This last year my music/art group attempted a change of posture and purpose: Instead of hosting events at whimsical intervals and mostly for our own sake, we felt it time to create something that would serve our community–to host regular, sacred meditative spaces for people to rest, receive. It would require more work but the result would be worth the effort.

Attendance is usually a good indicator of demand (duh), and such a metric has deemed our product unsustainable in its current format. We are sad. I am sad. Perhaps promotion of the event was not up to snuff, or we played too much original material, or too loudly, or we should have printed all the lyrics for clarity. We can be weird. A best effort was made to solicit feedback, make plans, use our resources wisely, and still we didn’t find viability after a half season run. I am not entirely surprised, I wouldn’t go to a Radiohead concert every month.

And so here and now I know the pang of a failed church planter; a believer who set out to do something for God, for neighbor, and found wanting. This happens all the time, in all spheres of life. I don’t like pity parties. I don’t like having my well being attached to my creativity, and my creativity attached to my faith. And when Christian charity doesn’t work you have peculiar bitterness to spread around. If I failed at making tiles my disappointment would be relatively brief and simple and who cares what God thinks, I’m just crap at ceramics. Or something like that.