“…a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:27).

Anyone can criticize the church. It’s the most vulnerable institution in the world, the most victimized, and the most vilified.

Criticizing the church is like clubbing baby seals.  It has no way of fighting back, but just lays there and takes what you dish out. The difference is that, after the beating, the church stands to her feet and goes on about her business, while you the critic walk away beaming as though you have done something heroic.

You haven’t. You have picked on the easiest target in the world.

In this morning’s newspaper, some (ahem) rocket scientist wrote a letter to the editor taking on the church for the Spanish  Inquisition of the Middle Ages and before that the Crusades.  I assume he just discovered these.

No institution on earth has been so targeted for villainy as has the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ.

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(This is the place where we often post a scripture which defines what follows. Is there a text about creativity?  We don’t have to have one, and at the moment, can’t think of one. But if we do, look for it to replace this note.)

TIME for May 20, 2013, devotes an entire page to “assessing the creative spark,” a rarity in newsmagazines.

Now, I’m no authority on creativity or anything else, but have long been fascinated by the subject and attuned to writings dealing with it.

“Creativity is that ineffable match-strike, that flash in the dark that comes to you from, well, it’s hard to say where. You can’t summon it on demand, though inclining your mind to a task does help.” –TIME. (Jeffrey Kluger, writer)

I know a little about this right-brain activity, being a preacher, a writer, a cartoonist, and a story-teller.

Here’s something of what I have learned about creativity:

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“But for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.” (Revelation 21:8)

There are numerous biblical texts that stop me in my tracks and leave me gasping for air. But none intrigue me more than this one. And, one thing in particular I find fascinating and profound.

Cowards don’t make it to Heaven.

The fearful go to hell.

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“It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes.” Somewhere in the Psalms.

In USA Today for Thursday, May 9, 2013, Jeffrey Katzenberg talks about movie-making lessons he learned from Walt Disney.

“Walt believed that an animated movie was only as good as its villain. I never forgot that.”

Think about that for a second. Villains make movies work. Villains turn ordinary people into heroes.  Villains rivet our attention on the story. Villains keep us fixated on the plot until justice is served.

The greatest drama of the Twentieth Century was the Second World War. Think about its villains–Hitler, Mussolini, Hirohito, and then Joseph Stalin, too. Now, consider that without that war and those villains, we would never have heard of heroes such as Generals Eisenhower, Patton, MacArthur, Montgomery, etc.  That war made Winston Churchill arguably into the man of the century.

Now, as the leader of a church, you have encountered your own set of villains. You’ve noticed that they fall into two camps. One is the devil himself and all his cohorts. The other are people who are supposed to be on your side but instead of helping the program, they seem to spend their days and nights scheming and searching for ways to bring it down.

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Those of us who counsel pastors and teach future preachers sometimes caution them to “study the Bible for itself, just to receive the Word into your heart, not to prepare sermons.”

We might as well tell Sherlock Holmes to enjoy crime scenes for the beauty of the occasion and stop looking for criminals, tell Albert Pujols not to worry about actually striking at the baseball crossing the plate but to relax and take in the inspiration of the moment, or tell Joan Rivers to give up on plastic surgery.

Some things you do because this is who you are.

When a pastor reads a great insight in the Scriptural text, does anyone think for one minute that he is going to file that away in a personal-edification file, never to be shared with others in sermons?

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The preacher knew he should clean up his act, get right with the Lord and apologize for his past laziness and start taking his ministry seriously. Instead, he took the cheap way out.

He used his sermons to slam anyone thinking of leaving the church.

“It would be a sin against the Lord for you to leave this church at a time like this when it needs your faithfulness so much,” he said. “And I can promise you this, if you do this rebellious act, you will never find happiness in another church.”

When someone asked me what they should do–stay or leave such a church–after learning that the lay leadership had no intention of doing anything, I said, “Whenever a church decides it will accept shoddy pastoral leadership and refuses to abide by scriptural principles, unless you have strong reasons for staying, I would ask the Lord for permission to leave.”

“And,” I added, “if He does lead you to join another church, I can promise you almost anything will be an improvement over what you have there.”

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“A thorn in the flesh was given me….” (II Corinthians 12:7).

For two thousand years people have speculated on the nature of Paul’s thorn. But their efforts come to nothing. The Lord clearly did not intend for us to know what Paul’s handicap was.  For good reason…
“Well, Paul had this same problem too, so if he did you surely can’t expect me to conquer it.” You can just hear some husband justifying his failures (and unwillingness to deal with them) to his wife in those words.

“At least I don’t have Paul’s weaknesses.  His were awful and yet God used him.” Just so easily we would excuse our problems and cling to them.

We can be glad we do not have a clue what his problems were.

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In an old radio program, a woman listens as Sherlock Holmes tells her exactly how a crime came about and how he exonerated her fiance’.  At the end, she exclaims, “Oh, Mister Holmes! You are wonderful.” Slight pause, then the master sleuth replies, “Quite!”

I do love to see confidence on display.

As Ali said, “It ain’t bragging if you can do it.”

A generation ago, after actor Jack Palance won an Oscar for his supporting role in the movie “City Slickers,” his celebrity was revived for a short time. Suddenly, he was in demand for commercials and more movie roles. In an ad for some after shave lotion, I think, this rugged star, by then in his 70s, squinted into the camera and said through his whiskey-voice, “Confidence is sexy. Don’t you think?”

There is something most attractive about confidence.

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