About ArtWalk

F.A.T. Village (Flagler Arts & Technology Village) is home to some of the region’s most talented artists. Their studios, galleries and performance spaces are comprised of a series of unique buildings. Built in 1950, the incomparable construction of these industrial warehouses offers ideal space for artists, galleries and performers. The location and venues provide an array of options for film and television production, photography shoots, events and parties. F.A.T. Village is situated to the west of Andrews Avenue and the FEC railroad tracks, and bordered on the south by NW fourth Ave. and the north by NW sixth Ave.

Art Walks are held on the last Saturday of each month, from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. These walks allow visitors to stroll through art galleries, open artist’s studios, prop warehouse, and even enjoy a street puppet show or a play in one of two theatres. With plenty of free parking, the walks are attracting hundreds of visitors to this evolving monthly event.

To RSVP, contact Brad Schmidt (brad[ay]citychurchftl.com). 

Similar projects have improved neighborhoods in Chicago, Dallas, Fort Worth, Portland, and Memphis by actively engaging the community, helping them to visualize better outcomes for the future, and empowering them to provide feedback in real time.

Better Block FTL collaborators include Cadence, FAU School of Urban and Regional Planning, FATVillage Arts District, Flagler Village Civic Association, C&I Studios, Urban Matters, and the City of Fort Lauderdale.

To learn how you can participate with us, contact Brad Schmidt (brad[at]citychurchftl.com).  

About Better Block

Better Block Fort Lauderdale (Facebook)
TED Talks: How to Build a Better Block (Youtube)
Building better cities 24 hours at a time (NPR)
Is This a Better Block? (BetterBlock.org)
Better Block Dallas: From Concrete Desert to Oasis (The Atlantic)

In an article from USA Today, Oliver Thomas echoes the position that we can ignore religious beliefs and still appreciate religion for the value system it provides. He says the world needs religion because religion makes us decent people. And that, he posits, is what life is all about–leaving the world better off than how you found it.  Or, as the scary kid from the Sixth Sense once put it: Pay it forward.

So, is this what life is about? Is our place in human history to become more decent people so that we leave this world better off than we found it? And does it really matter what we believe?

Well, judge for yourself.  Here’s what Christians believe.

1. Christianity says to the world: Your view of where human history is headed is way too small
Christianity says that history isn’t simply headed toward a better place (better off than you left it), it’s headed toward a perfect place.  A place where there is not less suffering, crying, and pain after we leave…but a place where there is no suffering, no crying, no pain. Christianity then poses the question to every person: What if life isn’t about you? What if life isn’t about all that you can make it? What if something is happening in human history that is greater than you?

But at the same time…

2. Christianity says Your view of what humans are capable of is way too great
It makes the bold statement that we are not part of the solution, but each of us are a part of the problem. It says that the world is the way it is because we are the way we are.  The problem isn’t outside us, as if we can then influence it for the good.  Rather, all of our problems come from within.  Christianity poses the question to every person: How can I be apart of the solution if I’m apart of the problem?

One of the great paradoxes of Christianity is this: It makes more of human history, all the while, making less of human capability. It tells us something we want to hear and something we don’t want to hear – at the same time.  Thankfully though, we’re not left to reconcile this tremendous gap – the gap between the world that God intended/has in store for us and the broken people we have become.

The news of Christianity is that God himself fills the gap. Though we became the problem, he becomes the solution.  He solves our human incapability problem by living the only truly good, truly decent, perfect life and takes our place on the cross. He then solves our human history problem by resurrecting from the dead and thereby securing a day when he returns – only this time to bring all of heaven with him in order finish what he started – the restoration of all things.

In the meantime, he’s gathering people who believe.  And that’s why Christians would say it makes all the difference in the world what a person believes.  Because if Jesus did rise from the grave, then now – and only now – can we be apart of the solution. We do that by being apart of The Solution, that is, by being united to Jesus through faith and by joining him as he addresses the problems of this world through us in order to build for that day when he returns to finish what he started.

And that’s what a Christian is. They are people in this world who have exchanged greatness - “I’m a good person who can change my life and this world” - for humility - “I’m not truly good and need someone to change my life and this world”.  They’ve exchanged being decent…for being His.

As people addicted to comfort and convenience, we’re often unaware of how we live to feel good about ourselves, to gain a bit of affirmation, to exert influence, to maximize our own pleasure, to satisfy our immediate needs. Lent invites us to intentionally frustrate ourselves, to engage in a season of deprivation, which actually makes us more aware of the depth of our dependence on any number of things – a substance, our reputation, control, achievement, being right, being comfortable, being secure.

Lent is NOT a behavior modification program. It’s not about going off chocolate or caffeine or alcohol. It’s about frustrating what Thomas Merton calls our “false self,” our illusory self, the part of us addicted to living the lie, a life of hiding. As Merton writes, “All sin starts from the assumption that my false self, the self that exists only in my own egocentric desires, is the fundamental reality of life to which everything else in the universe is ordered. Thus I use up my life in the desire for pleasures and the thirst for experiences, for power, honour, knowledge and love, to clothe this false self and construct its nothingness into something objectively real.”

In this sense, Lent’s frustrating reality is an invitation to, once and for all, taste reality, our truest self, gifted to us by God as a pure act of grace. Beneath our illusory self is our real identity, who we were made to be. It is our true self, secure, beloved, held in the Father’s embrace. Lent strips us of everything that is not us. In that sense, Lent is not a chore. It is an opportunity for profound grace by a God who longs to love us at our core, not in our false projected self which desire influence and accolades, but in our truest, most humble and dependent self, once lost but now found in the wilderness of Lent.

Each of the resources below offers a trustworthy Lenten guide to this unique encounter. But no book can manufacture grace. It is most fundamentally about your willingness to surrender to the God who wants to invade your heart with disruptive love, who wants to stifle your exhausting attempts to manufacture love with unfathomable grace. Lent affords you this unique opportunity, by God’s grace. The way down is the way up. Through this Lenten journey, you might find yourself hidden in Christ, and revealed ultimately in the Easter reality of God’s resurrection life, stripped of pretension and falsehood, and revealed as a humble and dependent son or daughter. That’s my hope and prayer, and perhaps yours as well.

- by Chuck DeGroat, City Church San Francisco

Resources

Martin Smith, A Season for the Spirit

Richard Rohr, Wondrous Encounters - Kindle

Henri Nouwen, Show Me the Way

NT Wright, Lent for Everyone (this is Year B)

Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter

Lent from St Francis and St Clare of Assisi

Lent and Easter Wisdom from Thomas Merton

2012 Lenten Readings - The Meaning of Lent

Tools for the Christian Life - On Keeping a Holy Lent

Free Album - Songs For Lent by New York Hymns

Click here to learn more about CityKids and the other ministries offered on Sunday mornings.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing from my friend, as we conversed together over coffee. This was coming from someone who didn’t believe in Christianity but understood the implications of it better than most Christians.

And honestly, as I sat with him on this day…better than I did.

Because he’s right.  Imagine living in a world where for all it’s madness, it never “gets to you”. Imagine living in a world where it’s Maker esteems you and considers you his, despite all your shortcomings and failures.  Imagine living in a world with the promise that everything that’s broken about it will soon be fixed.

Perhaps this is why St. Paul could write from a prison cell to persecuted Christians these words: “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!…The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything…And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” (From Philippians chapter 4)

My friend, though he didn’t believe, knew what this “peace of God” meant and knew that having it would be a superior way to go through life.

But after his remarks, I really didn’t know what to say. I ended up just saying the very thing on my mind at that moment: “You know…you would make a great Christian”.

He laughed. My curiosity was only growing though, “So, I have to ask…what’s stopping you?”

His reply was: “I want Christianity to be true…but I’m just not convinced yet.”

It was an honest statement.  But because he knew the potential implications for his life were so great, he also said something else that was honest: “If it’s true, I want to find out.  And I’ll take as long as I need to find out.”

We then ended up having a lengthy conversation about the historical reliability of Jesus’ resurrection. Still searching, I’m not sure where he’ll land.

But I do know this.  What sends many people on that search is simple, honest…curiousity.  After all, the claims of Christianity are just big enough and the implications are more than desirable enough, that you have to at least wonder…what if?

A while ago, I was watching HBO’s Real Time and I heard Mos Def  give one of the most theologically and philosophically cogent definitions of “religion” I’ve heard in public discourse.  This was before I discovered the gift of DVR so I was bummed I didn’t record it.  But then I remembered another of God’s good gifts…YOUTUBE. In the 30 second clip below, Def is contending against Bill Maher and Christopher Hitchens, two guys who can’t stand religion, and Def makes the claim that everyone is indeed religious…including them.  Take a look.

Mos Def got that one right.  The term religion doesn’t start with the concept of God, but with the concept of devotion.  For Christians, the end of their religion (devotion) is indeed God.  But for those who don’t worship God, the end of their religion is something else.  So Def is correct to say that people either are devoted to God or to a god-in-principle.  As he put it, we’re all “ten fingers/ten toes devoted to something or someone…we’re all hardwired to worship.”

And this is exactly the point St. Paul is getting at when he writes to the Romans and says that humanity’s biggest problem is that we “worship and serve created things rather than the Creator God – who is forever praised” (Romans 1.25).  We don’t normally think about religion like this, but whenever we give ultimate allegiance to our careers, children, money, status, etc – we are participating in religious activity.  Nancy Pearcey, in her book Total Truth, puts it this way:

Humans are inherently religious beings, created to be in relationship with God – and if they reject God, they don’t stop being religious; they simply find some other ultimate principle upon which to base their lives.

Paul’s point in Romans 1 is that whenever we forsake God for a god-in-principle, we’ve “exchanged the truth…for a lie”.   It’s a lie, he argues, that anything else in this world is worthy of our supreme devotion and the title “forever praised”.  And if we think about those things that easily become our god-in-principles, I think Paul’s words resonate.  Our jobs are not to be “forever praised”. If we make them that, will we ever rest and feel as if we’ve truly “made it”?  Our significant others are not to be “forever praised”.  If we make them that, will we ever get enough of their approval to satisfy the real longings of our hearts?  Our children are not to be “forever praised”.  If we make them that, won’t we just crush them under the wait of our unrealistic expectations?

The reason Paul designates Christianity’s God as “truth” and “forever praised” is because God has done what mere god-in-principles can’t.  He gives people exactly what is needed to satisfy the deepest longings of the human heart – himself.  Jesus is God the Son, who at the cross, gave himself up for us in our time of need.  When we separated ourselves from God by exchanging the truth for a lie, Jesus stepped in and exchanged his life for ours – to bring us back to God.  This is the reason why so many people devote their worship/”religion”/whatever you call it…to Jesus.  In their hearts and minds, Jesus has become more worthy than any other created thing, than any other god-in-principle.

So, if St. Paul of Tarsus and St. Def of Brooklyn have it right and we really are hardwired to worship, the only question left is…what are you doing with your worship?

I’ve always been a fan of documentaries. They expand my horizons. They take things that I wouldn’t normally be interested in, and they make them interesting – whether it’s wheelchair rugby, pig farms, nursing home classic rock choirs, imaginary baseball, tight rope walking, or serial killers.  I know that last one makes me sound a bit creepy but stay with me for a second.

I remember when I saw a documentary on Aileen Wuornos. Her story was eventually made into the feature film, Monster (2003). Her childhood was a tragic one. She never met her abusive father and her mother abandoned her and her brother when she was 4. She got pregnant at age 13 and began supporting herself as a prostitute by age 15. As much as she tried to shake the past, she couldn’t. She eventually became America’s first female serial killer.

In varying degrees, we all have something in our past that we feel has defined us.  We’d love to shake a lot of these things off and start over.  But because we can’t actually  start over, we cope and try to deal with our past in way that helps us move forward. Today, It seems that the coping mechanism of choice is to simply ignore the past, and all things negative, and think optimistically about our future. This method has been popularized in best-selling books like “The Secret” (even though I think someone else said it all a little better). The idea is that you are not actually defined by your past. You can’t change the past so don’t dwell on it. Think positively and positive things will come your way. I agree, to a point. After all, optimism does seem like a more productive option than pessimism or depression. But does this approach actually accomplish anything?

At the end of Monster, Wuornos, played by Charlize Theron, is about to pay the penalty for her past. She has just been convicted of multiple killings and is now walking out of the court room to death row. As she’s walking out, and as the film closes, we hear her narrate these words over the scene:

“Love conquers all.” “Every cloud has a silver lining.” “Faith can move mountains.” “Love will always find a way.” “Everything happens for a reason.” “Where there is life, there is hope.”
[laughs]
“Oh, well… They gotta tell you somethin’”

I think she’s onto something. Positive thinking may help us cope when life gets hard, but ultimately, it’s just not enough. We need our past actually dealt with. We can’t just wish it away.

Christianity has always taken a different approach to the past. It says we ARE defined by the past. It owns up and says that YES our mistakes have shaped us, and NO we can’t just wish this state away. But it also doesn’t leave us there. It provides the world with the much needed doctrine of what’s called the New Self. Christians are people in the world who are now defined by the past of another. This is why God entered the world in the person of Jesus – to re-define broken, messed-up people. For those who rely on him and what he’s done, their life is (as a great Christian hymn puts it) “hid with Christ on high.” It’s now his identity and his record that people can now live out of. In this way, Christianity gives a real solution to the problem of the past, and gives people the opportunity to change from the inside-out as they live out of this new identity they’ve been given.

So, if you really ARE defined by the past, the only question left is…who’s past? This question is the reason so many people run to Jesus and to the cross where he died. It’s there where he actually exchanges his record for ours. And that’s much better than wishful thinking.