 Last year I went on an adventure, so I put on a v-neck and some of my skinny jeans, and I headed over to the local mega church. Booming speakers, atmospheric mist, amazing lights, it was quite a show. But following my experience as I wandered out of the building, I couldn't help but feel like something was missing. I'll tell you what that was in a minute. But first I just want to give a huge shout out to my patrons on Patreon. Patreon is the way that people can support me and this ministry on a monthly basis. If you'd like to head on over there to help support my ministry, link is in description now onto the video. So what was missing? I'll get to that, but fast forward to today. I follow a number of these trendy churches from across North America online, and you may ask, okay, why do you do that? If you're not very familiar with me, you may say, oh well because they're popular, you know, everyone's following them. But if you know anything about me, I'm not one to just get sucked up into what is popular, especially in terms of Christianity. The precedent has kind of shown that a lot of the most trendy popular churches across North America, not all, but a lot, have wonky theology. So for you watching, this confession of mine may be concerning for you. But hold on. On many occasions I've found that more liberal theological churches, so churches that take the Bible less seriously, perhaps they don't believe in a six-day creation. They don't preach a lot about God's justice or wrath, and they're more kind of the wishy-washy, seeker sensitive type churches. They focus more on creativity and what I'm going to call method. That stuff is brought to the forefront of what they're doing. The more theologically conservative churches, so churches that take the Bible very seriously, in terms of highlighting really deep theological topics, often have the message at the forefront, and creativity often is kind of pushed to the back burner. For someone like me who is a creative, I am in the creative space with graphic design on Instagram, working with TikTok and YouTube, and I'm on a lot of different social medias, doing a lot of different kind of creative content. I'm constantly looking for places to be inspired, and I've found that a lot of these more trendy liberal churches is a place where I've found that I actually get creatively inspired from their YouTube videos, from their music, from their graphic design on social media, and just the tactics and the different things that they do to engage with people online. It's inspiring for me to see content done so well with at least some semblance of a Christian message. And that last part, I'm going to highlight that because I've found a big problem and maybe I've already spelled it out enough for you to understand what it is. But substance without creativity is lifeless. This is the conservative Christians battle, right? Substance without creativity is lifeless. But creativity without substance is useless. And this is the liberal Christian, trendy churches battle to fight as well. So we're stuck in the middle of this, right? We see substance is necessary. We need the message. We need Jesus without that substance by which we can understand who God is, understand who we are in light of Him. If our message and Christ is not central to what we're doing, everything else will fall by the wayside. It will crumble because we need a firm foundation. So a lot of these liberal churches, they found such great success in really honing in on their creativity and how they do things, their method, but they've forgotten a lot of the substance of what is most important in terms of Christ, Christ, character, justice, mercy, the gospel, and turning it into a more man-centric message. So, but all of a sudden, yeah, their creativity is at the center for them, for conservative churches. And this is part of the reason that I do, I'm more conservative in terms of my theology, I guess you could say. It's a weird terminology. It's not like that's in the Bible, but it's just terminology that we've used to identify ourselves. But it's like, yeah, I do take the Bible seriously. I'm not going to say I take it literally because there's places that I take it literally and there's places that I don't. But it's like, okay, message is central. That's great, but a lot of Christian conservative people stop there. The creativity has been pushed to the backburner, as I said earlier. And for me, I'm trying to rediscover that because ideally, we want to be in a place where we have both substance and creativity, where we have both message and method. Because you need to understand, and I think this is something that I'm discovering too, not just if you're a part of a big wig in a church or anything like that, but even in just your own life, method is often just as important as message. Of course, if your message is crap, method doesn't matter how you present it. But once you have that solid message, once you have that substance, we need to be all in on excellently, creatively, and sharing that message in a way that moves people, that makes sense, that's well thought out. All that because we want both message and method to work together. Some of us might just be tempted to focus only on the message. We only focus on what is the information around Jesus, around the gospel, around who God is, what is the information there? And I'll take that. Some of us may feel the tendency to only focus in, how do I make this look beautiful? How do I make this look amazing? How do I present this in a way that connects with people? And maybe we're not as focused on what the actual content is. Ideally, what you want to do, and I'm trying to do this for myself, is evaluate what kind of person are you? What leanings do you have? Do you lean towards more of the message or the method? So here's our task. Not as just people, maybe high ups in the church, but as just individual Christians. Here's our challenge. We want to represent Christ in both the message and the method that we do it. So both in what we're saying about God, part of me, the truths that we're saying about Him, and also the creativity by which we share that message. Both ought to represent Christ well. Because this is where I'm at now. A lot of the theological teaching that I consume comes from, quote unquote, conservative Christians, Reformed Christians. And I'm happy with that. I love that. But the problem is oftentimes is I need to go to find a lot of the creatively inspiring things to liberal and people that don't take the Bible that seriously or maybe have a squishy message or even teach very heretical things because these people are doing art excellently. But they may not have the substance behind it. But my hope would be, and this is part of what I want to do on this channel, I don't do it perfectly. And this is the thing too, guys. This is the goal, right? To have substance and creativity, to have both message and method done excellently. But the problem is, none of us are perfect. I'm not perfect. This video isn't perfectly shot. The message behind it isn't perfect. I'm not speaking in a way that perfectly engages with your heart or mind or none of us can be perfect. But this is the goal. So in your own life, where can you hone in on both the message and the method as you're speaking to people? You have something you want to communicate. Now think about how you can communicate it. You have a way. You have an avenue of creating something, maybe painting, maybe drawing, maybe writing. What is the substance behind it that's going to give some body to your method or your creativity? That's the question. I want to give one disclaimer that if you're going to do as I have done and follow some of these trendy churches, some of which I have already named in the title, I want you to be careful because, look, I don't follow these people for their theology. Not in the slightest. There's lots of great places that you can go for very solid, fantastic substance. But in terms of creativity, a lot of these people, they do it really well. So be aware of what you're taking in and be careful that you're not being led astray if you follow these people. I've only been following them for a couple months now, and I'm not going to say I'm going to follow them forever, but right now it's giving me great creative inspiration to both pair method and message. Thanks so much for watching, guys. I love you, and I'll see you next time.