I've been thinking a lot lately about the power of story telling.
The power film makers have in our culture.
The power to be moved by a good telling of what God is doing in a life or in a community.

It is the job of us as artists to use creative means of communication to capture peoples imagination and put them into the greater story of God's redemptive purpose on earth.

Are you an artist?
If so, how are you doing this?
Are you doing this?

Lately I've been camping out quite a bit in Ephesians in prep for our next series, Sit, Walk, Stand.  It's based on a book about Ephesians by Watchman Nee.  A pretty common passage from Ephesians chapter 2:

Verse 10 – We are God's workmanship.  Greek.

Or as my study Bible says, can also be translated "work of art."

So in other words, we are God's work of art, created in Christ Jesus.
This Greek word is used one other place in the New Testament.

The point?  Expanding on Cron's thought, we are God's work of art, and through his work of art people will see clearly what they feel vaguely.  Holy moly!!  Sorry.  That just speaks my language and resonates big time.
According to Genesis, mankind was created in the Trinitarian image of God.  We as a whole, as a community, are a walking breathing reflection of the Creator.

While lots of people aren't sure they like Jesus, many are on a spiritual journey.  They know vaguely that there is something bigger, and they are created to worship.  It is the role of Christ followers to ultimately help people clearly recognize what that longing is.

How are you as God's work of art pointing back to Him in the way you live?  When people look at your life, do they see Jesus clearly?

I'm encouraged.
Inspired.
Challenged.

But I've been able to kinda follow along via Twitter and blogs.  Definitely not even close to the experience of being there, but nice nonetheless.  There have been some great quotes that have stuck in my head as people twittered them, and I wanna use a couple of posts to unpack the train of thought that one of them has me traveling down.

Love this thought.  It's why I am passionate about art and creative worship.
It got me thinking again about the topic of an artists retreat I was at a few years ago where we discussed the importance of "prophetic art."

Just as some speak of prophetic worship, our art can and should be prophetic.
Good art causes an emotional reaction.  It requires a response.  It often gives expression to the feelings and truths that we just can't fully express through words.

If you are an artist, create art with power.  I hope that the music we write, the films we create, the photography we produce, and the visual masterpieces we labor over are echoes of God the Creator and give expression to the longing buried inside of the people around us and ourselves.  We need our art as a faith community, inside and outside the walls of our church, so that people will see our work and exclaim, "God is really among you!"

Rick Dempsey
Rick is the V.P. of Disney films who has spent the past several years focusing upon character quality and the preservation and restoration of the Disney brand name.  He was there to talk with us about branding.  He shared some of the keys to branding in general and specifically at Disney.  he then transitioned to talk about the branding of the church as  whole and what we should be branded by.  Fun conversation.  here’s a few fun facts and info about Disney’s new strategies with their movies:

New Disney Movies Strategy

• Emphasizing the Disney brand
• Movie guidelines
  • No bad language
  • No gratuitous violence
  • No sexual content

2007 Movie Release Dates  the ones that interested me anyway

• Pirates 3 – May 25
• Nightmare Before Christmas…in 3D!!! – October 19
• Enchanted – November 21
• National Treasure 2 – December 21

We were able to see a trailer and a scene from the movie Enchanted.  I have to go see that movie, and  you should too.  It looks hilarious!

Leeland & Cyndi Mooring

Well you already heard a little about worshipping with Leeland.  That was an anointed time of worship and it rocked.  So was the rest of the afternoon.  Leelands mom, Cyndi, came to talk with us about what it looks like to be a good parent and raising a child, specifically one that is an artist.

This is one special family, and clearly two great parents in Cyndi and Todd.  they shared their stories of traveling full time and singing in churches around the country as a family.  They also shared the first song that Leeland ever wrote.  Check it out, and most importantly, be sure to listen at the end when they ask how old he was when he wrote this:

Man the spirit was thick in that room the whole time.  I couldn’t stop the tears from flowing several times as we took moments to worship and to be prayed over.  Here were a couple of REALLY great quotes from that session:

• They didn’t shield us from the hard times.  You can never know how mighty God is until you know how mighty a problem is that he needs to overcome.
  -Jack discussing the things he learned about faith as they prayed and trusted in God to take care of them as a family.)
• You can’t take your house to heaven, you can’t take your luggage to heaven, you can’t take your stuff to heaven, but you can take your children.
• We have an awesome responsibility to pass on what God’s done in our lives to them.  Then they will pass it on to their kids, and them to their kids, and you’ve left a legacy.

Chattin

Took some time as Re:create attenders only to chat with Randy for a while to hear about his dreams and what he is doing now as well as to discuss how the conference could be even better next year.  you will probably hear a bit more about Randy Elrod and his dreams here in the future.  this guys is an amazing visionary, artist, encourager, and all around inspiring person and I am so glad I had the opportunity to meet him here.  For a sneak peek of some really awesome things to come, check this out.

It was also really cool to be at a place where instead of having some lame evaluation form that may or may not be looked at, we were able to sit and openly and honestly share what we’d like to see more of in the future.  This is definitely a unique and special annual gathering.

Dinner and New Song Cafe

We all had dinner at someone’s house…yeah, all 100 of us!  Did I mention it was a GORGEOUS mansion?  As a sidenote, the guy who owns the house is the inventor of the evangecube!  I think that’s hilarious for some reason.  Check it out:

After an amazing dinner, we sat down all together in the main room of the house for a time of songwriters from EMI and Worship Together sharing some of their new songs.  the artists were Leeland Mooring, Matt Maher, and Brenton Brown.

After they shared some songs they wrote, which of course we got chord charts for, we decided to just finish off with like 20 minutes of worship.  Again, the worship was absolutely amazing!  I think some of the best worship times in my life have been with a bunch of friends in a packed out living room.  It was an awesome evening.  I’m sure you’ll recognize a song or two from these guys, and enjoy the tail end of our worship time:

Day four definitely turned out to be the best full day of all of them.  And there you have it.  The trip was great, and I’m sure I’ll give some closing general thoughts on the conference.  Sorry for a couple of long posts this week, but if you’re still with me, good for you.  Thanks for sharing the journey with me.  And to all you Re:create bloggers who are now reading, thanks for joining the longer journey.  I hope you stick around and hang out with us here for a while.

Morning worship with Mark Roach

Dang it…i couldn’t get out of bed.  I’m sure it was great.

Dean Batali

Dean Batali hosted the first session this morning that lasted til lunch.  Dean is a writer in Hollywood who has worked on "That 70’s Show" and "Buffy" as well as some other shows.  Check out his bio to get more info.  As a Christian working on shows like these, you can see under his bio on the re:create blog that he catches some heat from Christians.  What was interesting is that he doesn’t fully disagree.  He says he doesn’t like these shows and in fact sees them as damaging to our culture, however he’d rather be there making some sort of difference rather than not. 

Dean is clearly very passionate about being a missionary in Hollywood as well as the need for us to reclaim the arts as Christians.  he points out that in order for us to make an impact in culture, we need to have somewhat of a voice in an industry that is responsible for shaping our culture.  We need to not throw out our televisions because there’s filth, rather we need to be knowledgeable about what others are watching.  And just about every story out there has a redeeming truth, although you may need to find your way past some of the crap to get to it.  The question becomes, "Where is the line of what is worth sifting through and what isn’t?"  (Great question, by the way.)

Before coming to Revolution I worked for a couple years in the entertainment industry.  Every time I have come to a crossroads in my life I have wrestled between a call to full time ministry and a passion to be a professional artist, rubbing shoulders with other artists who need Jesus, too.  I have several friends who work in Hollywood, many of who I now only have minimal My Space contact with.  Point it, I too have a strong desire to see Christ followers in the field more and nore, despite how difficult it can be, and much of what he had to say resonated deep with me.

Here’s a couple of good quotes from our conversation with Dean (keep in mind these are loose quotes cause I can only type so fast…and besides, I’m not a journalist.  You’ll get the point):

• Go to where the damage to the culture is being done and be a part of damaging that culture so that it may be redeemed or preserved.
• Salt is not meant to preserve or restore something, but rather to slow down the decay.
• “Compromise” is another word Christians need to reclaim.  It isn’t always such a dirty, horrible word.
• We seem to think that unless we’re getting these big victories we’re not being effective, but we can at least help to stop the decay.
• Where is the "Christian" Vagina monologues?  We need to go out into the culture and tell our stories in the arts.  (That one probably sounds a bit odd out of context, but I think you’ll get it.  If not, we can talk in the comments.)
• I like to ask groups, "How many people of you have watched something in the past month in TV or film that offended you?"  Then I’ll ask them, "How many of you prayed for Hollywood after seeing that?"

Good stuff.  Moving on.

Tim Hodge

Just in case you’re wondering, that isn’t him, it’s a picture he drew.  Tim Hodge is an illustrator who has worked with Disney and now with Big Idea.  He came to share with us the basics of storyboarding and how we could use that in our creative projects and meetings.

He had some interesting stuff and some good practical practices to share.  Unfortunately, he was right after lunch and a pretty mellow guy, and that combo made for a difficult time of sitting for a while.  Regardless though, i think I can come away with a couple of good rules to be thinking about in the future when we do video.

As a side note, I love modern technology!  Look at this picture and see how many computers you can find:

Correct answer is 6 (a few of them are tough to find, but they’re there.)  Of course, half of them are probably iChatting and e-mailing.

Dinner

Yup MORE food…and GOOD!!  We had dinner at a place called Saffire.  Cool vibe good food.

And here’s me and Bobby.  Yeah, B squared, Bobby to the second power, Boobbies, whatever.  (Partial credit for name ideas going to John Voelz.)

What’s even crazier?  He is the pastor of Revolution at The Crossing Church.  Coincidence?

Tonight there were two awesome worship artists that played.  Check out a quick clip of Bebo Norman:

After Bebo was Jon Abel.  Jon’s written some great stuff, at least one of which you may have heard Chris Tomlin play, Awesome Is The Lord.

One thing that listening to these guys worship has definitely done is once again inspired me to really want to try writing something again.  I’ve wanted to in the past, but never really written anything cause for some reason it scares me to death.  One way I know I’ve been listening to a great singer/songwriter is it makes me want to go home and pour my own heart out into a song.

Anyway…day two rocked!  now I’m gonna go iChat with my wife and kid, watch last nights episode of 24 online, and go to bed so I don’t miss out on Mac Powell tomorrow morning.

If you can find some time, go by and check out what they have going on.  If you do, let us know how it was!  Find out more about the events here.

Seriously, though, this video is sweet.  I totally want this at our church, and I’m not even kidding.  Who’s in?
[via thevoiz]