reflections on the 2006 willowcreek arts conference

June 28, 2006

i had the wonderful privilege of attending willowcreek's arts conference again. the arts conference is one of the biggest highlights every year for me. the Lord always does great things there. every year i leave inspired, encouraged, and passionate about the potential and power of the arts in the church. every year i am more convinced that we need to unleash our artists into their God-given potential and create spaces for them to thrive. every year my heart bursts at the possibilities of God-moments that can be created with the arts. every year i long for the arts to flourish in ever-increasing measure back home, at rhcbc.

it's hard to describe all the things i've experienced this year—i'll attempt to capture some of the things i was thinking about during my week there.

team collaboration & rhcbc
in nancy beach's first session, she talked about team collaboration and how rare it was to have a great team. she began to list several characteristics of a great team. as she listed them, i thought back to my team at rhcbc and decided if it was true of us. at the end of her list, i found that my team met every one! i kept thinking, "yeah, that's like us!" i've always enjoyed my team tremendously. our meetings are so great. they're filled with laughter, smiles, happiness, honesty and creativity. i love it! i love every minute of it. but somewhere along the way, i never stopped to consider how rare it was until nancy beach mentioned it. wow! i felt so privileged, so honoured, so blessed to have the opportunity to work with them.

longing for God
for the past two years, the first day or two of the arts conference have been focused on the attendees. the willowcreek team understands that conference attendees give so much of themselves to their churches during the year that they rarely get the same energy invested back into them. the arts conference is a place where they don't have to do a thing and have the willowcreek team build back into their lives. i always loved that. i went to willow this year thinking the same thing would happen. i longed to meet with the Lord. i longed to be touched by His unfailing love. i longed to give Him everything—all of me for all of Him.

to my surprise, the conference was structured differently this year. instead of extended corporate worship teams, dramas, media presentations, dances, they dived right into the main session materials. i was shocked at first. when we arrived, the first session started with a welcome to the conference deal (they used sand art, it was the most amazing thing!). then nancy beach came up and started talking. i thought she was giving a few words of welcome, but after a while, i realized she was right into her first talk. most sessions in the first two days were structured that way.

i really, really longed to meet with God. on the first day, there was only two songs of corporate worship. it was such a tease! it was the same deal on the second day, but fortunately charlie hall was there for our last session. after longing for a few days to worship God corporately, i finally had the opportunity. i let loose and went after God with all my being, heart, body, mind and soul. the time i had with Him was amazing! it was so much sweeter because the time was delayed. in our society, we are so used to instant everything: food, communication, gratification. we don't know what it is to wait. i don't know what it's like to wait sometimes either. but through this experience, i realized that sometimes things become so much better when we have to wait, because our anticipation builds, our longing for it builds. a.w. tozer, in the pursuit of God when describing the holy men and women of the past & their pursuit of God, says this "when they had found Him the finding was all the sweeter for the long seeking" (p. 15). so true! i experienced that first hand.

stories, stories
the morning of the second day was remarkable. they started off with a presentation of several 100 word stories of "polaroid moments" of God (times where people really encountered God) from members of the willowcreek congregation. some of these were really difficult moments, where people had to trust God through some tears and saw Him do amazing things. i was so encouraged by what i saw. i wondered at the kind of stories people had at rhcbc. i wondered what the Lord was doing in the lives of people in my church. i wanted to know. one of the biggest problems with larger churches is that you never know people well enough to know what God is doing in their lives. jer's church, rcefc, has a time called family time near the end of service. this is a space where anyone can come up, share prayer requests and/or God stories. i think it's the greatest thing ever and i wish we could have something like that at my church. at the end of the session that morning, nancy encouraged us to write our own 100-word stories and post them outside guest central. at the end of the conference, i made sure i went to guest central. i read every story that was posted (and there were a TON!). i was so moved by the work of God in so many lives. i was so moved by how He cares and knows each of our deepest needs and struggles and does miracles in our lives. i love it. i love God stories!

i am a palm tree
i was very encouraged by the last session of act one. kenneth ulmer was the speaker. his last point were two things he learnt from a palm tree. as he spoke, i felt something inside me stir. tears filled my eyes. everything he described has been my life for the past few years. it was if he was talking about me. he talked about how a palm tree had an elasticity to it, that in the midsts of the storms, it'll bend but won't break. i've been bent by the storms of life in every which way, to such a degree that i've been on the verge of snapping several times, but by God's grace, i've never broke. He's given me the courage, the faith, the hope to press on and keep trusting in Him. kenneth continued. his next point about a palm tree was how their leaves sit at the top of it (unlike other trees) and out of the way of the storms. he talked about how when the storms of life go by, the leaves wave. in the hardest of times, God gave me the ability to still give Him praise. He gave me a heart that still sought after Him. kenneth talked about how in those storms of life, all we have to do is stand there and give God praise and people will be blessed by us. the tears kept coming. God has been doing something special in my life, despite the pain, the sorrow, the agony, the deep hurts, the suffering, the questions, the loneliness, the isolation, for His glory. i knew He had been using my life to bless others, but to hear that from the speaker brought so much encouragement to me.

an artist's holy discontent
bill hybels gave a powerful message at the beginning of act two. he started off by saying how for the longest time, he's wondered why people give themselves over to what they do. what motivates people to give their lives for a certain cause? he used moses as an example and showed us how he had a holy discontent over the treatment of the hebrews in egypt. he was wrecked when he saw the egyptian man fighting the hebrew slave. he was wrecked when the hebrews slave were fighting each other. he asked us, what breaks you? what really wrecks you? he suggested that it's possible that those things that breaks and wreck us are the same things that break and wreck God and that it's possible that God wants us to do do something about it. powerful words.

i thought about his question. what are the things in life that i cannot sit by and do nothing about? synergy arose out of holy discontent. jer and i could not stand the lack of social justice in the chinese church. we felt something was horribly wrong with the picture and so after much prayer, we formed synergy ministries. what else? was there anything else? the arts. i long to see the arts flourish in the church. i long for churches to create environments that are full of God-moments. especially in the chinese church, i long for parents to allow their children to step into their God-given giftedness and not hold back. for too long, chinese parents have been forcing their children to become doctors, engineers, business people, professions that are stable and make lots of money! this must change! i do not believe God has not gifted chinese people with artistic gifts. i believe it's the parents that have diminished those gifts in their children and persuaded them into other professions. we must let our children flourish in their God-given giftedness and potential!

seasons of the soul
i went to a workshop led by nancy beach (my favourite person at willow) called seasons of the soul. she talked about how our the course of our lives mirrored the different seasons. i've heard of this metaphor before, but i've never heard much on what summer and fall was all about. even before going to the workshop, i knew i had been in winter for the last few years of my life. my winter ended at the beginning of 2006. everything was different. i had entered spring. new things were blooming in my life. i was in a new season, finally. i had entered into the final chapters of the book of job.

as nancy discussed spring, i thought i definitely was in spring. but then she went to summer! i changed my mind. i was in summer! summer is the season of abundance. it's the season that can pass us by the quickest if we're not careful. it's the season where gratitude and thanksgiving should be at the forefront. i couldn't really believe my ears. all that time, i was thinking i was in spring, but no! i was definitely in summer. God had brought me out of winter, into spring and now into summer.

i feel my life has been blessed over-abundantly by the mercy and grace of God. after a long season of toil and hardship, He's turned things in my life completely around. praise Him! oh He alone is worthy! in this season, He's done things in my life that have completely blown me away and i am ever so grateful. i found it really interesting how God has brought me into this season of summer. during my winter term at tyndale, i begun to notice how ungrateful, how unthankful i was towards the Lord. i didn't like this one bit and i asked Him to help change that in mind. God really honoured my prayers. He began to develop a deepening heart of gratitude and thanksgiving. His timing is simply impeccable. when nancy talked about being thankful, my heart leaped with joy! that's what the Lord has been doing in my life! helping me to be more thankful!

i was so delighted. at the end of the workshop, nancy set some time for prayer. she asked people in each season to stand up so she could pray over us. i thought back to my experience at willow last year. last year, had i been in this same workshop, i would have stood for prayer in the winter season. but that season has come and gone. i stood up for prayer in the summer season. i was soooooo thankful in that moment. God had brought me out of the coldest, harshest, longest, most bitter winter i've ever faced.

only through the arts
at the seasons of the soul workshop, nancy showed a drama that described what winter was like. the sketch was about a husband and a wife. the wife had committed emotional adultery with another man (emotional adultery happens when one spouse gives a part or all of themselves over to someone else other than their spouse. it happens with an intimacy occurs with the opposite sex outside of marriage. it has nothing to do with the physical, but everything to do with the emotions, the heart and the mind. in some ways, emotional adultery is even worse than physical adultery. but physical adultery normally happens after emotional adultery. i've never actually heard about emotional adultery until quite recently. i've been reading up on it for more own interests. two good articles on emotional adultery can be found here and here). the husband was outside, thinking. the wife comes out and tries to talk with him about what she did. as i listened to the husband, i could feel the heartache, the brokenness, the deep pain, the frustration, the anger, he felt from what she did. it wrenched my heart. in that moment, i was reminded of how powerful the arts can be. there's simply no other way that these kind of emotions could be felt by a congregation except through the arts.

the arts give voice to the heart. it gives voice to emotions, feelings that cannot be expressed in any other way. the arts reaches the very depths of who we are. i believe our hearts reflect our most truest thoughts and attitudes about something. i always make it a point to give special attention whenever i feel something deeply. if i react in anger, sadness, tears, laughter, etc., i ask God, what's really going on inside? why am i reacting this way?

i read a quote from a magnet that night by helen keller (everyone has heard of this person except for me), "the best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. they must be felt within the heart." how true! and the arts is one major way those things can be felt.

fit for ministry—different molds
as God has firmed up my call to full time ministry over the years, i've always looked at the classical roles of pastors and never saw how i fit into those. i'm really a very different person. i'm highly introspective, i'm highly introverted, i require a lot of time (sometimes a few hours, sometimes a day, sometimes a few days, sometimes more than that) to answer questions because i need to process it in my mind, i have a graphic design background, i don't like hanging around big groups/crowds of people, i love blogging, journalling, reflecting and the list goes on and on (don't get me wrong here, i'm not saying pastors don't do some of these things). i've always seen myself as someone outside the typical pastoral realm. i just didn't fit that mold! how would God use me? i didn't have any answers. during one of the workshops, the speaker said things that really affirmed some things in me. it was as if the Lord was whispering to me, "see leo, i have purpose in what i'm doing with your life. you may not fit those classical roles of pastors, but i don't want you to do. i've created you to be you, not to fit into some other molds. you have your own mold and that mold works! you are fit for ministry. it's different from what you see now, but that's just fine!"

more to leadership
i went to a workshop on encouraging & pastoring a creative community. i was reminded of how there's so much for me to learn as a leader to lead a ministry. the workshop leader talked about how ministries need to be formed on solid foundation, how Biblical principles need to be at the basis of everything we do. while this is common sense, i wondered how often we discussed Biblical principles in our ministries. i don't think very often, especially in the ministries that are more task-oriented. i know i've rarely been taught those things, except in teaching type environments (sunday service, sunday school). it's so important to figure out which Biblical principles guide our ministry and then communicate those principles to the people in our ministry with regularity.

an aside, the speaker touched on the issue of skill (excellence). he said something that really struck me. he talked about how churches focus too often on the skill of their ministry members and put too much effort, time and resources into developing skill. in short, he said that skill is really about getting people to a level where they are not hindering people from God. that really rocked my paradigm. i don't think we should ever give up honing our craft and becoming excellent at what we do, but that sure was a different perspective. one thing a hollywood movie producer said the church could learn from the secular world was their pursuit of excellence. everyone in hollywood strives for excellence, they try to get better and improve at what they do all the time.

arts at its finest
three years ago, at my first willowcreek arts conference, i attended the canadian reception. the willowcanada rep was talking about how the church should be setting the standard for the arts, not hollywood. it should be hollywood coming to the church for the latest and greatest ideas, not the other way around. why? because God created the arts for Himself. three years later, i can say that the church no longer has to go out to hollywood for inspiration. friends, if you want to see arts at its finest, head down to willowcreek. i don't say that to promote willowcreek, but God has truly blessed them with the people, the leadership, and the facilities for the arts to flourish in.

delirious recorded a live cd/dvd at willowcreek while we were at the arts conference. in fact, we got to be part of the whole experience. i was amazed that a church was set up with the equipment to do it. i mean, you need really high quality facilities to be able to pull off something like that! one of the last songs willowcreek did in the conference was "seasons of love," a song from the musical rent. it was simply incredible. when we walked around backstage, i was thinking, any theatrical production would give anything to be able to perform at willowcreek.

move over hollywood. the church has woken up.

perfect love

June 23, 2006

i went swimming again on wednesday, just before lunch. as i walked to the change room, i glanced through the glass door to the pool. nobody was swimming. i love it when i have the pool to myself. it's my sanctuary. my home away from home. it's my intimate space with God.

i changed, stretched up, rinsed off and walked to the pool from the change room. i pushed open the door and to my surprise, the pool was packed. but, it wasn't so bad. the beauty of it was in two people: a little girl and her father. i love watching how kids interact with their parents. i thought about why that was and i think it has something to do with how it reminds me of how my relationship with the Lord ought to be.

into the pool i went. i tried to subtly watch how they interacted with each other, but it wasn't working very well. every time i reached the end of the pool, i would stop, turn my head and watch them. i decided to swim using different strokes. sometimes it would be a head-up breast stroke or side stroke. ha! now it would just appear that i was simply swimming.

i was delighted to watch the two. this little girl was ecstatic. her little body could not contain all the things she was feeling. screams of joy and glee filled the air. her eyes were constantly locked with her father's. she was constantly smiling. the two danced about the pool, spinning around in sheer joy. how beautiful!

a friend of mine recently went on a silent retreat. as she was sharing with me, there was one thing she experienced that really struck me. she told me that at this retreat, (as it was absent of any noise, distractions, appointments, schedules, TV and phone calls) the Lord revealed to her how much those things dominated and controlled her daily. it was weird for her to simply be with the Lord and rest in that. the peace and silence was almost uncomfortable. stress, worries, busyness, and time constraints were so ingrained in her system, it was almost foreign to live without them. but in the Lord's presense, she found the deepest rest and peace—everything else melted away. everything was light and easy, as Jesus said Himself, in matthew 11:28 [NIV], "come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest."

i wondered why that was. why in the Lord's presence were all those things removed? as i reflected later about it, a verse came to mind, from 1 john 4:18 [NIV] "perfect love drives out fear." God = perfect love. fear = anything we are afraid of, anxious, worried, apprehensive about. being in the Lord's presence means being in perfect love. being in perfect love drives out fears. driving out fears means fears are no longer with us. when something is driven out, it does not return.

the little girl was so delighted by her father's presence and their interactions, the only thing on her mind was how wonderful their time was. she wasn't anxious, she didn't worry and she certainly wasn't fearful. perfect love drives out fear! God was giving me a beautiful picture of what the verse looked like.

when we go to God with our worries, fear, anxieties, we must lay them down at His feet. we must relinquish our grip on those things and hand them to Him. when we do that, we are free! our fears are driven away. but, if they still linger in our hearts and minds, we are holding on too tightly to them. peter, once a fisherman, writes in 1 peter 5:7 [NIV], "cast all your anxieties on Him, because He cares for you." the key verb in this passage is cast. i think peter uses this word because of his experience as a fisherman. when you cast something, you throw it away/out. it does not return unless you pull it back in.

paul writes in philippians 4:6-7 [NIV], "do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. and the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." as we present our anxieties to the Lord, His peace will guard us. to guard is to protect. to protect is to shield from harm. do you see it? it's like the peace of the Lord stands in front of us, protecting us, not allowing our anxieties to return. perfect love drives out fear.

oh how i long to be like that little girl. teach me how to trust You more!

be confident!

June 21, 2006

"be confident, be confident, be confident!"

my vocal teacher kept saying this to me at my last vocal class. i smiled at him and then prayed those words into my life. "God, i need to have more confidence in myself. not an unrealistic, self-serving confidence, but an acknowledgment of the person You have created me to be, including the gifts, talents, abilities and passions. my lack of self-confidence can get in the way of the work You do in my life because i focus too much on myself and not enough on You. free me from that."

i was reminded how God is using my vocal classes not only to develop the voice He's given me, but also to work at my struggles with self-confidence. i love how God uses everyday things like vocal classes to speak truth into my life.

later, my vocal teacher said to me, "you have such a beautiful voice leo. i don't think you fully understand that."

i shrugged, "i guess not." his words rolled off my shoulders. but as i thought about it some more, i thought to myself, "is that really true? could it be possible? maybe he's just saying that to be nice... but wait a second! this is my vocal teacher here. he's the most straight-up, blunt guy you could ever meet. this guy almost left me in tears once. he's not just saying it."

why do i think like that? it's like, i'm afraid of admitting that God's given me gifts in certain areas of my life, afraid of actually being excellent at something, even though i believe we must give God our excellence. but believing that we must give God our excellence and being excellent (by God's grace) are very different things. i've noticed almost every time i have to perform, present, speak, create, my immediate response following it is, "did i do okay? was that alright? i hope i didn't screw up." i rarely think, "wow, that really went well. i'm glad the Lord is able to use me for His work." all i want to hear after i'm finished is "you did fine." one phrase commonly said about this is "you are your own worst critic." i am notorious for this. i tend to think the worst when i'm shaky about what i just did. even if i'm happy with something i did, i tend to look to others for affirmation. the core of my problem? i have way too much focus on the self and not enough on Him.

confidence can be viewed as a line: on one side, you have no-confidence, on the opposite side, you have over-confidence, in the middle, you have healthy confidence.

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no confidence         healthy confidence          over-confidence

no confidence can lead to fear, anxiety, worry, self-handicapping, performance degradation, too much focus on self and not enough on God.

healthy confidence leads to an appropriate perspective about the self. i believe this is where we all need to be. confident in the gifts, skills, abilities, talents we have and confident that those things are given to us by God. there's a balance. in my four years in design, i always attributed all my grades and achievements to the Lord and absolutely none to myself. at the end of four years, i was like wow, God really pulled the wool over the eyes of my educators! when i stopped to think about that, i realized there was something horribly wrong with my mentality. as if i had no part of those things! i had a choice in my education: to work hard, to pursue excellence, to give God my best OR to laze around and half-heartedly approach my studies. sure, God has given me the desire for the first rather than the latter, but still, it ultimately comes down to the individual what they will do. if you were to do some kind of work for the Lord and someone came up to encourage you afterwards, you might say, "oh no, it's not me, it was the Lord." how would that person respond? it makes that person feel awkward. i think a much better response would be, "thank you for your encouragement. i am glad the Lord was able to use me!" God allows us to participate in His Kingdom work. He gives us a choice. if we choose to participate, we have a part in the work. so to say "oh no, it wasn't me" is simply not true. you could say, "oh, it wasn't simply me, it was the Lord working through me." there's two key players: you and God.

over-confidence can lead to pride, arrogance, self-reliance, performance degradation, too much focus on self and not enough on God.

even though i came to the realization in my design studies about my confidence issues, i still err more on the no confidence side, but i know the Lord has been working in me to bring me closer to the middle. be confident. be confident. i need to remind myself of these words so that in time, with the Lord's help, i'll move towards a more healthy confidence. less of me and more of you Jesus.

social issues: homelessness & poverty

June 6, 2006

over the past week and a bit, i've been learning more about the situation of poverty and homelessness in our city. i went to a homeless workshop with jer a little over a week ago. the focus of the workshop was with regards to immigrants and homelessness. it was very eye-opening. while there were many topics discussed, the biggest thing i took away from it was the need for community support. in my eyes, the most important factor between homelessness and non-homelessness for immigrants is support. they need people to be in their lives that will care, support, love, encourage them. they need people that can help connect them to job opportunities, people related in their field of work. interestingly, the surveyors asked their sample whether they attended a place of worship. they noted that a place of worship was a great place to build connecting points, but regular church attendance was really quite low.

many of the immigrants surveyed in the study had a post-secondary degree, but it was not recognized in canada. i also learn that some canadian workplaces required canadian-only job experience. they would not even recognize workplace experience from the US. talk about a close-minded policy! how are they to get jobs? plus, add to the that, the language and cultural barriers immigrants face. it's a lose-lose situation for them. the bottom line: unless immigrants have support, they will most likely end up on the streets.

support, support, support. community, community, community. two pivotal words. words that should be associated with the Christian church. but are they? where is the church in all this?

following that workshop, i read an article in the toronto star about women and the shelter system. i was shocked to discover how awful the situation was for them. i read a statistic that there was something like a 70-80% chance that these women would be murdered. it talked about how women didn't have enough time in shelters to secure a job and/or living. their average stay time ranged from four to six weeks, when it should have somewhere around six months. it also talked about how women would rather choose to live in a life of abuse rather than in poverty. this morning, i read another article regarding this issue. there were actual quotations from women who said they'd rather be in an abusive relationship than see their children starve. women in these situations have a really difficult time getting out.

it's almost impossible with the way things are now. the concept of minimum wage was created so that people earning it would have enough money to live. unfortunately, minimum wage was never increased to reflect inflation. thus, it no longer does what it was supposed to do! in terms of being on welfare, if someone wanted to get themselves off of welfare, it's very difficult. from what i remember, welfare actually pays out more than a minimum wage job. another problem is the lack of affordable housing in our city. this has been an issue for far too long. people have been on wait lists for years and the list only keeps growing and growing. our social policies have seriously failed. they need to be revamped and they need to be revamped soon. something is horribly, horribly wrong here. how did we let this happen? it breaks my heart to learn that women have to subject themselves to abusive relationships in order to survive.

what can we do? what can i do? awareness is one thing, but what else? and to think, this is only one of the many, many social issues in this city. i hope and pray that one day, in this city, that the church will be the one advocating for the rights of the oppressed and marginalized, that the church will be standing up and fighting for fairer social policies and that the church will be the place of support and community that so many people desperately need.