As the year comes to end, we look back with gratefulness for the privilege of partnering with you in serving the local church. We look forward to 2009 and seeing what amazing things God has planned for us.

In the upcoming days, we pray that you will make time to prepare for the celebration of the birth of our Lord and Savior. We pray that your services will draw people to see the Light that has come into our world.

Merry Christmas and may God bless you.

Redeemer, come, with us abide; Our hearts to Thee we open wide;
Let us Thy inner presence feel; Thy grace and love in us reveal.
Lift Up Your Heads, Ye Mighty Gates. — George Weissel

By Ian Morgan Cron

The original Creative Arts Pastor was St Francis of Assisi. Historians credit this twelfth century saint with writing and directing the first Nativity play. On the day before Christmas in 1223, Francis told the citizens of a small village called Greccio that he wanted to do something special to celebrate Jesus’ birth—he would hold a Christmas Mass outdoors. Despite the fact that this was the Middle Ages and people were regularly burned at the stake for this sort of thing the townspeople jumped into high gear clearing the site, while the local candle makers started making altar candles. Then Francis got another idea: they would re-create a manger scene, complete with live oxen and donkey. Now the farmers ran off, arguing about whose livestock would star in the celebration. Then Francis walked around the village, picking a few of the locals to play the parts of Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, the angels and the Magi. That night, when everything was ready, the entire town turned out. The evening was lit with candles and torches. The people sang matins and watched as the Nativity was reenacted right before their eyes. Francis sang the gospel reading and preached with so much passion about the miracle of God’s willingness to visit us as an infant that some said they actually saw the baby doll’s eyes open. For one night, he transformed Greccio into Bethlehem.

So what inspired St Francis to stage the first recorded live crèche? He knew that people would come to church dreading the inevitable. Every year they heard the story of Jesus’ birth told in a dispassionate drone followed by an equally lifeless homily. So Francis did what any self-respecting Creative Arts Pastor would do—he snuck past the fortified front door of his congregation’s intellectual cynicism and smuggled the Christmas story in through the back door of their unsuspecting imaginations. He plunged them into an experience of the Incarnation that pulled the rug out from under their skepticism. Francis reawakened their somnolent capacity for astonishment, arresting them with the story of God invading human history in the form of a child.

I have known many Creative Arts Pastors over the years and most have more than a little of St Francis’ blood coursing through their veins. They are in love with Jesus and their enthusiasm to do something beautiful and surprising for God is infectious. Like Francis they live to tell the old story in a new way.

In 1993 Pope John Paul II wrote a sublimely inspiring letter to the artists of the world. Pope John Paul was an accomplished actor and playwright, so his words come from a deep place of solidarity with the artistic community.

Click Here to read the entire article. >>

Drama
DOOR NUMBER THREE

Message
FAITH WITH GUTS

Video
HOPE OF THIS CITY

TraininG
QUICK REFERENCE COPYRIGHT FOR SERVICE PLANNERS