intersections

Celebrating Faith and the Arts

This past Saturday my church did something amazing! It is really impossible to translate into words. This is the opening few paragraphs of my reflections on the CREDO Art Show. To read the whole thing, click here.

On Saturday night, November 15, between 100 and 150 people visited the CREDO Art Show, held at the Hollywood Seventh-day Adventist Church. The CREDO Art show was an artistic exploration of The Apostles’ Creed and the culmination of nearly a year of thinking and planning and nearly three months of worship services and sermons.

The evening began at 7:00 pm when the doors to the church opened. Behind the scenes, a team of about a dozen people were scurrying to put the finishing touches on the main gallery. By 7:30 pm there were 70–80 people in the foyer of the church, eating refreshments that were also artfully created by another team of church members and friends. At 7:30 we gave a very brief introduction and opened the door to the main gallery. For the next two and a half hours people came and went, enjoying some incredible art and having conversation.

For years I have wanted to do a sermon series on The Apostles’ Creed, exploring the ancient statement of faith phrase by phrase. While many Christians repeat the creed weekly in worship it is quite foreign to most Seventh-day Adventists, so I felt it would be an ironically fresh and almost edgy way to approach the subject of “belief” and “beliefs.” Our congregation is also pretty action oriented. It’s unusual for us to spend several months talking about our beliefs, so I felt it would be a good change of pace.

Read the rest at the church website.

Walking around Red Square

Today was the first day we were able to get down to the center of Moscow. Paul Richardson, Elysabeth and I were accompanied by our friend Yaroslav Paliy. We traveled by bus and Metro to the Kremlin and Red Square. We didn't take the time to go inside the Kremlin today (hopefully in the next couple of days), but we did go inside St. Basil's Cathedral (pictured above). It has been very cloudy and overcast since we've been here but when we stepped outside I snapped this picture -the best of the day (click photo to enlarge).

This city is so impressive - all the buildings are massive and communicates so clearly the Soviet power. One observation I found humorous is that the tomb of Lenin, on one side of Red Square, faces GUM (formerly the State Department Store), the most impressive shopping mall I've ever seen. (Move over, Caruso!) Lenin must roll in his grave daily to look across at this monument to capitalism. Needless to say, a lot has changed in Moscow in the past 20-30 years.

For more pictures of our time in Moscow, click here.