Thursday, April 12, 2007
creative play
Just working on a lecture exploring the place of imagination in the emerging church. For me, a critical missional issue is whether our emerging imaginations are formed by our negative experiences of church past. Or whether they are grounded in the creative and Kingdom story of Jesus. (The lecture includes drawing on a email conversation between Al Roxburgh and myself here).
So it was nice to get this blog comment:Hey Steve, on a separate topic, just wanted to mention that I used your tile painting along with moby idea, and it was a fantastic experience for everyone. And then click this link to find this:
So I found some old unwanted tiles underneath the deck of my friends home, left discarded by the previous owner.
I brought them to our creativity and spirituality class and had each student choose a tile. They were extremely grimy so they were each asked to go wash them off. As they cleaned the dirt off of the tiles they were instructed to imagine themselves as the tile being cleansed by the hands of God.
Some tables were put together with a large blue camping tarp laid over it. This again was to stimulate a fresh environment that was also conducive to creative messiness. Dollar store paint and brushes were laid out.
Somewhat inspired by Steve Taylor’s “The out of bounds church”, everyone was asked to silently reflect, imagine, and paint as I read from Genesis 1, while Mobys track “God moving over the face of the waters” was playing.”
It is so encouraging as an author to get feedback like this, so thanks so much Lon. And what a great metaphor for imagining God’s redemptive work, taking old, discarded tiles and creatively redeeming them, bringing colour and vibrancy into the world God loves.
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Hey Steve, thanks for linking me! your book was an awesome resource. Thank you for writing it.
Comment by Lon — April 13, 2007 @ 11:28 am
wonderful tiles
Comment by jen — April 13, 2007 @ 11:52 am