“Would it be OK if I took the girls through again?” the young mother asked in a hushed voice, trying not to disturb the others worshipping on Good Friday. Her three school-age daughters batted their eyelashes at me. The mother explained, “This really had an impact on the girls, and they’d like more time at each station to pray and think about the story.”
Our Good Friday last year included no sermon, no worship team, no cutting edge technology or lavish drama. Still, people lingered for hours to pray, teenagers returned later in the night with their friends, and children begged their parents for the opportunity to stay longer.
Why?
I believe it’s because our church chose to nourish the most emaciated aspect of people’s spiritual lives—their imaginations.
Traditionally discipleship has focused upon two areas—knowledge and skills. Churches have poured enormous energy into communicating knowledge about God through preaching, classes, and small groups. Recently an increasing number of voices have challenged the effectiveness of information-based discipleship. That has resulted in churches shifting their focus to skill-driven formation. This model teaches people “how to” have a healthy marriage, share the gospel with a friend, or parent difficult teenagers.
While necessary components of spiritual formation, both these models miss an important aspect of the human spirit. As a result, what captures the imaginations of most Christians is not God’s character, story of redemption, or invisible imminence, but rather the values of Hollywood and Madison Avenue.
In his stirring book The Prophetic Imagination, Walter Brueggemann says, “We need to ask if our consciousness and imagination have been so assaulted and co-opted by the royal consciousness [popular culture] that we have been robbed of the courage or power to think an alternative thought.”
Those filling the pews every Sunday may be full of information about God, and they may be trained to obey God, but without an imagination enraptured by God, they will be powerless to live the life he’s called them to. They simply cannot imagine living any differently than the culture around them.
Even a casual reading of the Sermon on the Mount reveals that the imagination plays a central role. Jesus shows that sins like anger, pride, greed, and lust germinate in the spiritual soil of one’s imagination. Without significant re-cultivation and sanctification of the imagination, led by God’s Spirit, a disciple will be incapable of weeding out sin and living obediently. Oswald Chambers knew that if “your imagination of God is starved, then when you come up against difficulties, you have no power, you can only endure in darkness.”
So, on Good Friday we helped people enter the biblical narrative with their imaginations. We adapted the traditional Stations of the Cross into an experiential journey with Jesus from the garden of Gethsemane to the grave. Families, cell groups, or small circles of strangers traveled around our sanctuary to seven stations. At each one they read a passage of Scripture, and a second reading guided them to use their imaginations to enter the scene with Jesus. Finally, a sensory experience gave their minds a tangible symbol.
While holding a bag of silver coins, they contemplated what they valued more than Christ. Children lifted a cross that was suspended from the ceiling while considering if they would have helped Jesus carry his burden. Newcomers jumped as someone nailed a spike into a beam while Isaiah 53 was read. Some adults were brought to tears as, perhaps for the first time, they traveled with Jesus through suffering.
“Imagination has been a dirty word for too long,” says Kevin Vanhoozer, professor of systematic theology and author of The Drama of Doctrine. “The imagination enables us to see the parts of the Bible as forming a meaningful whole. But we can go further still. The imagination also enables us to see our lives as part of that same meaningful whole. This is absolutely crucial. … What the church needs today is the ability to indwell or inhabit the text.”
The practice is far from new. Since the Middle Ages, practitioners of Ignatian spirituality have used their imaginations to enter biblical narratives, and Brother Lawrence has instructed Christians for centuries to “practice the presence” of the Lord with their intuitive senses. The beauty of these ancient models of spiritual formation is that they require no buildings or technology, not even a digital projector.
When biblical knowledge and pragmatic skills are linked to an imagination inspired by God, we may finally find the power to obey.
Skye Jethani is assistant teaching pastor at Blanchard Alliance Church in Wheaton, Illinois, and associate editor to Leadership.
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