Collecting Dust

The Rule: Awards Matter

In Newsong's cold white vault sits all the church's awards for its large church growth during the beginning of the decade. No one looks at it and is amazed by it. For someone who works for the church, I am not really proud of the achievements and quite frankly I don't care about them.

This makes me think about my own creative endeavours. Am I doing it to gain some kind of an award, may it be on paper or by means of a complement or acceptance? Eventually all the glory I could ever get will eventually collect dust and be a faint memory. All our energy, all our efforts, all our stress will find a home under a table. I have said this many times before in previous blogs, but I say it again to remind myself: what we do in our creative expression must be for the process not the end result. Of course I will not be writing this story for the rest of my life. It is not worth it. And I can still dream big, but I don't write to be rich or well known. I write to enjoy the creative process.

As for a church, size doesn't matter. All that a church would ever get from being large is an award and strangers throughout the nation saying, "Boy [insert church name here] is really big. It's crazy." and that is all.

When you think about it, greatness only breeds wealth, compliments and people talking about the greatness over steak or ice cream. I don't know if it is really worth it.

Is it?