Ideas Everywhere
If you change or modify your work very often, you end up moving a bunch of stuff. Once I got fed up with moving all the things in my office when we were relocating from Waterloo, ON to Calgary. It seems like that was yesterday, but it was way back in 2004 (and we’re now living in central Canada, again).

I heaved them without opening them
I can clearly remember taking three full boxes—two standard-size cardboard legal file boxes, plus a container about twice that size—didn’t even open them, but just walked them down the hallway of Lincoln Road Chapel, lifted them over my shoulder, and heaved them into the steel garbage bin at the edge of the parking lot.

Those boxes were what I called “idea” files. I had been throwing cool things into them for a half-dozen years: newspaper articles, lines of poetry, words from someone else’s presentation scribbled on scraps of paper, a single panel torn from an advertising brochure, found art objects, etc. I had thought that most of the ideas would end up in presentations – sermons and other talks.

Approach life in an open-eyed way
Over the previous seven years I had taught communication to nearly a dozen and a half MBA classes at Wilfrid Laurier University. One assignment I gave was for students to create idea files of their own. I was trying to get them to approach life in a more open-eyed way—to see that there are interesting things all around that can be used to help us communicate in more interesting/clear ways. And of course, ideas aren’t just tools; a surprising number of viral jokes that you get in an e-note, are somehow “true” (the e-mail items that had been printed and added to my idea files were one reason that electronic data had led to the opposite of a paperless office).

Ideafiles take over
My so-close-to-being-done-high-school-that-he-can-taste-it son Luke, recently shared some of the pictures on my nephew Ryan’s Facebook page – the pix are a kind of catalogue of “things I found in my Dad’s basement.” My brother Greg has a way cooler idea file than I ever did. He stored it up so that he could be a good elementary/junior high school teacher. I should get him to tour me through his crawl space and “rumpus room,” but I’m not sure both of us can be in the space at the same time. These are more like idea “rooms” – Greg never having had the benefit of a steel bin on the front driveway.

An Endless Supply of Good Ideas
Back to 2004: trashing those full boxes hurt, but it did happen; because I had finally realized that there is an endless supply of those good ideas and illustrations. This may surprise my wife and kids, or people who’ve had me preaching to them more than a few times. I realize that some of them suspect that I only have about ten “stories of my life.” That’s actually a different problem: I can only remember ten stories. On the other hand, the marketplace of ideas and pictures and metaphors and other-people’s-stories is rich and full and refilling all the time.

I was in Vancouver last Friday and Saturday, mostly to spend time with friends at University Chapel. I had early Friday morning breakfast at the Fairmont Hotel at Vancouver airport. This is a little better joint than most places I eat. Bacon and eggs for $20 instead of $3.99 (but great bacon and eggs – thanks again Alastair). And a nice fresh copy of the Globe and Mail to enjoy with my coffee. Here are two of four cool ideas I got from only 15 minutes with the Friday, September 23, 2011 edition, to remind me why I only keep one narrow idea file folder any more:

1. From the front page of Section L:
A kind of “in” media topic these days, is a piece titled: “Surprise. Singles drive community.” Apparently, “singles do more for their families and communities than married folks.” The article summarizes a researcher who has summarized the research. I immediately had two thoughts. The first is that we shouldn’t be surprised by this. The apostle Paul suggested that this was a key reason not to marry—so that there was time to do things for God and community; that in fact, people who don’t marry can focus on “the Lord’s affairs,” not on pleasing a spouse. It’s a part of the Bible I never liked much, but apparently Paul’s wisdom in this case is pretty well-supported by modern sociological studies.

My other thought is that it’s high time those of us who don’t like this news, or 1 Corinthians 7 for that matter, to shake our heads, and start seeing the single people in our family-oriented churches, as particularly valuable. We don’t, do we? We have them slotted in our minds as self-oriented and difficult to include, or maybe worse. But the facts apparently are that they “pitch in with their parents more than their married siblings do, they help their neighbours more frequently than their married counterparts do and they have more friends – and treat them better than marrieds do.” We should be chasing these people down, elevating them up, loving them like crazy, even just for the pragmatic reason of taking advantage of their work and strength at relationship. And of course we have better reasons than that.

2. From page R3 in Globe Arts:
The top of this page has a positive (three stars) review of Vera Farmiga’s (George Clooney’s “love interest” from Up in the Air), first directorial project, a move called Higher Ground. Looks like a film about faith and doubt, sounds like it finds the middle ground between treating belief with “an excess of reverence or too much mockery.” I haven’t seen the film (though I’ll make an effort), and it sounds like it won’t resolve in the completely wonderful warm “evangelical” (but maybe not very real) way that you find in Hallmark Hall of Fame presentations – and too many “Christian” films.

But the article reminded me once again how poorly read I am, when the reviewer quoted this wonderful line from Tennyson, that I might have heard before, but which is just beyond the edge of my memory. No matter, I removed the page from the newspaper, so can share this with you:

There lives more faith in honest doubt
Believe me, than in half the creeds

I know the fear that a young person’s doubt of carefully taught Christian beliefs can bring to a parent or a church leader. How can we help but want them to “just get it?” Couldn’t all of our kids have a rich grasp of faith (or rather the object of faith) without any questions? Well … probably not. God has no grandkids. And what real faith is, on that continuum between doubt and faith, isn’t all that clear anyway. I mean, is faith the complete absence of doubt? Is doubt the complete absence of faith? Jesus’ reaction to the man who told him to “help thou mine unbelief” was to grant the request for healing. Which makes me think that Jesus would have understood Alfred Lord Tennyson’s lines pretty well. I certainly understand the poet, and will continue to live my life, and shudder as I hope my kids do the same, inspired by one of the mantras of my life: I assume the value of doubt.

Of course there were two other great things from my quick dip into the Globe. But not for today. And there will be a great idea from some other source tomorrow–the richness of God and his mind just spilling out everywhere.

Jay Gurnett still loves being married to Marg. They have five kids and 7 grandkids (these are old people!). Jay spent about 5-10 years each as a newspaper reporter/editor, performing arts presenter, college/university professor, pastor. Nowadays he helps Vision Ministries Canada help new churches get started, spends some time drawing together an “incarnational organic community” in London ON, and flips houses with his son-in-law Andrew.
Jay has hung around university-aged people since he was one. New weird Christian communities and things are what interest him most.