"Christian" is a Noun

Well, tomorrow is Thanksgiving, so I'm finishing up some stuff today and heading down to Greenville, SC to visit my family for a couple of days. Last night, David and I led worship at Tirzah ARP near Newport for their Thanksgiving thing. We had a good time, and it was nice to visit with another body of believers and hear some of their stories. Tirzah has been around something like 200 years, and I appreciated their quest to remain true to who they've been while embracing newer forms of communication/worship. Andy Putnam (their pastor) is another Mac aficionado, and I enjoyed seeing his set-up.

Any way, this morning I was reading an interview with Rob Bell of Mars Hill Church in Michigan. He's an interesting guy who has drawn his fair share of praise and criticism from other Christian leaders, but he said something that I've felt for a long time-- just much more eloquently than I:

"I don't believe in Christian art or music. The word Christian was originally a noun. A person, not an adjective. I believe in great art. If you are an artist, your job is to do great art and you don't need to tack on the word Christian. It's already great. God is the God of Creativity. Categories desecrate the art form. It's either great art or it isn't. Followers of Jesus should have the first word instead of coming late to the game with some poor quality spin-off. Let's talk about things before everyone else."

Everything about the Pastor's call mixes art and science (creativity and concreteness): public speaking, counseling, writing, music, events, etc. It's a very fulfilling role to have in a community, but we fall short so many times. We play catch-up to real artists because we're not willing to push out of our comfort zone and inspire creativity in our congregations.

An artistic community is built on trust, but I wonder, do we always have that trust in the Church? The artist must have the trust of those around him/her in order to take risks. Risks by their very nature can lead to success or failure, but we must take them.

How can we support leaders (volunteer or otherwise) in our ministry and let them know that when they take risks, we are there for them to celebrate success as well as overcome failure?