Willow Creek Worship Arts Conference–Personal Notes

David Crowder above 

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Personal Reflections from Willow Creek’s Arts and Worship Conference 2007:

• Point of HOPE:  The theme was around celebrating “What Is Right With the World”.  As I said in an earlier blog, my “hope tank” needed some enlargement.  I’ve known that for some time.  God met me there.  I was beginning to wonder what “hope” really meant.  And I started to remember.  That’s about all I can say about that.   With hope, that’s about all you need.  I was just thinking that hope isn’t a deep, tangible, easily expressed idea–it is more of–say,  a butterfly you aren’t sure you saw, but think you did, were quickly captivated by it, and felt an urge to chase it to see it again– even though you know that if you touch it, you’ll likely kill it.  If you are fortunate enough to have a camera, there is no way to capture the beauty of the moment…and it will likely flight again before you can even focus, and the light will not seem as true, nor the colors on the wing completely captured enough to describe to someone else.  The magic just can’t be shred.  But, only if you smile, if for that brief and unreasonable chase…that’s hope.   I don’t know how, but it just keeps you going in hard times.  It comes and it goes, we never know when it will come, that flitter of hope we need, but we need hope.
• Point on CYNICISM:  It would behoove us to keep in mind that when Solomon said, “There is nothing new under the sun”…he was having a really bad day.  Later, we also read the God’s “mercies are new every morning”.  That’s the heart of the artist…capturing it, looking for it, knowing it.  Not getting caught up in cynicism and fatigue too long, even when we have a really bad day that brings some really sobering and wise- sounding, perhaps even truly wise thoughts.
• Point of Wonder:  God, who WAS Creator, is STILL creator.  We have gotten old.  He hasn’t.  So, He’s STILL creator.  That is who he is.  So, creation and art are very important to him.  They ARE Him.  So…what if, every day, He says to the shining sun…”DO IT AGAIN!”, with a big smile on his face, still creating works of wonder for our pleasure?  The point?  Facts alone don’t do God justice…we need the arts to awaken our hearts to God.  Creation does that.  Art does that.  Stories do that.  Relationships do that.  We are wired for, not just agreements of theological concepts, but romance, mystery, beauty, creation, newness, freshness, moments of inspiration.    
• Point of Challenge:   Decisions are not always made based on a rational set of bulletted points.  We are influenced to decisions by irrational processes often.  We often justify those decisions as rational when they were mysterious and anything but rational at the time.  This should direct the way we try to reach people. 
• Point of Learning:   When God tells a story in the Bible, He does not then often say, “Here is the point of the the story”, or “Here is the moral to the story”, or “Here is your take home message”.  The stories speak for themselves.  Often, we look for “the point” too much in our own lives.  So, in the same way:  God is telling a story with our life’s ups and downs…put there for creative interest and contrast.  Movies with no tension, nobody is watching.  Take heart.  Let him be a great producer and writer…just cooperate.  Stop looking for the point quite so often.  (God has said this to me so many times this year… it is quite scarey).
• Point of Encouragement:  God wants us to be filled up each day with him…each and every morning, for our tasks, trusting we’ll be refilled for the next day.  Personally speaking, often lately, I start to doubt if He can keep up with the pace of my life!   If I can keep up!  I need to learn to pace and trust more and more and more and more.
• Point of Disagreement:  I did not agree with the way dealing with long term sin was handled from the “emergent” standpoint.  I don’t know if this is inherent to their thinking or not.  I did enjoy some awesome speakers and enlarged my mind.  I am reading a couple books with more of an emergent slant.  However, I do not applaud those who clap to every idea a popular author says.  We need to sift.  More on that at another time.  Tough love is very tough, but it works.  I know that personally. 
• Point of Ministry:  The last day of the conference, a worship leading couple from Australia shared their life pain and how it is a contradiction leading in worship when your faith and strength are spent.  People need hope and energy and you feel “busted up”.  I wept.  I mean, really wept at their whole thing.  I needed it.   I can’t say that there was a take home point, no filling or healing or great wave of understanding, or even any new feeling of favor or love of God…I have that.  Just reality–a need to see it.  Face it in terms of faith.  Cry it out.  I did.   God was reassuring me that He’d just give me the time I needed to cry…, and He did.  I appreciated it royally.  I appreciate time for a good healthy and relevant cry.   It’s a gift.   (An older man in the back of the room pressed his hankie into the palm of my hand and asked me to keep it as a souvenior as I tried to return it for washing, though I didn’t get it too dirty.  I thought it a rather odd word “souvenier”, the word he used.  But, the more I pondered his eyes and words, the more I realized the precious difference in a tissue and a hankie.  Tissues are dispensable, hygenic, and cleaned, hankies are recycled, washes, and personal.  He asked that I just remember him.  We’ve shared tears on the same hankie…I doubt I could forget him if I tried.  
• Point of Tears:  I pray I’m more like a Hanky than a Kleenex.  See ”Point of Ministry” above.  
• Photos:  Click here for my photos

I’d love to hear about what “spoke to you” and discussions from your group.  Link here for me to follow your writings and posts.