hypersync

An interesting little piece in the Huffington Post - Why It's Cook to Go to Church.  In addition, it is interesting that he went to Union and seems to have such an attitude toward the ancient and enduring Traditions - Catholic and Apostolic.  These are generally not the norm for Union students.  I wonder why he attended a seminary for his degree?  What initially brought him even that far?

"Then, in seminary, taking classes on monasticism and ancient Christianity, I began to strongly feel the presence of God. I got inspired to visit monasteries and very ancient churches, first in the U.S., then researching and filming hermits in Egypt, then in Greece and Eastern Europe, and finally in Russia. I met hermits and monks, and they let me film their descriptions of the inner Christian life. They took me to their monastery churches. My studies in Christian mysticism and ancient texts grew deeper and deeper. I discovered a prayer, the Jesus Prayer, or Kyrie Eleison -- "Lord have mercy," or "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me." (Some add "a sinner" at the end.) I loved ancient church so much that I'm making a movie and writing a book about them, coming early next year (Mysteries of the Jesus Prayer is a not-for-profit feature film, the result of my studies and renewed love-affair with Jesus Christ and church)."

Alright, here is "Coming Up Close."  IMHO, one of the best songs ever written.

I loved 'Till Tuesday - the name, the music, the look, the album covers.  I've followed Aimee Mann long after the band broke up - have all her albums.  She has been referred to as the "last of the tortured artists" and an "artist's artist".  I remember in the mid-1980's sitting in the studio working on my graphic design projects listening to this album.  "Coming Up Close" is easily the best song!  New Wave, female vocalists with low voices... I had a platonic crush on Aimee Mann.

 


Well, she really needs to have a guitar in her hands in this video - not so good at free dancing.  This was when MTV had "VJ's" and actually played videos - all day!  Then, of course, there was the keyboardist.

Another photo from Red Hook.

Here is the quote:

"I think there is something much bigger going on than finding a niche market and asking how should we position this product of the gospel so that those people will appreciate it, and will like it, and will accept it. We're really asking a deeper question about who we are in a changing cultural environment when it comes to the way think, the values we hold, the tools that we use, and the aesthetics that are meaningful to us." -Doug Pragitt (describing the concepts behind his new book, "Church in the Inventive Age")   Pagitt is the pastor of Salomon's Porch Church.

This is the melee in which I desire to be and where the Imago Dei Society has a real place within the greater arena of Anglicanism. Well, actually, this whole way of considering and thinking has had a place within Anglicanism, but to understand how we continue to do this thing called Anglicanism (this Christianity) in emerging cultures and with emerging generations are the questions we need to continually ask!

I came across one of the ministries that has as its purpose (or its obsession) the condemning of the "Emergent" side of the Church as being heretical. I don't know whether it is simply their inability to understand enculturation and that we are all raised within a cultural system that forms us in the ways we collectively think, the way we understand the world around us and our place it in, what we consider to be aesthetically pleasing or appropriate, and even what we consider to be moral and ethical.  I don't know whether they are simply ignorant of disciplines like anthropology, sociology, etc., or what is really going on within them.  The Gospel of Jesus Christ and the divine Logos do not change, but we certainly do, our cultures certainly do, and what we consider to be self-evident truth certainly does.  So, groups like this, I suppose, either honestly not to understand, are being willfully ignorant (and as a former teacher, this is an astounding tragedy), or are intransigent in their beliefs - fundamentalists, in other words. 

What is this particular ministry, you might ask?  Apprising Ministries.  I don't know anything about this, really, and perhaps much of what they do is really good, but with regard to Emergent stuff, they have a thorn in their craw!  So, make up your own mind. 

Thomas Chatterton Williams in his book, Losing My Cool: How a Father's Love and 15,00 Books Beat Hip-Hop Culture, wrote: "Nietzsche believed the greatest deeds are thoughts. 'The world revolves around the inventors of new values,' he wrote.  For more than thirty years the black world has revolved around the inventors of hip-hop values, and this has been a decisive step backward." (p. 218)

In his book, Williams describes his experiences growing up with increasing allegiance to those inventors and the hip-hop culture, until discovering a much broader world when he went off to college - and more importantly due to his father's constant influence and love.  Certainly, not all of hip-hop is negative, but much of it is.  For many, many black people, according to their own testimony, the more gangsta forms have had a devastating effect on black culture and those forms are the "new values" taken up decisively by a generation.

Williams goes on to write that his generation, in order to pay the debt they owe their ancestors for all they suffered through in order to make possible in his generation a black President, who is a counter example as a "nuanced thinker" of hip-hop culture, his generation must take up the challenge to do things differently and make things right for the sake of the new generations coming.

I see in Williams' description of his experience and the "new values" of the hip-hop phenomina a similiar experience of another generation and another racial group - the overwhelmingly white Baby Boomer generation.  The "1960's" generation proclaimed a new morality with a whole set of "new values."  In their belief that their generation's purpose was to usher in a Brave New World, the age of Aquarius, they have been relentless in overturning anything they perceive as getting in their way.   As Nietzsche said, the world has revolved around this new morality and their new values.

Like hip-hop, not all that this generation has done is wrong or bad.  Many aspects of white, 1950's culture needed to be upended - racism, the "Stepford Wives" expectation of women are examples.  The proverbial baby was thrown out with the bathwater, however, because of an unnuanced rejection of all that came before them.  We are beginning to reap the whirlwind. 

One predominate characteristic of this generation is their rejection of the notion that their ancestors, or even their parents' generation, have anything worthwhile to say to them or to teach them, and as a result their generation is known as the first one to cast off history and lessons from the past as informants of how things should be. This may be a bit of overstatement, but not by much.  What is even more sad is that the generation in the aggregate does not acknowledge or perhaps even realize the tremendous sacrifice and denial of self past generations have endured for their generation's existence.

I am hopeful when I read the demographic trends of younger generations.  They will have their own problems, of course, but there seems to be a reclaiming of history and past experience as informants for figuring out how to live life.  As Williams claims it is up to his generation to overturn the very negative influences of hip-hop on African-American culture, so is it up to his generation, including all races, to overturn the negative aspects of the Baby Boomer zeitgeist for all Americans.

Fr. Dan Martins in his blog, Confessions of a Caricoa, posted an entry entitled, Missional Notes.  He is writing about the services of the Church and their connection with people of varying degrees of knowledge about or commitment to Christ.  He is wondering about the growing population of people who are very much in American post-Christendom and what can be understood in these days to draw people into relationship with God through Jesus Christ and the Church.

One thing mentioned is that a service like High Solemn Mass (which we do at St. Paul's during the regular season) might be over-kill to someone without a church background - the uninitiated or unconverted.  Fr. Dan writes, "Solemn High Mass is solid food, and is likely to induce spiritual indigestion in those who haven't been carefully and gradually prepared for it. Where's our version of breast milk, strained carrots, and Cheerios?"

How do we configure and do "Church" in Post-Christendom and in a culture that is becoming far more pre-Constantinian than post? 

We can no longer assume that new people coming in the door of whatever service or activity the Church engages in know anything about the Christian Gospel, Jesus, or the worship of the Church beyond often trite sound-bytes.  Something like a High Solemn Mass can be very intimidating, and if we actually obey our vows to uphold the Canons of this Church we cannot assume they are baptized Christians, so they may not be able to participate in the central act of such a service.  (They can, of course, come up for a blessing, which is exactly what every unbaptized person to whom I have explained the requirement for communion and why has done once they know they can come forward for a blessing.)  Perhaps this kind of service is for the initiated, while something else may be better suited for these post-Christian seekers.  A fine, well done choral Morning Prayer or Evansong may well fit the bill.

And, how do we configure and do "Church" differently in ways that resonate with younger people and still remain faithful to who and what we are as Anglican Christians in the Episcopal Church?  After all, they are looking for that kind of faithfulness.  An interesting thing about the demographic research - the majority of GenY'ers would rather us say up front who and what we are and clearly delineate what we believe.  They are looking for people and groups who are clear and unafraid to stand for what they believe, as long as we can deal with their honest questions, opinions, and doubts forthrightly and graciously.  With many in the younger generations, it comes down to a matter of rebuilding trust before we can earn the right to speak into their lives.

These are the very questions that I envision the Imago Dei Society dealing with - a charism to research and analyze emerging generations and the emerging cultures so we can meet them in authentic ways that resonate with them without jettisoning the Tradition, both in liturgy and in belief.  Then, taking the knowledge and engaging in "experimental" worshiping communities to see what sticks and what doesn't.

I am about finished with a very good book by the new author, Thomas Chatterton Williams, entitled, "Losing My Cool: How a Father's Love and 15,000 Books Beat Hip-Hop Culture."  For the past several years, I have bought an autobiography as one of my summer books.  This is that kind of book for this summer... Williams writing about his life, and I'm finishing it too quickly. 

In his acknowledgments, Williams quotes Truman Capote, "Anyone who ever gave you confidence, you owe them a lot."  A good statement, a good sentiment, a good thing to remember.

I hated when in school we were told to write about a favorite hero, and everyone seemed to jump right to it.  I couldn't.  I never really had any heroes, and wondered whether something was wrong with me.

But what about those who gave me confidence?  If I am honest, and I have to ask myself if I am truly remembering correctly, I have encountered more that broke down my confidence than raised it up.  I really have had to be my own motivator for much of my life. 

The person that came to mind most quickly is Dr. Terry Kuhn.  He is retired now, but while at Kent State he was the Vice-Provost and Dean of the new academic unit in which I worked.  He was my boss.  There is much to admire in Dr. Kuhn.  He had enough confidence in me to allow me to branch into areas of interest and person development that never would have been possible, otherwise.  He allowed me to develop the whole technology department for our unit, when I was a student development specialist and hardly a technology guy.

This may be strange way of conveying such a thing, but one of the greatest compliments I remember receiving came from Dr. Kuhn.  I asked him to write a letter of recommendation for me as a perspective student to The General Theological Seminary.  He wrote in the letter that he thought this turn in my life would result in a tremendous waste of talent, but he highly recommended me nevertheless.  There you go. 

Then, of course, there is my mother!

I know I shouldn't get into this, even before I start.  I have decidedly not been visiting all the Anglican/Episcopalian blogs very often, because, basically, they were truly causing me a lot of angst and distracting me from other important ministry stuff.  I have two brain cells, and when one and half of them is dealing with how this person doesn't like what that bishop said or whatever that other Primate declared, well, that only leaves 1/2 a brain cell to deal with the rest of my life - just too much to do.  In the end, all this stuff in the Church will come to nothing more than distraction within our culture and defamation of the cause of Christ.

Yet, when I hear this new line of reasoning and affront coming out of the leadership of this Church - whether lay or clergy - I just can't help myself.  When I hear people attempt to use a line of argument around the Episcopal Church's sense of "colonial victimhood" when the Church of England's & the Anglican Communion's Archbishop of Canterbury makes decisions that spank or put into "time-out" this Church for its self-centered actions, well, that is just beyond the pale.  It really is.  When I hear the leaders of the provinces in Africa making the "colonial victimhood" accusation against the "Western" provinces, I can understand their justifications for such accusation (even while I think they use that accusation for convenience and to attempt to justify their own actions of rebellion within the Communion).  (Before God, we will all give an account for what we do and say according to the attitudes of our hearts, and if any of us do things and then justify those doings with fine sounding arguments that are not the attitudinal reality within our heart - lying, in other words - then we will give an account to our final Judge and jury.)

This Church in the U.S. has absolutely no right to claim colonial victimhood!  

We as a Church act in the world with respect to the wider Anglican Communion just like the Bush administration acted politically and militarily in the world.  We expect that we have the right to do whatever we want unilaterally because we are so developed and so enlightened and so absolutely correct and our "prophetic" doings are so righteous. We can do anything just so it is justified in our own minds no matter what hardship it may cause for anyone else. In our hubris and the resulting blindness, we actually believe that it is "good for them." 

Then, when we get pushback, or spanked for our childishness (which ++Rowan is doing, now) by those foreigners, then we start to act with petulance.  It is laughable that we attempt to rebuke the English Church because we were once a colony of England - nearly 300 years ago!   We, at this point in our ecclesiastical decline as a Church, can no longer really act this way, but we still do so because this generation of leadership doesn't know how to act in any other way. We are blind to our own "colonizing" attitudes and "imperialistic" actions with respect to the rest of the Communion, and particularly those "poor, backward" Anglicans in most of Africa (except Southern Africa, because they agree with us). 

The time is coming sooner than later when the rest of the world will stand up to the United States politically, economically, and militarily and say, "No more!"  Just wait until that happens and see the epileptic fits this country will go into.  We will become truly dangerous during the transition from world dominance to a far lesser status.  We will assert our dominance, in the mean time, by brute force if need be because we have lost our moral authority as a great nation and beacon of freedom.  This is what is happening to the Episcopal Church, our Church, within the Communion and with many of our former ecumenical partners.  We may not lob physical bombs (or money, in our case); we will simply not listen to anyone else, hands over our ears. We will simply not face up to reality and our place in the world Communion.   Oh, we want diversity and multiculturalism all right, just so long as they believe just like we do or pretend to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

We have to come up with fine arguments or attacks against those English colonizers in order to attempt to save face, but we continue to act in ways that do nothing much more that prove that we are not trustworthy and unwilling to listen to the plight of those less fortunate than our own American selves.

It isn't that I disagree with women being clergy or LBGT people being members, priests, or bishops of our Anglican Churches. It isn't that I don't think we can or should be advocates of such things around the Communion or the greater Church. What I absolutely disagree with is the way this generation of leadership in our Church has been conducting itself with respect to institutional change and the "controversial" issues.  We treat those issues as civil rights causes and make decisions in like manner.  This is not the way the Church should handle things. 

Now, because our leadership makes decisions in such a political or social manner (they know no other way), we are losing the knowledge of how to made decisions as a the Body of Christ, internationally.  And herein lies the problem of trust and "faith and order" as the other provinces attempt to order their lives when they cannot ignore what the Americans' are doing without much regard for their plight.

"My parents told me a story that encapsulates Pappy's paternal psychology completely.  As a baby, I was with my mother in our old home in Newark, crawling freely while she was trying to clean and watch after my very active five-year-old brother. We were upstairs, on the second floor of the house. At one end of the room, there was a door that led out into the hallway and down a long flight of carpeted stairs onto the parlor level, where my father had his study and received visitors.  I was a quiet baby, and it wouldn't have been odd for me to not be making much noise as I crawled.  Somehow, my mother had gotten distracted with my brother, and I made my way over to the door, which wasn't properly closed.  I got out into the hallway and soon began tumbling down the staircase in a bright blue bundle of diapers and pajamas, rushing toward the hardwood floor below.  As my mother gaped from the landing above, the door to my father's study flew open and out dove Pappy to catch me like a fly ball before I reached the ground.  He had been in the middle of a meeting when suddenly he hopped up, told his guests to wait, and bolted to the door.  He almost certainly saved my life that morning.

"'How in the world did you even hear that?' one of the stunned guests asked him afterward.

"'I've been listening for that sound from the moment we brought the baby home from the hospital,' Pappy said.

"I grew up knowing that no matter where I was or what I was doing, Pappy never stopped listening for the sound of me falling."

Williams, Thomas Chatterton, "Losing My Cool: How a Father's Love and 15,000 Books Beat Hip-Hop Culture";  New York (2010): The Penguin Press, pp 33-34.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, issued a statement in his Pentecost letter to the Communion requesting the resignations from certain inter-Anglican bodies, such as the ecumenical relations committees, of representatives of those Provinces who will not abide by the moratoria agreed upon within the bodies that currently govern the affairs of the Anglican Communion (the Instruments of Unity).  The moratoria consisted of no sanctioning of official liturgies for same-sex unions, no consecration of partnered gay bishops, and no more crossing of diocesan or provincial boundaries by those who vehemently oppose homosexuality and feel they must extend their own ecclesiastical authority into provinces not their own.

Of course, no one is happy.  The liberals in the Episcopal Church howl that Williams is making the Communion into another authoritarian Roman Catholic Church by a different name, with his aping the Pope's authority.  The conservatives howl that Williams is a weak-willed man who will not be a decisive leader in these crisis times and who cannot do what is necessary to save the Christian faith within Anglicanism from the liberal heretics.  The man can't win!

From the more liberal side, this from Bishop Marcus Andrus of the Diocese of California via his blog, Bishop Marc:

When an Empire and its exponents can no longer exercise control by might, an option is to feint, double-talk, and manipulate. Such tactics have been in the fore with Archbishop Rowan since the confirmation of Gene Robinson as the Bishop of New Hampshire in 2003. The deployment of the Windsor Report and the manipulation of the Lambeth Conference, as cited above, are prime examples. The archbishop's Pentecost letter is the most recent example.

In the Pentecost letter, it looks like he is disciplining errant provinces of the Communion, while only a little concentration shows that the underlying goal is to assert his power to be the disciplinarian. Archbishop Rowan is intent on a covenant with punitive measures built in.

IMHO, the belief that Williams is trying to be an authoritarian figure because his presumed "goal is to assert his power to be the disciplinarian" is absurd - not just absurd, but ludicrous!  If Williams has demonstrated anything over the past seven years, it is that he is not an authoritarian and will not come down with a hammer on those "others."  Now, this is the problem. The Bishop Marc, I will presume, would have been fine if Williams came down with a hammer on the those bishops and provinces that acted in ways that Bishop Marc hated - like boarder crossings.

Comments by Michael Ramsey, former Archbishop of Canterbury, on the place of history and experience in Biblical Studies and the working out of theology in the Christian life:

"I would like to end by suggesting that holding the appeal to history and to experience in balance is really the key both to New Testament studies and to theology as a whole.  In theology, where the history of God in Christ is so central, we must appeal to experience in order to be credible: the experience of the first Christians, of Christians down through the ages, and of ourselves.  And in the area of New Testament studies, we are trying to find out what really happened.  What was said and done by the Sea of Galilee? What was said and done in the streets of Jerusalem, and on the hill of Calvary?  But we are also concerned in New Testament studies with the experience of those first witnesses to Christ the Savior that caused them to write at all -- the tremendous experience that left them and us exclaiming, 'My Lord and my God!'"
(Michael Ramsey, The Anglican Spirit; Dale Coleman, editor; Boston, Cowley Publications, 1991, p. 93)

Ramsey, in this lecture, is commenting on Charles Gore and Liberal Catholicism, in its Anglican form.

This from The Very Rev Dr John Shepherd is Dean of Perth, Australia, in the TimesOnline (UK). In an article entitled, "Credo: Trite music blocks our ears to the divine in the liturgy,"  Dean Shepherd writes about the importance of art, and not just are but good art, within the Church, particularly when it comes to our music in the liturgy.

It is in the liturgy that we are able to enter into another consciousness, probe a deeper reality, strive for a sense of transcendence which lifts us above the mundane, and in the words of psalmist, sets us on a rock that is higher than ourselves. Our worship enables us to enter another time and another dimension -- a realm of experience beyond our ordinary human experience, beyond all our known thoughts and understandings.

In monastic terms, the liturgy is the path towards an exalted "ecstasy", a flight into the cloud of unknowing, the place where God is, and where the true contemplation of the creative stillness of God is possible.

And this is a reality which is beyond the ability of historians, theologians, linguists, biblical scholars or even pastoral liturgists to express. Their contributions may even hinder rather than help. The intensity and intangibility of this experience can only be expressed through the arts.

The whole article is good to read!

"What Matters More" by Derek Webb... considering the controversy surrounding Jennifer Knapp and her coming out.  I understand why some consider this song "controversial," but again it simply comes out of the camp that gives no quarter to anyone who disagrees with them on their interpretation of Scripture, God's will, and homosexuality.  Good song, me thinks.

Just some interesting articles and other stuff.

Here is an article on "sin" in "Dallas News."  The reporter has various local religious leaders write a brief blurb on their denomination's or religion's sins.

http://religionblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2010/05/texas-faith-what-is-the-sin-wi.html


Here is a link to the "Q Gatherings," sponsored by Gabe Lyons, on of the authors of "unChristian," a book that challenges our commonly held notions of the perception of Christianity and the institutional Church by the majority of the emerging generations.

http://qideas.org/event/concept.aspx

I really do miss riding the subway, daily.  I even kind of miss the crowdedness of the trains during rush hour - all of them.  To ride the train is to experience all kinds of cultural and social forms - great rudeness and even more kindness... frustration and wonder... selfishness and compassion... the very young and the very old - it is all here.  Perhaps I'm waxing nostalgic, since I rarely ride the subway these days, but on Monday night as I was traveling to and from seeing Willie's musical (Willie Martinez is a parishioner and Jazz leader - he is the drummer for the band), "This Side of Paradise" about Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, it felt good sitting on the subway and watching the people and their interactions, seeing the "up and coming" cultural changes, the vast array of cultures and dress and languages and attitudes, and knowing that this is New York City, the center of the known world.

I heard this song on the new "Stargate Universe" episode that premier on May 7th.  It is entitled, "Only If You Run" by Julian Plenti - yet another singer/songwriter with connections to Brooklyn (where else?).  This song is on his premier album, Skyscraper.

I've been thinking over and through aspects of "contemporary" Evangelical worship practices.  This past Sunday, I was home in Ohio for Mother's Day (I surprised my Mom - and she was!) and attended the church my sister and her family attend.  It is a growing Church of God (Anderson, IN) with a new building and all the "spiritually correct" stuff that is supposed to draw large crowds.  It was a fine enough service.  The band was very good.  The worship leader was a young guy and I could tell that he really enjoyed what he was doing - his personality was infectious.  As I watched the crowd, they were actually singing.  In many of these kinds of worship services, I've noticed that a large majority of the people simply stand and watch the band rather than interring into the worship experience, so I was glad to see that there was more going on than just a "spiritual concert."  The preacher gave a good sermon.  Babies were dedicated - it was Mother's Day after all.

North Point Ministries is a very large mega-church.  They've done a parody video of themselves, as I understand it, and it captures the new wave of doing church that is supposed to be the "relevant" and "contemporary" thing to do. This too, shall pass.  Not that there is anything wrong with it if it is done well and within context, but if, as is happening, everyone jumps on yet another bandwagon that is supposed to save the church in America, then it once again becomes inauthentic and just another passing fad, a puff of wind.

Here is the video parody:

"Sunday's Coming" Movie Trailer from North Point Media on Vimeo.

By the way, my sisters church service was a whole lot like this - including the cool video with relevant questions.  I don't get the impression that the pastor thinks he has all the answers, however. 

Part of me really liked it - it was fun being back in that environment, even without the all encompassing Charismatic-Evangelical aspects that are not part of the Church of God, Anderson theological belief concerning the Gifts of the Holy Spirit.  Yet, I'm not there any longer.  To me, it smacks of religio-entertainment.  People come to God through it, people grow in their relationship with God and one another in the midst of it (if the pastor preachers well, that is), but I would rather be involved in a "full-bodied" experience that I've come to know in Catholic worship in its Anglo-Catholic form.  We all participate and we all do the work of worship and liturgy together. 

The influence our manner of life can have on and within the prevailing culture for the sake of the Gospel of Jesus the Christ, for the sake of the beautiful, for the sake of freedom, for the sake of wisdom:  from where I am at present, I see two primary avenues for the Church to influence positively the prevailing culture in our current contexts, being primarily postmodern and post-Christian.  Since my efforts are being channeled through the creation of the Imago Dei Society and the Red Hook Project, a primary avenue is simple presence - presence among emerging generations so that we understand the new contexts in which the Church must dwell and within the arts because those people within the arts are the moving edges of the culture.

For the Imago Dei Society, our charism is to understand the contexts of the lives of emerging generations.  The best possible way to do so is to be present with those in that cohort.  My goal is the development of ways for re-establishing an enduring presence of the Anglican tradition of Christianity on our college and university campuses.  Focusing on witness and formation in a "pre-Constantinian" like society, we are working to establish live/learning intentional-communities of students that can provide for building strong relationships of fellowship and discipleship.  This also presents to us a means for learning "on the ground" the dynamics of the changing lives and understandings of younger people. 

Our presence on campuses where people of Faith in general, and Christians in particular, continue to be increasingly marginalized (and in some cases overtly objected to) provides a sane witness of the Life in Christ to the greater higher education community and provides support and encouragement for Christians wishing to live openly their Faith without apology.  Whether we like it or not, understanding it or not, accept it or not, university and college graduates will be the leaders of politics, business, science, and industry in the decades to come. To be a positive and forming influence on these holders of society's future is vitally important in building social structures that work for a sane, compassionate, and good society.

The Red Hook Space (the outcome of the Red Hook Project) will be our presence within a neighborhood context that includes a large number of artists and creative types. Part of the charism of the Red Hook Space is to begin the process of rebuilding trust and conversation among communities of people that have great misgivings of Christians and of the Church, at least as an institution.  The artist community is at the forefront of the changes being realized within our emerging culture - artists of all types are the cultural movers and shakers. 

Being present with and engaged creatively in the arts within the Space helps us understand and be a part of the continually changing dynamics within the arts. This type of ministry helps us live into and live out a primary aspect of being created in the image of God - we are creators with God of that which instills beauty, hope, reconciliation, and inspiration for the good. Our goal is to create wonderful, world-class art in all forms that bring beauty to a culture that is often bereft of it, to be a witness in the positive influence of our Faith in the creative endeavor, and to be witnesses of the creative power endemic in the Christian life (or at least should be).