Collide Magazine

Confession: I’m not supposed to be contributing to this blog, or editing a magazine for that matter.

Why? Well, now that we’ve finished our fourth issue of COLLIDE I have exactly four issues worth of experience working on a magazine (or any other publication). No one is supposed to be a magazine editor with precisely zero experience. Especially not a 25-year-old who doesn’t know anything about anything. And yet here I am.

That got me thinking …

Will someone tell Tim Stevens and the rest of Granger Community Church that mega-churches are supposed to be middle-of-the-road, not edgy? And leave out the culture stuff, OK? Churches aren’t supposed to acknowledge what’s going on in the world around them.

Will someone tell Craig Groeschel, Bobby Gruenewald, Terry Storch, and the rest of LifeChurch.tv that churches are supposed to imitate, not innovate? Plus, a few satellite campuses are OK, but you’re not supposed to have more than 10. That’s ridiculous. (You’re not supposed to have “dot ____” after your name either, so try to work on that.)

Will someone tell Mark Batterson and National Community Church that people aren’t supposed to worship God in a movie theater?

Will someone tell Camron Ware that you’re supposed to project on screens, not on huge brick walls?

Will someone tell Rob Bell and NOOMA that Christian media isn’t supposed to have great production value? You’re not supposed to waste money shooting on film or waste time creating amazing art when the message is all that matters.

Will someone tell Shane Claiborne that best-selling books and cross-country speaking engagements are supposed to make you a lot of money?

Will someone tell Josh Jackson at Paste that Christians who start magazines about music and film are supposed to write about Christian music and Christian film?

In Christian culture it’s so easy to focus solely on how things are supposed to be done. Thank God he calls us beyond conventional thinking, beyond “supposed to.” Jesus wasn’t supposed to heal people on the Sabbath. Martin Luther wasn’t supposed to nail 95 theses to the door of a church. William Wilberforce wasn’t supposed to take on the slave trade in the British empire. But I’m grateful they did.

Sometimes, when we go against “supposed to,” great things can happen.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 27th, 2008 at 9:20 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.