Cabinet of Curiosities: Creativity Edition

My weekly roundup! This week it’s all about creativity & art.

1.  A lovely minister named Joanna (I say lovely, meaning lovely on the internet, as we have never met in person) has created some crafty-creative retreat materials on the Fruit of the Spirit. Jesus + Crafts. Can I say more? Who doesn’t want to break out the colored paper and colored pencils to get all crafty with the Spirit?

2. While we’re talkin’ creativity in the Spirit (can I get an Amen?), another extremely resourceful young female pastor, Korean-American Pastor and Mother Theresa at theresaecho.com, puts together these extremely amazing prayer stations for inter-generational worship. Her ideas are really inspiring, and I can’t wait to try out one of these at Peace Church! I am particularly thinking that the ideas for Stewardship could come in handy in October/November.

3. This week I stumbled across the most adorably wonderful online magazine: Darling. Personally, I like to think of myself as the Intellectual, with a touch of the Hostess. Full of so many very creative ideas!

4.  The #1 source for all things creative (no, not Jo Ann): Mollie Makes! Check this out: a fabric necklace! Ah, if only the subscription to Germany weren’t so absurdly expensive… *sigh*.

5. Not convinced about the visual arts & the church? Here is a smart quote from a great article in the Christian Century. Of course, “Mercy Seat spends about $27,000 a year on the arts” – which is, uh, about our church’s entire annual budget. But I do admire their passion for nurturing real art in the church.

“The book readers, the artists are leaving the church,” Even­sen said. “There’s not a place for them.” She pointed out that in the past the church often served as a patron of the arts, but today a reliance on technology rather than original creativity has left congregations using projector screens and showing uninspired clip art…. “Christian art is sometimes just praying hands, or Jesus carrying sheep over his shoulder or . . . an American flag or an eagle soaring. It’s illustration, it’s not art,” she said. “In some churches I served, people . . . just didn’t think about art.

“You go to the Minneapolis Institute of Art—and then you come to church and a puppet show will do?” she queried. People know that there is more to faith, she said, “it’s just that they don’t have any vocabulary, don’t know how to articulate it.”

COLLECTION OF ST. MATTHEW’S LUTHERAN CHURCH, FORT WORTH, TEXAS. © 2009-2010 KAREN GJELTEN STONE