” by Tom Stoppard but I can’t remember putting it on. We did end up performing scenes from “The Princess Bride.” We chose the part where the man in black bests the swordsman, the giant, and the so-called smart one. I got to play the “smart one” who lost to the man in black in the battle of wits to the death, a role played in the movie by a short bald guy. Perfect for my lanky fifteen-year-old almost 6 foot 3 frame. Still, this one was fun.
In grade eleven, we put on “As You like It.” More Shakespeare!
Anyone in the school could audition for “As You like It,” but the cast was mostly my friends. I perhaps should mention here that I never saw myself as the centre of my friend group. I was by far the most reserved out of all of them. But, I was also the only one out of all of them who sang. I’d always been in the school choir, I had sung in church, and my family sang together, The Beatles and “The Sound of Music” on long road trips most memorable.
I had sung some solos before with school choir and I hadn’t yet died on the spot, so I put my name in for the part of Amiens, the singer. He had barely any lines besides two songs. That suited me just fine. A very minor part was perfect for me.
Two people who were not part of my friend group were cast as Orlando, the lead. They would act in the role on two nights each of a four night run. At least that was the plan. A number of weeks into rehearsals and the two male leads had only shown up a handful of times. Something about hockey practices and prior commitment to the team.
Ms. Peterson (still the same teacher) came to me and asked if I would take on the role of Orlando. Every fibre of my being said no. But somehow my mouth didn’t translate what the fibre of my being was screaming. In fact, my mouth didn’t say much of anything while the gracious and ever-encouraging Ms. Peterson went on to tell me that she thought I would do an excellent job.
Somehow, at the end of our conversation, I was the new lead, and with no understudy that I can remember. I would go on all four nights. I think I enjoyed it. Mostly, I remember being terrified.
In grade 12, with all this acting experience under my belt, I was determined to be in the high school musical. Our school hadn’t done a full production musical in a few years, but there was finally going to be one. I had seen my older sisters be in them and for me they were on par with professional theatre.
I was hoping for something really good like our family favourite, “The Sound of Music.” And then the word came that we’d be doing “Grease.” There were screams of delight mostly from the soprano section of choir. I was horrified. I hated that musical. I rationalized that I had some moral qualms about it, but I think I was really masking my fear.
I could see myself as a good Captain von Trapp—refined, serious, basically having to just stand there most of the time while Maria and the kids did all the dancing. Sure, there was a bit of a romantic part, and then a little bit of child-like joy toward the end, but he wasn’t the real lead, and it was all very controlled, subtle. There was nothing subtle about being a greaser. That wasn’t me at all.
I decided, though, that “I would always regret it” if I wasn’t in the musical in my grade 12 year. So I auditioned, hoping to get a small role just so I could always remember the experience of being in the high school musical. They got everyone to sing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” rather than something from “Grease.” That was good, except maybe it wasn’t, because I could sing the “Wizard of Oz” song no problem and actually sound good.
It never really occurred to me that I could turn down a role once offered. So, that was it. I was the lead again, but this time it was Danny Zuko. I had to grow my hair long for the role throughout the year, and I actually ended up letting it grow even longer after I graduated. In my first few years of University I had shoulder-length hair. I have friends who still comment on the time when I had long hair. Well, it was starring in Grease that started it all.
I do remember having a ton of fun in “Grease.” I remember being pretty good too by the last of the five-night run in front of the hundreds that packed the school gym for each show. The drama teacher came to me on closing night and told me that he “really believed it” in the final song. That was high praise from him.
When I look back on different parts and stages of my life, I see certain through-lines. Lately, I’ve been noticing the ones that are about creativity. I’ve also noticed an initial reluctance or resistance when it came to creative expression. Acting in plays in high school is a good example of this.
The same English teacher that got me into acting for those few precious high school years also tried to encourage me to do more creative writing. I remember writing a piece for her class where we had to describe a house and then look out a window and describe what you saw. Her feedback was so positive, but I wasn’t interested in creative writing at all.
I barely recognized that Ms. Peterson was trying to help me. I’m ashamed to say that it was easier to make fun of her a little bit behind her back for being “super artsy.” I guess I’m kind of one of those “artsy” people now! I probably was then too but didn’t really realize it.
Mostly, I thought English class was lame. I ended up not doing more creative writing than was required of me in class and instead focussed on math and computer science. I think I was drawn to those classes partly because I was good at them, and also because I was very black and white in my thinking. I wanted there to be straightforward answers to problems. Perhaps this is, in a strange way, what drew me to church because, at least as it was presented to me as a teen, Christianity provided clear answers to life.
As a pastor, and just as a human, I feel quite differently about things now. I know that life is nothing like finding a solution to a math problem.
Ms. Peterson saw something in me that I didn’t recognize and I have barely ever given any credit. She persisted with me. In my grade 12 year she invited me to consider trying for valedictorian. In our school, valedictorian didn’t go to the person with the highest grades. My grades were good, but they weren’t the best in the school. No, for us, teachers invited students to try out. You wrote a speech and would deliver it to a small panel of teachers who would choose someone to be valedictorian. Then one or more of the teachers would help the selected student to polish their speech in time for the graduation ceremony.
I was horrified by all of this. I had overcome some of my fears of being on stage from being in plays and the musical, but at least in those cases I was acting, pretending to be someone else, delivering lines written by someone else. Being valedictorian meant it would be just me… all alone… saying my own words that I had written. I couldn’t do that. Ms. Peterson didn’t push me on this and someone else gave the year-end speech.
That one teacher encouraged me to be in the school plays (she succeeded on this one!), nudged me in the direction of creative writing (which I thought was completely stupid at the time), and invited me to be a speaker (which I flat out refused out of fear). As an adult, I ended up speaking on a weekly basis as a pastor, and the year I turned forty I wrote and published my first novel. Three more plus a novella followed over the next nine years.
But no, I don’t have plans to take up acting!
Mostly, I tell this story from my teens to illustrate a larger pattern that has sometimes shown up for me. One where I was initially reluctant to engage in creative practice.
But now I am becoming more attentive to the possibilities, enjoyment, and fullness of life that opens up when I push past reluctance and embrace my own creativity. So, I am focussing on being faithfully creative. Here’s what I mean by that term…
First, what do I mean by faithful?
At its most basic level, I mean regular, consistent. Being faithfully creative means habitually engaging in creative activity.
Faithful also means more than just putting in time. Being faithful to something or someone is more than just showing up. There is heart to faithfulness. I am faithful to my wife and faithful to my daughter and that kind of faithfulness is more than just being there. I wonder about what it means to be faithful in this way to creativity. Perhaps this kind of faithfulness means “staying true” to the creative vocation. And by vocation I don’t mean a profession. Vocation means calling and I believe that creativity is built in to our calling to be human, but more on that to come as we go, I’m sure.
When the word faithful is used, it also has spiritual or religious connotations. This is intentional. In addition to being an author and podcaster, I’m a Presbyterian pastor. I’m deeply interested in the intersection of faith and creativity.
Creative work in my experience requires trust, which is essentially another word for faith. This may be trust in God, in a higher power, or somehow trusting in the creative work itself to guide, or for God to somehow be at work in or through the creative work. We might explore this idea more as we go as well.
What do I mean by creative?
I thought about providing you a whole bunch of definitions of creativity from authors and artists, but you can search for those yourself if you really want to. Instead, I’ll just say these few things:
* Creativity has something to do with newness or innovation.
* Creativity is about making. It is about craft and not mass-production manufacturing.
* Creativity has something to do with imagination.
So what are we talking about when we say “Faithfully Creative?”
Being faithfully creative can mean staying true to creative acts. This might mean something as simple as showing up daily to write, or turning up in a studio to paint or to record music. Faithfulness is about developing a habit, which also allows for the development of craft, of refined technique, which further opens up greater possibilities for creativity.
Jazz might be one of the best examples of this. Hours and hours of practice enables the mastering of the craft so that in the moment beautiful improvisation can take place. The musician imagines how they could sound, they practice, they experiment, and that opens up new imaginative possibilities, new playgrounds of sound. The same is true of essentially any creative endeavour.
Being faithfully creative can also be about staying true to creativity, to prioritizing it. Beyond simply showing up for acts of creativity, faithfulness as “staying true” is about following the creative path. Being faithfully creative is about following where creative impulses and the commitment to craft lead.
In putting these words together, I am interested in a kind of grounding for creative expression in faith. I bring some theological assumptions to this. Three big ones…
* God is faithful. Most of the time, when we think of faithfulness, we are thinking about our own faithfulness. But, fundamentally, God is faithful. God is dependable. God is there for us. God “stays true.”
* God is Creative. This should be a no brainer except that, a lot of the time, even those who believe in God behave as if God just created things a long time ago and then just let it all spin. In other words, we tend to think God WAS creative rather than God IS creative.
* Human Beings are created in the image of a Creative God, so creativity is central to being human.
Faithful creativity for me has something to do with God being faithful and with my own faith being lived out through acts of creativity. Increasingly, for me, this has been writing. But writing is obviously by no means the only thing for everyone. There are a myriad of forms: art, gardening, music making, parenting, travel planning, counselling, and on and on.
None of this is a straight line. There is a meandering creative journey. This doesn’t mean that we can ordain everything creative and everything faithful. But I would rather err on the side of affirming creativity rather than shutting it down. We have likely had too many people thinking “I’m not creative.” I was one of them. I honestly thought I was not particularly creative because I limited my idea of creativity to drawing ability, and when I attempt to even draw stick people they are almost undecipherable.
Let’s have an expansive view of creative work and not one that is bound by the categories of only professional “creatives.” E.g. photographers, sculptors, writers, filmmakers, etc. If you think you are not really a creative person, I respectfully disagree. You are creative because you were made in the image of a creative God.
To wrap this all up, let me pull on another thread from my own story…
I started a podcast in 2017 which became the Spirituality for Ordinary People Podcast. I had self-published my first novel by then and it had been out for almost a year. I had also put out two short non-fiction books that were loosely based on sermons: Let God Be God, and Let God Be Present.
I loved listening to podcasts, and about a year earlier I had been challenged to try using Facebook’s new “Live” feature, which I did. Every once in a while, someone still tells me that they really loved my Coffee and Psalms daily devotional that I did live on Facebook in 2016. Doing that daily Facebook live gave me confidence to try out starting my own podcast, which I thought would be a great way to promote my non-fiction books.
It turned out that my podcast didn’t really do much to promote the books, but I LOVED podcasting. It was interesting to me that my original motivation to start a podcast about Christian spirituality came from kind of negative mindset where I judged particular forms of spirituality as weird. I called the podcast Spirituality for Ordinary People because I didn’t like what I then considered fringe ideas. I wanted to do a podcast that was straightforward, something for just “regular people” that was accessible and wasn’t too “out there.”
I discovered a few things along the way:
1) In the end there are no ordinary people. Everybody is their own person, everyone is quirky.
2) The breadth of practice within the Christian Tradition is astounding and it is ALL helpful. Originally, I believed there seven core practices to focus on: Reading the Bible, Prayer, Corporate Worship, Community, Service, Giving, Sabbath. In some ways these might still be helpful categories, but they are categories not practices, and something like the category of “prayer” is pretty massive. I learned about Examen, Centring Prayer, Praying the Hours, Prayer Walking, Pilgrimage, Labyrinths, and more. Something else that I didn’t anticipate was learning about the Enneagram, something that when I first saw it decades ago, I thought perhaps it was something from a Satanic cult. Ummm - no. It has turned out to be one of the most helpful tools in understanding myself. I also learned a lot about breathing, meditation, mental health, and psychology.
3) While I enjoyed learning about the broad landscape of the Christian Spiritual tradition, I just didn’t have the drive to continue a podcast on this topic. What I really loved, more than the subject itself, were the conversations I was having with the many creative people, often authors, who were guests on the podcast. I also loved making something. I loved the creativity involved in putting the podcast together.
As I look back, the Spirituality for Ordinary People Podcast started to wind down when I took a job as the coordinator of the New Worshipping Communities project for The Presbyterian Church in Canada. I learned so much about starting new ministries through this work that I did half-time for three years. While doing this job and still being a pastor in a local church half-time, I didn’t really have the time to keep the podcast going like I had previously. It had been an almost every week podcast for over 100 episodes. But the big thing was that I was getting the opportunity to meet and speak with a different set of creative people. I got to have conversations with and support people who were attempting to start new communities of faith.
In both of these spheres, hosting a podcast on spirituality and leading a church-starting network in my denomination, I witnessed incredible creativity and also stalwart faithfulness. I might describe what I observed among writers, musicians, theologians, pastors, and others as creative faithfulness. They were finding creative ways to live out their faith, and to lead others in doing the same. So great!
For much of my adult life I have placed the emphasis on “being faithful.” I asked questions like “what is God calling me to do?” I had some core things to commit to like Church, Bible Study, Prayer, Community. I became fascinated by new (or new to me) ways to live out those core commitments.
In my church-starting work I would speak about how churches need to take risks and adopt a broader ecclesial imagination. We often used language of “innovation.” It was really all about embracing creativity while remaining faithful, or being creative in faithfulness.
Lately I have felt a nudge to centre creativity itself, and for me, particularly, that means writing. I feel invited to be faithful in showing up to the page to write. Not to be too semantic about it, but, I feel called to be faithfully creative rather than creatively faithful.
In the end, though, I don’t really want to split hairs. Let’s just do it all and see where it leads!
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This amazing conversation with Juno-award winning musician, Steve Bell, was the 9th episode of the Spirituality for Ordinary People Podcast. I felt like it was worth re-sharing, and have also included the original “show notes” below. You can also get a transcript by reading this post in the substack app or on the substack website.
This interview was such an amazing experience, recorded in Steve’s own studio in Winnipeg. Steve was incredibly gracious and generous with his time and his honest sharing. Steve shared a ton in this episode, and you can find all kinds of links below that reference just some of what Steve spoke about.
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This podcast episode also features several of Steve’s songs, used with his permission.
CONNECT WITH STEVE BELL
* Steve’s Website – stevebell.com
* Pilgrim Year
* Steve’s Albums
SOME OF WHAT WE COVERED IN THE INTERVIEW:
* Following Jesus as a Pathway
* Interactions with First Nations People and the effect on Spirituality
* The unhelpfulness of some of Western Christianity’s theological assumptions for our spirituality.
* Spirituality as relationality and grounded in the Trinity
* Reading as Spiritual practice and way in to inner quiet
* Scripture as art
* The role of music and art in spiritual formation
* Kindly guides for understanding art (and spirituality)
* Being deliberate with your Spiritual “diet” to be spiritually healthy.
QUOTES
* “The Bible starts with the goodness of creation.”
* “[You should] read 80% from people who are dead and 20% from people who are alive”
* “If there is this deep relationality that goes beyond words and mere ideas, we need art to get there.”
LINKS, RESOURCES, AND PEOPLE
* Terry Leblanc, Ray Aldred, Cheryl Bear and North American Institute for Indigenous Theological Studies – http://www.naiits.com/
* Richard Twiss – His books
* Theresa of Avila – http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=208
* John of the Cross – http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=65
* Edith Stein – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Stein
* G.K. Chesterton – http://www.chesterton.org/who-is-this-guy/
* C. S. Lewis – http://www.cslewis.com/
* Charles Williams – http://www.charleswilliamssociety.org.uk/
* Gerard Manly Hopkins – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_Manley_Hopkins
* Godric, a novel by Frederick Buechner
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There are certain Christian traditions that seem talk about how we need more “Bible-based teaching.” These same traditions that tend to indicate that they are elevating the Bible and take pride in “understanding the Bible literally” or, if they actually deign to admit that it is impossible to take the entire Bible literally because, well, least of all, there are poems in the Bible (even an entire book of poetry called the Psalms) and you can’t actually take a poem literally or you’ve totally missed the point, then they will instead declare that they, and maybe only they, are “taking the Bible seriously.”
Some of these same traditions have churches and leaders who have done things like silence women, perpetuate abuse and discrimination, gather enormous wealth, or created their own kingdoms and then done what is “necessary” to protect them. (See the Secrets of Hillsong documentary, and the Rise and Fall of Mars Hill podcast)
I’m not usually one to criticize other Christian traditions, but my aggravation at the way certain segments of the Christian Church are seen as representative of the entire Christian Tradition has grown in recent years. I usually want to try and just get along. Let’s just keep talking about grace and do our best to love one another. But still, I have become sick of a term like “Bible-believing” being far-too-often a code for a supposed God-sanctioned exclusion of anyone who is not a white man.
How is it that “Bible-believing” has come to mean in some circles that because there are a few places in the New Testament that have references like “women be silent in church” or “wives submit to your husbands” that that gives “wise male leaders” the right to subjugate women and pretty much anyone else they deem “less than” by using an institution that is actually meant to represent a community that is also described in that same New Testament as one where “there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus?” (Galatians 3:28)
If I’m a leader in a true “Bible-believing church,” shouldn’t I be shining a light on ALL the heroes of the faith, instead of just a select few? How about people like Sarah, Deborah, Hannah, Ruth, Naomi, or Elizabeth, just to name a few?
And indeed what about Mary? Should we silence Jesus’ mother in the church? In some churches it seems so, because how can Mary’s song be heard as anything other than just a personal song of praise (I guess women are allowed to have those) in places that continue to perpetuate power for the few at the expense of others?
Mary sings - and I’m just quoting the Bible here…
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly;he has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty. (Luke 1:52-53)
Hmm. I’m thinking there words are a little hard to swallow while flying in your private jet to your next speaking gig at the Bible believing mega-church where your college buddy is the head pastor?
I’m sick of seeing Christianity being portrayed as synonymous with corruption, abuse, discrimination, and the like. And I don’t want to defend the religion of Christianity. I want to instead point to the Bible, not as a proof-text about how to see things my way, but because it has a ton to say against the corruption of power, especially when that power is claimed as divine right.
As a Christian, I am supposed to see things through the lens of Jesus Christ and Jesus didn’t do any of the manipulating, excluding, discriminating, or defending or bolstering of his power or authority that you see among church leadership in certain circles. Sure, we can say, that if Jesus is God incarnate, then he simply **has** all power and authority (no defending needed), and we ought to just be obedient subjects. But interestingly, Jesus himself didn’t even make that argument.
He spoke of coming to serve and not be served. Instead of consolidating power and protecting his inner circle so that they would keep him in place so his religious movement would grow in numbers and also in political influence, Jesus was executed by a collusion of the state and religious powers of his day, and his inner circle was a scattered and broken mess (with one who denied he even knew Jesus, and another who betrayed him to the authorities).
Of course we know the ones who did stay true to Jesus even after he was arrested and given the death penalty. They were the same ones who God chose as the first people to go and tell Jesus’ other followers about the incredible news of him being raised from the dead. The real way the Jesus movement continued actually started with these people bringing this good news (Gospel!) and speaking it to other disciples. If that isn’t speaking in church I don’t know what is! These are the models for who should speak and to whom we ought to listen!
Matthew says it was “Mary Magdalene and the other Mary,” (Matthew 28:1) Mark says it was “, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome,” (Mark 16:1), Luke says it was “Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James,” (Luke 24:10) and okay, John tells things a bit differently, but the key moment still involves Mary Magdalene as the central participant.
All four sources agree that the most important message to convey to “the church” was first entrusted to women. So how about we listen! How about we also listen to Mary’s song of justice? How about we listen to any woman who stands up to speak?
My own denomination has been ordaining women ministers since 1966, before I was born. I’ve never known a time when there weren’t women preachers. If you asked me to name you a few great pastors I know, the first few names out of my mouth would be Theresa, Heather, Jeya.
I am flabbergasted that something like it being wrong to bar people from leadership based on their gender is still something we have to make a point of saying. It’s enough to make someone walk away from this whole thing called Christianity. And people have. And people are.
Maybe you need to step away for a while. Or maybe you need to walk away from a segment of the Christian tradition where you have experienced hurt. I get it.
I pray, though, that you might still look for or stay in and work for a community where Mary’s song is taken just as seriously as everything else in the Bible, where the reality of women pastors and preachers is just a given. I pray that together we can listen, speak, and help create communities actually centred on Christ who gave up power, who became human, whose love is without condition or bounds—the communities of grace, compassion, and care that people so desperately need.
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A podcast episode based on a written reflection first posted to the Noticing Delight Substack.
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Reading is interpreting. We know this more keenly than ever because we interpret all the time.
You receive an email announcing that you have won a cruise. You read just a bit of it and already you have done your interpretation. It is spam or a scam. You delete it or send it to your Junk Mail folder.
You read a news story and wonder if they have really got all their facts straight. Where is the news from? Is it the Globe and Mail or the National Post? NBC or Fox News? You interpret what you read or watch accordingly based on the source, on your beliefs, and probably a host of other things.
The same goes for novels, plays, movies, TV shows. You are reading or watching, and interpreting. All the time.
Reading the Bible isn’t any different. We don’t just read and get “the facts” or “the plain meaning.” Interpretation happens. One of the most important things to pay attention to is what we can call the narrative arc of Scripture.
When reading the Bible one really must enter the world of the story. We often zero in on something small, but we also must zoom out to take in the wideness and wonder.
We aim to resist proof-texting (quoting a single verse to just prove a point). Instead, we read one verse in light of another, a story in light of the law, a letter in light of a psalm, a series of proverbs in light of the book of Job and on and on.
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So knowing something about the overall arc of scripture is important for us as we interpret particular parts of Scripture.
When starting at the beginning, we discover that God created all that is and called it good. This seems to be as good a founding principle as anything. Creation is good, the animals are good, human beings are good. Then, there is a fall from original goodness. Things get twisted or distorted. And then, as we read forward in the story, there is a grand restoration.
We could see this narrative arc as life - death - new life, remembering always that there is an original goodness.
So, anytime we come up against a thought, or a whisper, or a hint of anything in all creation, and most especially humans (called images of the divine), being talked about as less-than, we know that this is simply not in line with the overall arc of Scripture that is emphatic about the high worth and goodness of all that has been created.
The arc of scripture points to prevenient grace, a technical term that basically means grace before anything else. God’s grace is not primarily seen as a response to some terrible thing that humans have done. It is not that the Almighty is waiting “up there” watching for us to slip up, to transgress, so He can decide suddenly at that point, to be gracious. No, God’s grace is THE starting point. God is gracious. God’s love is a constant: in good times and bad, when we get it right and when we get it wrong.
The overall arc of scripture points to creation and then re-creation. There is something new that God is doing.
It also points to God being all about justice and grace at the very same time. Justice and grace are not opposites in God’s way of doing things. They belong together.
The overall arc of scripture is not best communicated in concepts, but in story. This is why we might call it the narrative arc of Scripture.
There is a story of God with a particular people.
There is wandering in the wilderness, the experience of exile from home, and there is the jubilation of return.
There is a garden with a tree of life at the beginning and a broken relationship between God and humans, and then stories about gardens and a tree of life and the reconciliation of God and humans toward the end.
There is certainly far more that could be said about the narrative arc of Scripture, and in particular, what to do with the more challenging bits, but the important thing for us is that we enter into the narrative.
You see, we are shaped by story, and this particular story that keeps speaking, and keeps being re-told, has deep truth and deep wisdom. It is worth interpreting.
You enter this particular story and it becomes your story. Life - death - new life. Wandering in the wilderness, exile from home, the promised jubilation of return. Broken relationships and a loss of the ease of life in the garden, and a longing to find a way back.
A story of God who enters human life as a baby born in the most humble of circumstances, whose mother sings of the powerful being brought down from their thrones and lifting up of the lowly. A crucifixion, humiliation, and abandonment, and yet a resurrection and vindication.
You enter this story and let it shape you, more than all the competing stories out there. So interpreting this grand narrative, with all the stories, letters, poems, laws, prophecies, and sayings that it holds becomes quite important.
This Saturday, Nov 18 at 9:30am, I’m leading a workshop on imaginative interpretation of the Bible. It is in-person only, so if you are in Winnipeg and you’d like to come, just email me at [email protected]. Or, if you’d be interested in this workshop being on Zoom, email me and let me know.
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You can listen to the version audio or read the full reflection (transcript) below:
The fact that we hold this collection of books as sacred (or if you personally don’t, you may at least agree that there is deep ancient wisdom there), is enough to say that we may want to do our best to understand what the Bible is all about.
Interpreting the Bible can be challenging but, believe it or not, it can also be fun, and diving into understanding the bible through imaginative engagement with the stories, letters, poems and more that lie within its pages can be deeply rewarding, even life-changing.
On Saturday, Nov 18th, 2023 from 9:30 to 11:30, I will be offering a workshop on Interpreting the Bible Imaginatively. (In person only at 590 University Cres, Winnipeg) Email me if you plan to come!
The idea for this started when last year someone asked me about where ideas for some of my sermons come from. They were basically commenting on how they seemed to “get more out of it” when listening to a sermon about a particular text than when they would read the same text on their own.
This isn’t really that surprising. It is almost always better to be in a community setting when trying to understand the Bible (or any text). Also, I spend many hours on a given sermon, I went to seminary, and I have over twenty years of preaching experience.
At the same time, I really believe that there are things anyone can learn to help them in their understanding of the Bible, and one of the greatest things we can learn is how to read Scriptures while engaging our imaginations.
What do I mean by that?
Part of it is giving yourself permission. Permission to play with the text, to wonder, to ask questions, to focus in on specific images or words, and to focus out on the wider story arc, seeking connections with other parts of the Bible.
This is what we will learn and practice together at our little 2 hour workshop on Nov 18th, but for now, here’s a bit of a reflection on some of the challenges of this approach…
It can sometimes be hard to interpret scripture by using our imagination because we can feel hemmed in by a number of things. We may feel restricted by tradition, by particular teaching that is ingrained in us. We may feel constrained by certain concepts of God. We may have been taught that God absolutely must be this way or that way. We may feel trapped by particular philosophies, world-views, or pedagogies. For example, we may subtly believe that authority is never to be questioned, or we may believe the opposite: that no authority is to be trusted. We may somehow feel limited by the Bible itself. Shouldn’t we look at more than just scripture?
Or we may feel paralyzed by a lack of biblical knowledge and so we hesitate to jump in. For some of us, we have been taught not to trust ourselves, or that our thoughts or ideas do not have value, or are probably wrong. Or we don’t want to risk sharing something that we imagine coming from a biblical text for fear that we will sound stupid, or that others with more theological knowledge might shut us down or shame us. Maybe we’ve been shut down before.
Another reason it can be hard to interpret scripture imaginatively is because we have a sense that the Bible is sacred, and so to wrestle with it, question it, read against it at times, or play with it, might seem somehow irreligious or just plain wrong.
But, perhaps the most difficult barrier to interpreting scripture imaginatively is that many of us have all but lost our ability to imagine at all. We are more used to formulas, processes, techniques, and the application of critical methods. Of course, we can learn those tools as well and they can be of great help, but imagination is another matter, and is actually, for the average reader of the Bible, more readily available, and dare I say, more fun to employ.
When confronted with a story from the bible it might be very useful to ask “what is the historical context of this story?” We may even have a good study bible or commentary that can help us answer that. But we might not be as used to thinking to ourselves things like: “I’m going to pretend that I’m a shepherd and think about how I would feel or what I would do if an angel suddenly showed up in my field.”
This may not be the best example, but you get what I mean, I think. My point is that for some of us, somehow our imagination engaging with the text seems less legitimate than historical-critical knowledge. We have held some ways of knowing as the ONLY ways, and have often devalued and severely underused our imagination, to the point that we are hopelessly out of practice.
The imagination is relegated often to the realm of children alone, and many adults have forgotten how to use it. This is to our detriment, because without imagination, our engagement with such a diverse and complex set of books ranging in literary forms from poetry to letters, to narrative, to law codes, to parables, will always languish. Not only will we understand less about what the Bible is saying, but this most sacred text will feel further and further from us.
Engaging imaginatively with the Bible (and perhaps with anything) jumpstarts relevance and application. What I mean is that when you apply your imagination to a particular Biblical text, you are becoming invested. You are opening yourself up to what it might be saying to you.
So, perhaps you’ll join me, if you can on Nov 18th in the morning for a could have hours. We will actually look at some biblical texts and learn together about how to engage imaginatively with them. It would be helpful to me to know how many people to expect (for the purposes of snacks!), so please email me to let me know you’re coming.
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The fifth in a 5-part series for Advent/Christmas 2022.
He is born among us and is one of us. The incarnation.
God with us and with intent, with imagination and creativity. Bearer of hope, and peace, and joy, and love.
And so, we can be religious about the incarnation. As God came into the world and loved the place and people to which He came, we can do the same.
You can see the places you find yourself through God’s eyes. You can be incarnational about where you are.
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The fourth in a 5-part series for Advent/Christmas 2022.
The final advent theme is Love. Love is so central. It is at the core of who we are as human beings. We naturally love. Think of parents, children, grandchildren, wives, husbands, true friends.
And our faith takes us further with love.
Over and over we are asked to give ourselves to love. To be religious about it. To let our love reflect divine love.
As we move toward Christmas, we glimpse once again God with is. Love incarnate. Love itself in human form, for God is love.
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The third in a 5-part series for Advent/Christmas 2022.
What if joy was something you could simply choose?
We tend to think joy is something that happens to us. It isn’t in our control. We would love to feel joyful, but that is really hard to do day in and day out. Is it the same as just being happy all the time? No, not really.
So, what would it mean to be religious about joy?
To say yes to joy, to make joy part of the pattern of our life. To give ourselves over to joy...
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The second in a 5-part series for Advent 2022.
Being religious about something is about devotion, it’s about commitment. It is about staying the course even when you don’t feel like it. We are compelled to stay with it. We’ve made it our religion, and ours is a religion of peace.
War is rampant, but we claim peace.
Jesus claimed “Blessed are the Peacemakers” and declared that they would be called the children of God. On Sunday, we share peace with one another. It is a sign of having reconciled relationships. Of a healing between us.
Peace is far more than an end of war. It isn’t about tolerating each other. It is things being set right. How they truly ought to be. It is a massive concept in the scriptures. The Hebrew word Shalom is peace, healing, wholeness, salvation. And we are people of this shalom.
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The first in a 5-part series for Advent/Christmas 2022.
Getting religious about hope is not about being unrealistic or having some pie-in-the sky, everything will always be totally fine attitude. Religiously hoping means a full on acknowledgment of life in all its mess, brokenness, and still we fend off cynicism. We lament, but we don’t despair. We don’t just “hope everything gets a bit better soon.” We go bigger than that. We hope for complete renewal. We hope for reconciliation. We hope for a new heaven and a new earth...
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"From now on you will be catching people" - Jesus says this to his followers and it does not sound positive at all. Catching people? So, the job of people who follow Jesus is to go and "catch" others? Trap them? Trick them into something? I'm going to just say NO to all of that, but also say that when Jesus said this, there was something far more going on (no surprise - it's Jesus!).
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Matt welcomes AJ Sherrill for a conversation around a book that has one of the most amazing sub-titles of all time! - Being With God: The Absurdity, Necessity, and Neurology of Contemplative Prayer. AJ is the Lead Pastor at St. Peter's Church in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina and is an adjunct professor at Fuller Theological Seminary, where he teaches popular courses on transformational preaching and the Enneagram. Visit is website at https://www.ajsherrill.org/
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The Audio version of Prairie Presbyterian Church's Be Still and Behold series: 10 Weeks Exploring God's Presence in the Hebrew Scriptures. Get an Overview of the series here.
This is Part Ten - God With Everyone
For the printed liturgy and the original video series, visit https://www.prairiechurch.ca/worship
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The Audio version of Prairie Presbyterian Church's Be Still and Behold series: 10 Weeks Exploring God's Presence in the Hebrew Scriptures. Get an Overview of the series here.
This is Part Nine - Running Away From God's Presence
For the printed liturgy and the original video series, visit https://www.prairiechurch.ca/worship
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The Audio version of Prairie Presbyterian Church's Be Still and Behold series: 10 Weeks Exploring God's Presence in the Hebrew Scriptures. Get an Overview of the series here.
This is Part Eight - God NOT in the Earthquake, Fire, or Storm
For the printed liturgy and the original video series, visit https://www.prairiechurch.ca/worship
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The Audio version of Prairie Presbyterian Church's Be Still and Behold series: 10 Weeks Exploring God's Presence in the Hebrew Scriptures. Get an Overview of the series here.
This is Part Seven - God in the Temple part 2
For the printed liturgy and the original video series, visit https://www.prairiechurch.ca/worship
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The Audio version of Prairie Presbyterian Church's Be Still and Behold series: 10 Weeks Exploring God's Presence in the Hebrew Scriptures. Get an Overview of the series here.
This is part Six - God in the Temple part 1
For the printed liturgy and the original video series, visit https://www.prairiechurch.ca/worship
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The Audio version of Prairie Presbyterian Church's Be Still and Behold series: 10 Weeks Exploring God's Presence in the Hebrew Scriptures. Get an Overview of the series here.
This is part Five - God in the Tent
For the printed liturgy and the original video series, visit https://www.prairiechurch.ca/worship
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The Audio version of Prairie Presbyterian Church's Be Still and Behold series: 10 Weeks Exploring God's Presence in the Hebrew Scriptures. Get an Overview of the series here.
This is part Four - God on the Mountain
For the printed liturgy and the original video series, visit https://www.prairiechurch.ca/worship
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