Worship Media Arts

Many years ago, I was invited to speak at an event for media ministers. I was asked to demonstrate what creative worship looks like so I dug through some of the worship services I’d been a part of designing, and decided to write a sermon based on a coffee metaphor.

If you’ve been to a Midnight Oil Seminar, or if you’ve experienced the training I offer in the Ohio River Valley District of the UMC, you’ll quickly recognize this material.

As you begin the new year, I’d invite you to look examine your heart, in order to be as effective as you can be.

I love coffee, yes I do. I love coffee, how about you?

Have you ever had the perfect cup? –The kind where the cream, sugar (and maybe even chocolate or caramel) are mixed just perfectly. –The kind where you savor every sip.

Can you remember the worst cup of coffee you’ve had? –The kind where your first sip was combined with a mouth full of grounds. -maybe it’s been sitting in the break room all day. -The kind you just want to forget.

You know, we can learn a lot about life from coffee. Like the idea that it only takes a few grinds ruin the whole cup. If grounds slip past the  filter, the whole pot can be ruined.

Our lives are like that. Little things creep their way in that, if unfiltered, begin to stain our hearts. Unresolved conflict, greed, laziness, jealousy, and lust are just a few of the grinds that can slip through and make our hearts impure. Pretty soon, our cups can be overtaken with a bitter flavor that makes take on a flavor that repel people from Christ, rather than drawing them to him.

Thankfully, there is a process for purification laid out for us in Luke 3:16-17.

John answered them all, “I baptize you with water. But one more powerful than I will come, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”

Believe it or not, John the Baptist knew something about making coffee. Well, about filtering anyway. His sermon was a foretelling of what Christ would do when he came to earth, (separating the wheat from the chaff) but it was also a message of purity. Through Christ’s death on the cross, we can be made pure again as we filter our lives and our work as artists through the Spirit.

Our attitudes about ministries are often reflections of our own personal spiritual lives. Just like at Starbucks, we can add all kinds of extras to our cup, but they won’t cover up bitterness underneath. We need to constantly strive to make ourselves pure in heart if we want our ministry to have flavor. John the Baptist’s message gives us a plan for making ourselves pure: why it’s necessary, as we prepare for the coming of Christ (separating those who are impure from those who are not), and also a process by which we can be made pure.

When sin creeps into our lives, it affects everything. It affects the way that we relate to others, it affects our jobs and ministries, and it affects our relationship with God. We have to be willing to break down the old sinful self- to start grinding the beans so to speak – to become vessels by which the Spirit can be poured out for others to taste. Sometimes grinding the beans means changing our self centered attitudes; giving up our consumeristic attitudes of worship – other times it may mean confronting our own laziness. Even worse, it may be unhealthy addictions that prevent us from reaching our potential for ministering to a lost world. It’s only when we grind away our sin that we can be filtered through the Spirit and become pure again.

We know that this is what Jesus called us to. It’s at the very foundation of our faith.

Matthew 5:8 says“Blessed are those who are pure in heart, for they will see God”. If we aren’t constantly filtering our lives through the Spirit, we won’t see God, and if we don’t see God, how can we express God’s truth the sermons we write, music we sing, media we prepare and so on and so forth? If your spirit isn’t right with God, you have to start there. Actively pursue ways to renew your spirit. Find accountability, and if you don’t already, enter into a daily time of personal devotions.

Ministry is hard. When we become complacent and impurities overtake our spiritual lives, everything we do is affected. We can begin to just phone it in. It’s like instant coffee -We know enough tricks that in a few hours we have something that passes as a sermon or music, liturgy or media (just as instant coffee passes for coffee) but the results of our quickie efforts have to be “choked down” by those sitting in the pews.

Purity, then creativity is the key to making the Gospel appealing to a lost world. Creativity is innately part of who we are, but for some of us, we never engage in a creative process when we think about our areas of responsibilities for worship. We just download sermons, give little though to music selection or throw up some nature footage or abstract backgrounds at the last minute, and we wonder why our ministries don’t flourish.

So if we’ve ground up the parts of us that need to go, and we’ve engaged in a process of daily renewal then we can begin with the guidance of the Spirit to brew the pot for others to taste. When our cups are pure, others will be drawn to Christ in us, and that purity will pour out into everything we do. That means that our worship will be even better which leads to deeper discipleship and a desire to engage in mission.

Whether we’re creating graphics for worship, writing sermons, preparing music, building a house for the homeless, or feeding the hungry, we have to look at what we’re doing as being the hands and feet of Christ.

Brewing the pot for others, should means making it taste as good as it possibly can. That doesn’t happen in an instant. It takes careful preparation, creativity, and personal discipleship. Only when those things have happened can we then begin pouring the cup for others.

Who is the cup for? It’s spelled out pretty clearly in Matthew 28:18-20:

“Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Pouring the cup means growing the church and making disciples of the world around us. What we project (on screen from the pulpit and through our lives) has to have a flavor that is appealing to those we minister to. We’ll fall short sometimes, but Jesus came and died so that his Spirit could filter out the impurities that make us bound for the unquenchable fire.

Maybe as you’ve been reading this, you’ve thought about the things in your life that have gotten through the filter and have made your cup impure. What’s preventing you from living up to your fullest potential? Are there attitudes or actions that are making you less effective as a minister of the gospel? What does God need to do to create a clean heart within you?

Take a moment to reflect and pray about these things. Go to your pantry or wherever you store your coffee filters. If you don’t have coffee filters, then pick up a napkin. Stare at it for a moment. Think about the things that are preventing your cup from being pure in heart What must you separate to be Pure to the Last Drop? Give those things to God by writing them down in the filter. When you’re finished, fold that filter up, place it on your dresser or bathroom counter, as a reminder of what needs to be regularly separated from you life.

In 2012, through the Spirit’s Guidance, you can live Pure to the Last Drop.

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