Remember this idea for a new church development housed in the arts center?

It continues to percolate, though I must admit that the idea makes me tired. I visited another NCD not long ago that also has an arts focus, and found it very interesting and inspiring but it was also clear that it’s the pastor’s show. Not a great lifestyle for someone with three children under the age of 6.

But weird things keep happening. For example, I met someone at the writing workshop who’s doing an NCD and talked glowingly about her experience. I also talked to a friend in the presbytery about this idea, who affirmed its coolness and suggested I chat with another associate pastor in the neighborhood. Turns out she’s been having dreams about an idea very similar to mine. Like, goose-bumpingly similar. We have been trading e-mails. Actually this makes me very happy because maybe this means that I can just be the catalyst, but this thing will be hers to do. Trouble is, she might be having the same feeling about me.

The second thing is that the denomination has a yearly discernment event for people considering NCD. Apparently the people are “loving but honest” in helping people determine whether they have gifts for this kind of ministry. Perfect. I do feel like I have the gift of vision, but don’t consider myself particularly entrepreneurial. So I need some guidance. The next event will be in October, which I shrugged off—the logistics of traveling out of town while J is still so young are formidable. Eh, maybe another year.

Guess where the event is being held this year.

Sigh…

So I am working on an application to attend this thing, which includes a 500-word statement on “Why I want to attend this event.” Here is what I have written as a first draft (with pseudonyms):

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Simply put, I don’t really want to attend this event… and yet I feel compelled to.

I have heard many candidates for ordination describe God’s nudging them into ministry and their running the other way a la Moses or Jonah. My call story was never like that. For whatever reason, I always felt a sense of “rightness” about God’s call and never felt the urge to resist.

However, after five years of ordained ministry, I am being nudged to explore the idea of NCD, and I now understand where so many of my colleagues were coming from. It is not an area of ministry that ever held much interest, mainly because I assumed “I could never do that.” I’m still not sure I can, which leads me to wonder what God is up to with these nudges. The timing is also particularly inconvenient. I am content in my current ministry, where I am trusted, appreciated, and challenged to grow. I have three children under the age of six, and recently negotiated a shift to part-time ministry that has fit my life very well. I have a burgeoning ministry of writing that is beginning to take shape.

So why am I asking to attend this event? Because I have a vision that I cannot shake.

Many of us in the National Crankypants Presbytery have been talking about a church in Nearby Suburb, a current “dead zone” for Presbyterian churches. The vision that has come to me is of a church housed in the Arts Center, a former prison turned arts space that will open later this year and will house studios and galleries, a theater, classes, workshops, and community events.

I believe that the arts and faith can be a powerful combination. Last year during Lent I coordinated a study series for the church I currently serve, entitled “A Beautiful Thing: Exploring the Creative and Liturgical Arts.” The series included presentations on arts and spirituality, an arts and crafts exhibition at the church, and a class on writing as a spiritual discipline, which I led. The Lent series was an energizing experience for the church. It also fed this dream I have about a new church development, housed in the Arts Center and capitalizing on the arts emphasis there to get people creating—writing, drawing, woodworking, cooking, knitting, singing, whatever—as an expression of the prayers in their hearts and their experiences of God.

I have also been reading extensively about church transformation, the emergent church, and missional theology and am becoming more and more convinced that while most of our congregations excel at creating consumers of religious services, if our churches are making disciples, it is often happening in isolated pockets, if at all. I am convicted by Willow Creek Church’s “Reveal” study, in which the church leaders found that while their programs were thriving, people were not deepening their faith, and the church was not successful in equipping the saints for ministry.

For this reason, I am longing for something different in a Christian community, and I think other people are too. As one who writes poetry and works in images, there is something about a church in the Arts Center that resonates with me on a very deep level. There is something powerful about the idea of a former jail becoming a home for a different kind of Christian community. I think about Paul and Silas, singing songs (creating art, in a manner of speaking) and having those prison walls tumble down around them. The prison in turn became a space for transformation for the jailer, who thought those crumbled walls meant his doom when in fact they meant his true liberation. (Acts 16:25-34)

I am hoping the discernment event will help me evaluate whether this NCD might be mine to do, or whether it is a sound idea but someone else’s to bring to fruition, or some other outcome I cannot even envision.