Can you even remember why you got into church work in the first place?
You wanted to change lives. You wanted to tell His story. You wanted to impact. You wanted to see people place their hope in the Nazarene. You wanted to live out of an authentic understanding of the Kingdom. Words like renewal, worship, creativity, and inspiration led the visionary statements you spoke into existence. Grace ruled.
And then you started working there—at that church.
What began as a marriage between vision and hope morphed into a balancing act between expectations, anxiety, and routine. Your hope of bearing fruit in a garden transformed into a life of production in a factory. You traded the creation of God-experiences for the production of worship widgets.
And if you’re not in this situation, you know someone who is.
While there is no solution, you already know that a solution is not really what you’re looking for. You’re looking for something far greater than solutions.
You’re looking for hope. And that’s where the really great news enters. Life in Christ’s Kingdom always proclaims that there are glimmers of hope littered along the highway of your life’s journey. And these glimmers are intentionally designed by God to lead you into a deeper companionship with Him than you’ve ever known. Companionship with God—at the end of the day, isn’t that really the point?
There’s a glimmer of hope you may have never considered. It has to do with framing windows.
In his book Windows of the Soul, author Ken Gire talks about experiences in which God’s transcendence crosses over into our everyday. He calls these situations “windows.” A window is where our search for God meets His search for us. It’s an intersection of sorts, a moment in time when we realize that there’s something more going on than what we see.
God is constantly creating windows for everyone.
Here’s my question: What if you’re more aware of these windows because of your own current helplessness and brokenness? What if your exact church experience is causing you to see the great Unseen like never before? When I was a pastor, I called it “becoming softer.” During these extremely difficult times, I listened and cried more. I saw God’s interaction with His creation every day. Clearly.
And here’s where this glimmer of hope really comes into play (the part you already know, but may never have put words to): The primary way masses of people see, experience and meet God at these windows is through artists creating and storytellers telling. God produces these windows, but artists and storytellers frame them for everyone to see. These daily interactions with God will become invisible without artists and storytellers framing them. Without you framing them.
You—isolated and misunderstood, in the middle of your pain and disillusionment with your boss or your elder board—have the ability to frame windows for all to see. And your awareness of these windows is heightened by your brokenness. Through your music and your blogs and your sermons and your media, you have the potential to help your world see and experience the places in which God is meeting them. When you’re on the brink of tears, your art and your narratives make more of an impact than ever before.
The final year of my pastoral ministry was the most emotionally draining experience of my life. During that time, I started piecing together a short video, envisioned from a story I read years ago called, “The Life Saving Station.” The story spoke of the Church becoming more of a Club and losing her ability to save lives.
So with my old and broken version of Premiere Pro, I began to create art. I drove to the ocean with a $300 video camera and shot footage of waves crashing onto the beach. I recorded some strings and an acoustic guitar, and I laid down a vocal underscore. At the end of those 100 hours, I had a three-minute mini-movie that would play great in any church (this was before SermonSpice and WorshipHouse even existed).
That video has now played in more than 10,000 churches around the world. And while I’m not proud of the film’s quality (it’s actually embarrassing to watch today), I can now see what God was doing.
He was leading me into the window framing business.
God is asking something of you during this dark night. He’s asking you to frame the window where His hand is reaching out to a lost world. And the frame is pieced together with your narrative and your art.
Gary Molander is an extremely fulfilled husband, father, and business owner. The beta version of an organization in which his deepest desires are married to a legitimate need in the world is called Floodgate Productions (www.floodgateproductions.com).