{"id":2660,"date":"2013-05-25T12:50:05","date_gmt":"2013-05-25T17:50:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.covchurch.org\/wc\/?p=2660"},"modified":"2013-05-25T12:50:05","modified_gmt":"2013-05-25T17:50:05","slug":"boxed-creativity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.covchurch.org\/wc\/2013\/05\/boxed-creativity\/","title":{"rendered":"Boxed Creativity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s post is written by Chris Logan, Pastor of Worship Arts at\u00a0Community Covenant Church<\/a>\u00a0in Lenexa, KS.<\/em><\/p>\n

Lately I’ve been finding myself preoccupied with the many limitations that life places on me, and it has led to a certain sense of failure in so many places. Ministry seems consistently busy, so I don’t feel like much of a parent or husband. Life gets busy for other people, so I don’t have the sort of volunteer involvement in my ministry that I need (or at least, wish I had). I get busy, so I don’t exercise and thus feel like a total failure at maintaining a healthy weight (much less getting down to one). Life, it seems, has a tendency to get task-driven when I feel like a failure, and so I inevitably miss the orchestra for the instruments (or however the saying goes); I drive myself to perform, to succeed at everything.<\/p>\n

And of course, with such a self-made mandate, I inevitably fail.<\/p>\n

Cue cycle restart.<\/p>\n

Upon confessing this, someone said this to me: “Your congregation doesn’t need you to be a good performer, they need you to be a good pastor. This has to be a group effort, or it’s all for nothing.”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

To paraphrase Phil Hansen<\/a>, true creativity doesn’t happen when we have unlimited resources of time, money, volunteers, energy, or willpower, but rather, true creativity happens within constraints. When we are forced to prioritize, when we are forced to make the main thing the main thing, we become artists. For me, that means being a worship PASTOR<\/a> and not a performance artist or booking agent or any other myriad of things (what’s yours?).<\/p>\n

What would happen if, instead of seeing a limitation \u2026<\/p>\n

\u2026 in the number of instruments or voices I can use
\n\u2026 in the available pieces of music that I like (or think will work in my setting)
\n\u2026 in the amount of time I have at home with my kids and wife
\n\u2026 in the finances for ministry or life<\/p>\n

\u2026 what if instead of seeing a limitation, I started seeing the possibilities that God is opening up for my creativity? What if this is a chance to do something new and novel because of what I don’t have? What if, by ceasing to worry about the boxes placed on me (over which I have little control), I suddenly find that in embracing my limitations, I’ve been set free?<\/p>\n

Report This Post<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s post is written by Chris Logan, Pastor of Worship Arts at\u00a0Community Covenant Church\u00a0in Lenexa, KS. Lately I’ve been finding myself preoccupied with the many limitations that life places on me, and it has led to a certain sense of failure in so many places. Ministry seems consistently busy, so I don’t feel like much […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":119,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,10,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-formation","category-vocation-and-call"],"yoast_head":"\nBoxed Creativity - Worship Connect<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/blogs.covchurch.org\/wc\/2013\/05\/boxed-creativity\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Boxed Creativity - Worship Connect\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Today\u2019s post is written by Chris Logan, Pastor of Worship Arts at\u00a0Community Covenant Church\u00a0in Lenexa, KS. 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