The concept of imagination is catching my imagination these days. Not that I’m a particularly imaginative person – for me it takes hard work to be creative, and even then there’s not much originality in what I do.

At the same time, I’m inclined to think that creative expression is almost always hard work, even for those supposedly gifted souls – you know, the artists and poets.

I’m on an imagination kick because I’m trying to be imaginative about ministry, and about the way the church (and the congregation I serve) might articulate the gospel in our time and place. Imagination builds out of the resources of the past, anticipating the new and different while in a profound sense remaining faithful to the heart of the gospel (the Spirit improvises on the gospel, and we become creative actors in that improvisation – thanks Jeremy Begbie). But to be an imaginative person is thus necessarily to live in a tension – between what is and what might be. Continue reading →