Our calling is to “… become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some” (1 Cor 9:22). I believe that “all possible means” refers to the same creativity that God employed in our amazing creation. God created monochromatic zebras and vibrantly exquisite Quetzal birds. He did not break the mold, He simply had no mold. When Jesus healed the blind, He used a variety of methods. One time He spat into a man’s eyes, another time He created a mud compound to rub in the guy’s eyes, and several times He simply spoke the word to heal the blind. Jesus was divinely creative.

We are created in the image of God. Part of the image of God is not only choice, but creativity. Just as God gave Adam dominion over the birds, the cattle, and all of creation, so Paul charged his protégé Timothy to “preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage – with great patience and careful instruction” (2 Tim 4:2). God did not prescribe the method of dominion, nor did Paul prescribe a system or method of evangelism. In Acts, we see that Paul used whatever touch point he had available to connect with his audience. On Mars Hill, it was popular Athenian poetry and an altar to an unknown god. When presenting the Gospel to the Jews in Jerusalem, he took a much more different approach.

Since we serve a creative God, we must remember that creation requires change. Unfortunately, the history of the Christian Church is one of creating immutable monuments to the men and movements that dramatically changed the direction of the church. We then systematize and venerate the methods used by these movers and no longer look for the movement of the Spirit to bring creative methods to reach a new generation. We become old wine in old wineskins, irrelevant and unable to adapt and adjust to a changing culture. Those chosen few saints whose eyes are open to see the movement of God in their life, see that God moves in a new direction in a new way, a new wineskin. Meanwhile, the church is content to “sing an old song,” doing things like we have always done. Change implies an unknown, a sense of being uncomfortable. We like the familiar. We tend to share the Gospel the same way that we came to faith, thinking that it is the “right” way to evangelize. God never restricts Himself to formulas, traditions or human laws. He will communicate His message through a donkey or a daffodil (Num 22:30; Rom 1:20).

I also believe part of the reason we “sing an old song” is that we remember how God moved in the past. We are encouraged to remember the Lord and what he has done and celebrate it, but we must be careful to worship only our Maker and not His methods or His means. In the wilderness, God instructed Moses to make a bronze serpent so that anyone who would look to the serpent could be healed from the plague. Centuries later that bronze serpent was being worshiped as a relic and had to be destroyed by Hezekiah.

When Moody Bible Institute began broadcasting on radio in 1926, over 80 years ago, many Christians said, “You can’t use the devil’s tools to share the Gospel.” A full-time Christian radio station had never been attempted. The visionary founders moved forward undaunted, and decades later millions had been reached with the Gospel broadcast around the world. Many Christians opposed presenting the Gospel on TV in the early years, but no one can deny that countless souls have trusted in Christ for salvation from a televised Gospel presentation.

In today’s media driven culture, the Gospel is being presented through drama, dance, video, mime, debate, music, radio, TV, podcast, blog, SecondLife, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and a whole host of other mediums. Each of these media platforms can be transformed into pulpits to share the truth. Some pastors today are turning to movie clips for sermon illustrations. A brief sixty to ninety seconds scene from a movie may provide a powerful word picture that emblazons the message or point upon the heart of the listener. Once again, the critics claim that such multi-media illustrations are an endorsement of Hollywood or carnality. But this is no different than verbally telling a story or other sermon illustration or even the actions of Paul on Mars Hill. It is simply using the tools of the world to connect lost people to the truth of the Scriptures.

Creative illustrations help the listener realize the Word of God is “living and active,” applicable to life today. There are times where the message and illustrations simply flow. When I was a youth pastor, I observed unchurched kids in the neighborhood having a shaving cream fight. The Lord prompted me to invite the kids to our youth group the following week for a “massive shaving cream fight.” Out of curiosity, many of the kids came. I incorporated a few other messy games and called it “Slopfest.” We had pudding slip and slides, Jello wars, shaving cream fights, and the messiest stuff imaginable. At the conclusion of the chaos, I pointed out our disgusting stickiness and filthiness. I compared it to our personal moral failures and how we were dirty in God’s sight and needed to be cleansed. We brought out the hose and cleaned everyone off, pointing to the Gospel and how Jesus can cleanse us from our sins. A simple illustration that connected with the hearts of the hearers.

Numerous times I have had people talk about an illustration I used years ago and how they still remember the message; yet, they may scarcely remember what I taught on last week, because the illustrations used last week did not provide the “Aha!” moment. Is this because the earlier illustration was divinely inspired or divinely connected? There are times where the preparation of the message is a wrestling match, a constant struggle for position and points, exhortation from exhaustion. God can divinely inspire and move in the flow or in the struggle. We are simply called to be obedient, following the example of our Lord, who poured himself out as a drink offering. We may not connect with everyone all of the time, but as we yield ourselves to Him, He can accomplish much.

Our commission as ministers of the Gospel is to share the Good News “by all possible means.” We are called to a high standard of creativity. The message doesn’t change; the methods do. We can creatively share the Gospel, but we cannot touch what is the Gospel. Paul rebuked the Galatians for “turning to a different gospel” (Gal 1:6). Some people today, in an effort to be creative, are preaching a different Gospel, one that they have created. Their creation is a cheap imitation of what the Lord handed down, and it has departed from the essentials of the faith. We must be careful that in our creativity, we do not play with the essentials. That creativity was seen in the early church and warned against by Jude, “… urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints” (Jude 3). The substance of our faith was handed down “once for all,” not to be recreated, upgraded or improved. The methods and means are up to us, using the creative ability God has given us. “… I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some” (1 Cor 9:22). Are there “means” you need to explore?

Tye Riter is Senior Pastor of Calvary Chapel West Boca in Boca Raton, Florida. He and his wife Lori have had professional careers in classical music, performing in orchestras in the United States and with musical missionary groups. Tye also teaches music at Palm Beach Atlantic University, a Christian liberal arts university in West Palm Beach, Florida.

The New International Version of the Bible has been referenced.

Immediately after that “out of the norm” concert, we received some flak from church leaders who accused us of being “worldly.” “They were bringing the nightclub into the church,” was their allegation against us. Those really were the days.

Yet, it is ironic that most churches today would not conduct their services without a band of musicians playing electronic musical equipment and worship leaders imitating what is current in Gospel music.

Well, it seems that there is today a “nightclub” (to use the same analogy) in almost every church and that is perfectly acceptable? Modern worship music is not just the norm. It is the key to survival for most churches. Who would stay with one that is not singing the latest worship songs? And the latest and greatest worship songs today are those that sound like the hits of the 80s and 90s. Hey, we are still ten years behind!

It used to be that in medieval times, the Church led in music, art, literature, and the aesthetics. Those great composers, artists, painters, sculptors, poets, and authors were creating for the glory of God and pushing the envelope. The scene somehow changed with the Enlightenment and the Reformation and we became more rational, intellectualized, and cerebral in beliefs and behaviors and less emotive, imaginative, and creative.

We are ministering in the 21st century – a time of sound bytes, images, amusement, experience, and feeling good. How embarrassing that a people and an institution that worships the Creator is often devoid of creativity. The Church should be the world’s most creative organization. Yet, “We’ve never done it that way here before” seems to be our mantra when it comes to ministry expressions.

Why are we not creative anymore? Perhaps in doing church and ministry, we need to overcome some mental blocks.

Mental Block #1 Fear of Change

Like any other institution, we have the tendency to slip into a maintenance mode. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!” seems to be the course of least resistance. I recall that for the longest time, a certain denomination was holding its traditional Sunday evening Gospel service every week. It became apparent that most of the people who showed up were the converted and even they grew tired of it. But as we all know, sacred cows are hard to remove. That weekly Sunday evening Gospel service eventually died a natural death when attendance kept dwindling.

Coupled with this fear of change, we tend to suspect those who are gifted, imaginative, and creative. They are seen as different from ordinary and normal people. They appear to be somewhat eccentric. And in our church mentality, what is weird is to be avoided.

We live in a world of exponential change. Society and culture are changing. Values are shifting. People are changing. To be sure, we have the same unchanging mandate to go out and preach the Gospel. Jesus did not specify how we should do it. In response to changes and challenges that are molding how the postmodern person is like, we must adjust the how we should do it. We die for the message but not for the method. Change does not destroy tradition. In fact, an institution guarantees its continuity by adapting to changes.

We all “do church” following a series of procedures and prescriptions. Most of them are assumptions, not written down anywhere. If it is a tradition, is it valuable, meaningful, or just the way it has always been done? Remember: tradition is suggestion, not law.

Mental Block # 2 Fear of Failure

Any church or organization with a reputation for innovation will readily admit that not everything they have tried worked. A church I worked with in Amsterdam many summers ago tried to reach out to the immigrant restaurant workers in the city with the idea of opening a coffee house for these workers to hang out. The church social hall was transformed into a makeshift coffee house during the day. That was before Starbucks became a global brand. It was a cool idea but the opening hours were not conducive for these people. We discovered later that the best time was midnight after the restaurant closed. That was when they would spend their time in gambling or other nocturnal activities. Of course, running a midnight coffee shop in church was not everyone’s cup of coffee (tea). But at least the church had that innovative idea. When you try something new, there will be failure. But there will also be discovery. If the church, group or team works together enthusiastically on anything, they will at least learn teamwork.

Failure should not deter us from trying something for which we are not certain of the outcome. Taking risks (sensible ones) means just that. As corporate gurus are telling us, the key to success in today’s world is innovation and we need creative leadership. One “risky” event we tried was to hire a pub for a night and let Christians invite their colleagues and friends to an event featuring Christian rock bands. Everything else was normal for a night out in the pub – drinks and chatter except that the bands played both Christian and secular songs. It was a huge success in terms of the turnout. The yuppies, the young, and the hip were having a great time. The challenge was in sharing the Gospel to the bunch of noisy and busy revelers. I tried my level best to engage them but realized that it was not the most effective way for that occasion and audience. Did we fail? Well, not really. The non-Christians enjoyed the rest of the evening and probably went away with the impression that Christians were not boring and dull people! We could have communicated the Gospel through a more appropriate medium than having a speaker on stage (unless he is a comedian).

Mental Block #3 False Dichotomy between Secular and Sacred

This perception has led the Church to be suspicious of expressions that are considered secular and therefore “worldly.” After all, we are exhorted not to “love the world” (1 Jn 2:15). Many of us boomers grew up with that false dichotomy.

As young Christians, we were taught that movies were the source of immoral influence and therefore going to the cinema was not a spiritual thing to do. It was a place of abomination and by just being in there would be contaminating. A pastor we knew at that time was even reprimanded for making references to Charlton Heston’s movie “The Ten Commandments” in his teaching. What became confusing to us was the arrival of the TV set into our homes. How was it that watching TV was not sinful but visiting the cinema was?

Leonard Sweet in his book AQUA Church writes, “… many of our religious communities find visual delights highly suspect and murky.” In his words, we are “image-averse communities,” and as a result become unimaginative and uninteresting whereas the postmodern mind perceives in images, metaphors, and stories rather than theories and propositions.

Another example of this false dichotomy between the secular and the sacred is in the area of music. Barely twenty years ago, rock music was termed the “devil’s music.” The problem was not the music but the values and lifestyles of its purveyors. Rock music was associated with the drug-crazed culture of the 60s and therefore was an import from hell. Probably the now elderly British pop star Sir Cliff Richard helped to clear the air with his song, “Why should the devil have all the good music?”  Now we have Christian rock, rap, metal, country, blues, etc.

I am not advocating that everything different and out of the box is acceptable for ministry in the name of creativity. As the famous dictum of Marshall McLuhan states, “The medium is the message.” Expressions that are immoral, offensive, defamatory, and discriminatory are certainly out. But there is so much more we can do to articulate the Christian message and demonstrate the Christian life in creative, exciting, and meaningful ways.

The challenge before us is how to make the Gospel attractive without sacrificing its strict demand for obedient discipleship. How do we help Christians work out the multiple ramifications of following Jesus Christ in the postmodern world? Sounds impossible? Walt Disney said, “It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.” Did not God say that with Him, nothing is impossible?

Michael Tan is the Executive Vice-President of Eagles Communications. He likes to preach, write, play the guitar, and manage his staff!

References:
Sweet, Leonard. AQUA Church. Loveland: Group Publishing, 1999.