Break the form

We have traded our creativity and it's inherent risks for conformity and it's apparent safety and predictability. The local church should be the epicenter of creative thought and artistic expression; instead it mimics the surrounding culture but sanitizes it by straining it through a Christian filter. Busywork and consumption are substituted for creative expression and a giving spirit. Subsequently, God's voice and creative presence is stifled and the Christian faith is marginalized and seems irrelevant to the surrounding culture. God is the Creator of all, and being made in His image, we should not hesitate to follow his lead......but it takes courage and a refusal to accept the passivity so rampant in many of our congregations.

This boils down to the fact that we as Christians are so concerned with being liked that we have sold ourselves to the trends and forms of this world. We compare our latest sold called "worship" cds to the latest and greatest bands. Half of the Christian bands today are nothing but yesterdays backup rock musicians who have the look needed to sell. They give them 12 songs that almost sound like their about Jesus but not too much because that won't sell. We have gone from writing about miracles and the Life of Jesus to self help books that teach us how to just be happier and never face challenge and we have gone from Pastors who looked to God for direction to pew fillers who tailor their message to what people want to hear (p.227 purpose driven church)

I pray that we would follow only the voice of God and never be swayed by popular opinion

2 Corinthians 3:18 (The Message)

Whenever, though, they turn to face God as Moses did, God removes the veil and there they are—face-to-face! They suddenly recognize that God is a living, personal presence, not a piece of chiseled stone. And when God is personally present, a living Spirit, that old, constricting legislation is recognized as obsolete. We're free of it! All of us! Nothing between us and God, our faces shining with the brightness of his face. And so we are transfigured much like the Messiah, our lives gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters our lives and we become like him