| Take a Look & Listen! |
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Click here and enjoy Brad Thomspon & the Five Smooth Stones as they perform "Still." |
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Hospitality Team Greeter: Assures all worshipers are warmly welcomed.
Sacred Space: Develops & implements the installation of worship decor for prayer stations & communion table.
Media Assistant: Assists in the visual worship elements.
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The Value of Creativity, Art & Beauty... |
 The value of beauty, art and creativity in our world. It's a nice phrase, isn't it? And it's one of our core values at The Search. We strive to be agents of beauty. It's a call from our Artist God to do so! One way we do this over and over is through our prayers, reflections, and I guess I would say our praises--our doxologies that pour forth from our souls. These serve as a layering of the call of God working in our lives that we then share as a community.
We have a call to live out the way of Christ, the way of a revolutionary love, the way of hope, the way of grace. If in our worship we are transformed by God REVEALING something to us, and we RESPOND with acts of worship, service and art, then we become partners in this relationship with the Divine and our heavenly and cultural realm become a bit closer--we become a living doxology.
Recently I had the opportunity to lead The Search worship staff in a retreat in which we deliberately took time to be prayerful about our roles and creative factors around our worship gifts. We designed personal storyboards to communicate to ourselves and each other what textures, images, sounds, lyrics, poems, photos, etc. speak to us and continue to spur us towards being creative, out-of-the-box thinkers.
And as we prayerfully created these boards, we shared why we chose certain items to be there, and each of us cried at some point, laughed a lot, and genuinely felt the Spirit of God connecting us through this small act of worship and offering.
As more and more postmodern pilgrims journey in faith, we must become the catalysts that offer a more glorious, doxological pattern to our worship. Worship that acts and calls us to connect worship in all parts of our lives, not just the sanctuaries where we assume God moves and lives. Isn't it good to be about beauty, art and creativity?
Thanks be to God!
- Suzanne Castle-Rolen, Minister
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Music Inspired... |
 5 Smooth Stones, led by Brad Thompson--Music Director of The Search, is a creative force that represents one of our core values: beauty, art and creativity in the world.
Over the last year or so, Brad and the band have crafted some incredibly thoughtful songs that inspire and move us. And different from a lot of "worship tunes", this music does not always lead us to a sense of "yippy skippy God tunes" but moments of great reflection. Recently at The Search, we used the song "Still" and wrote some connective prayers based on a lament psalm to go with this song.
It is one more example of the organic nature of what we do at The Search: that it reflect who we are and the journey we are taking together. Take a few minutes of prayer and reconnect to God through this video.
Thanks be to God in all times and seasons of our lives!
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How Do You Use Your Creativity? |
 The first thing that came to my mind on the topic of our value of creativity, art, and beauty in the world, is that in comparison to Suzanne, Brad, and Lisa, I consider myself to be the least creative and artistic. However, when I thought deeper into this, I came to realize that it doesn't matter how creative or artistic one is in the world, but rather how one uses their creativity (even if it is only a tiny bit) for the glory of God. I am constantly challenged at The Search, pushing the limits of my artistic style and creativity, but always seem to leave the service satisfied by this challenge and the results because in them I know I have praised God. You see, God made us exactly the way we are, whether that is someone who can think creatively on the fly, or someone like me who struggles every time someone asks you to use your imagination and create something artsy from scratch. We are called to praise God with our individual abilities, not by trying to be someone we aren't and worship like someone we can't be. So in this I give us all a challenge, to worship God this week in a way that you might not consider yourself gifted. Sing as loud as you can at The Search even if you feel you don't have a great singing voice or can't remember all the words, dance to the tunes even if you lack rhythm or think you look silly, create a beautiful piece of art even if it must contain stick figures and you're the only one who knows what it is, write a poem that expresses your love but that wouldn't be compared to the greats, because in the end God knows that our worship is worship, there is no rating system in God's eyes as to how good one is in singing, dancing, drawing, or painting, but only if your heart and mind are full into it.
Alec Ylitalo, Campus Ministry Intern
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| Upcoming Highlights |
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*New Series: Revolution!
During the month of September we will be exploring a new series: "Revolution"
We will gather together to explore the revolution of Love, Change, Whisper and more!
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Monday, September 8, 2008 at 01:22AM 
