Collide Magazine

The Futurist

Scott McClellan - Originally posted Monday, July 28, 2008

No one word can describe Erwin McManus. That’s why a string of words—words such as activist, author, communicator, cultural architect, filmmaker, futurist, innovator, leader, lecturer, pastor, and speaker—typically follows his name. Furthermore, unique verbs are often used to describe what he does. McManus doesn’t simply preach and write; he awakens, creates, engages, envisions, and unleashes.
 

With all of that in mind, it’s easy to see why McManus is such a natural fit as the primary communicator (you might say lead pastor) of Mosaic, a diverse community of followers of Jesus Christ (you might say church) in Los Angeles. At Mosaic, McManus is passionate about embracing the arts, cultivating a community of faith, hope, and love, and communicating the gospel to the surrounding city. As a community, Mosaic pursues those ideals differently than most young, growing churches.

“Last Sunday we had nine gatherings in seven different locations,” McManus says. Those locations are scattered about the LA area and include a converted nightclub, a converted art gallery, a university auditorium, a club decorated like a Mayan temple, and Beverly Hills High School (yeah, the setting of Beverly Hills 90210). However, Mosaic doesn’t use video feeds to facilitate its multi-site strategy.

“All of [the gatherings] were live. We don’t do video venues at all. I did five of the venues live at four different locations, and then I had four different people in our community speaking at the other four venues live,” McManus explains.

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McManus realizes that approach is atypical, but his reasoning for steering clear of teaching via video is simple: “I’m a huge fan of technology. The challenge is when you start using technology to advance something in this moment that may actually slow it down for the future. So while putting me in nine venues helps us today, it doesn’t necessarily help us in terms of raising up a generation of world class communicators tomorrow.”

That explanation is indicative of the care with which McManus and Mosaic employ technology. As he said, McManus is a huge fan of technology, but it is essential that technology enhance rather than interrupt or entertain.

“The human element is probably more of who we are,” he confesses. “We really think the most valuable resource a church has is the human resource, and to pull out the creative capacity in people is the most powerful thing you can do. Technology enhances that and technology is a medium that serves the giftedness inside of the people.”

However, when McManus is convinced technology will help him communicate and connect to his audience, he doesn’t hesitate to take advantage. While McManus speaks some Mosaic attendees submit questions for him via text message. The questions are transferred to index cards, and when he’s finished speaking, he is handed a stack of cards to work his way through.

The use of technology to foster community and conversation seems to genuinely excite McManus. “There we have a really interactive dynamic in our gathering where people are listening, they are engaged, and they know if something doesn’t make sense to them they can ask on the spot.” Even so, he is quick to reiterate that technology has to serve its proper purpose. “But it is using technology to enhance community rather than to replace community. It’s using technology to increase communication rather than to decrease interaction. Technology can both diminish interactivity and accelerate interactivity.” Just because a church is actively using technology, he says, it’s not safe to automatically assume it is enhancing community and increasing interaction. “You have to really ask yourself that question,” he asserts.

Technology aside, it’s no surprise that McManus considers visual media such as film an “essential” part of communicating a message given the short film series DVDs McManus has produced (Crave in 2007 and the brand new Wide Awake).

“Communication to me isn’t simply speaking,” he says. “Somehow Christianity has made communication a monologue. If you are committed to communicating, then you ask what medium helps people get what they need to get.”

Beyond simply embracing the arts, Mosaic does what it can to embrace artists as well. “I think the American church is really more of a reflection of the Enlightenment and an enemy of the Renaissance. So then ‘I think, therefore I am’ really becomes the Christian credo.” He can’t help but laugh as he observes, “In some sense Christianity in America thinks that only the left brain didn’t get tainted by the Fall.”

The problem with that way of thinking, he says, is that “the seat of emotions and the part of our brain that accentuates imagination and the creative dynamic are as much a part of the brain, the mind of a human, as the other. We think of our emotions being in our heart, our instincts being in our gut, and our reason being in our head. But it’s all in our head.”

Continuing in that vein, McManus believes “the Church has really been postured to be an enemy of the creative process because you can’t control it and because the message isn’t always as linear.” The irony is that “we wonder why there are no artisans in our church.”

In that cycle, the rejection of the creative process and the alienation of creative people, McManus sees a divine tragedy: “A lot of our children that grew up in church are high creatives and never felt there was a place for them in the church. So they concluded there was no place for them in the kingdom, no place for them with Jesus.”

“So they walked away from the gospel because they felt like who they were was proof that God did not exist. Because how could God exist and not value who they are as creative, artistic, imaginative human beings? They walked away from the faith because we kept telling them God doesn’t value those things and for them to come to Jesus they have to relinquish and deny who they are in the arenas that God actually created them to be unique.”

What does the opposite approach to creativity and creative people look like at Mosaic? The Sunday before McManus and I spoke, the gatherings featured “a dance piece, an original short film, and there were people painting in different places.” Almost as an afterthought, he adds, “And I talk.” But, he qualifies, “it’s different; it’s not really put in the category of a sermon.”

In the past, Mosaic created custom graphic novels for each of its locations to accompany a sermon series. “Each location had a different character in the graphic novel and you had to actually be in that location to follow that particular character,” he remembers fondly. Another time, 200 artists joined McManus on a retreat in the mountains. Together they worked on creating an upcoming series and discussing the ways in which their various art forms might be incorporated. Custom graphic novels and a retreat for artists to shape upcoming series are certainly unorthodox, but more important, they are indicative of the energy and resources Mosaic is willing to put toward supporting its commitments to community and the arts.

Mosaic values art, creativity, and the imaginative, McManus says, but adds: “this is not just with painting and dance and film. One year we sent half the adults in our community overseas on short-term missions projects. So the creative process goes beyond art. It goes into humanitarian efforts, in areas of service and mercy and compassion and justice.”

It’s probably not a coincidence that the founder of TOMS Shoes, a great example of creative humanitarianism, attends Mosaic. After all, McManus believes with utmost conviction that unleashing the God-given gifts, passions, and creativity in people can have powerful results. “Once you begin to create an environment where you encourage people to really discover who God has created them to become and to encourage dreaming and imagination, then people begin to do good creatively,” he says. “Something amazing begins to happen.”

McManus feels the amazing byproducts of creativity and faith far exceed those of relevancy and imitation. “When you’re working at being relevant you’re acknowledging that you’ve somehow been left behind,” he explains. “And I think we have to go beyond relevance to creativity. Instead of reacting and responding to culture we should be creating culture.”

That thought seems to ignite McManus, who begins to share his vision for the future of the Church—his frustration with where it has been, and his challenge for where it should go: “It just strikes me that in mainstream Christianity we demean and we deride people in Hollywood, and yet they are the ones who are focused on Darfur. They are the ones trying to deal with issues of suffering and poverty and inhumanity in the world.”

“I think that we should be, one, embarrassed that we have to follow everyone into the important issues of the world. And second, we should be inspired to pave the way, to lead the way, to create the path. We shouldn’t be known for cheesy movies; we should be creating the best movies in the world. We shouldn’t create a category called Christian art; we should be the best artists in the world. I just can’t imagine Michelangelo, Raphael, Mozart, or Brahms wanting to be famous in the Christian music world or Christian art world. I think they were the pioneers and the standard for art and music in the world. And that is what we need to step back into.”

“I think we’re in the place where we’ve got to stop creating these escape pods where we can say, ‘Well, we’re the best in the world in our tribe.’ But instead really be fearless and say ‘No, we can compete with the entire planet and be the very, very best.’ And in that, once you do anything at a level of greatness, you can talk about anything you want. And I think we need to boldly step into creating those things that are beautiful and true and good and have confidence that we can be the best in the world and earn the right to be heard.”

As a passionate, innovative church leader, McManus has certainly earned the right to be heard. Whether he’s speaking to thousands of church leaders at a conference, executives from the NFL or the film industry, or the faithful gathered at Mosiac’s various locations on a given Sunday, McManus is intent on connecting with his audience and unleashing them to creatively pursue the future God has for them.

To find out more about Erwin McManus’ projects visit www.erwinmcmanus.com.