Canvas – a community of wonderful people working to make the world a better place – is located in Irvine, CA (USA). If you like anything about the podcast or the blog, you will like Canvas! Really. To jump straight to the Canvas website, just click here.
The Slightly Longer Version:
For me, Canvas is church as I always hoped it could be: rooted in and centered on love, open, creative, intelligent, and genuinely engaged with the world. In other words, we are trying to live like Jesus.
Canvas is a part of the Presbyterian Church (USA), and we share the classical Christian beliefs about Jesus as the Son of God, his resurrection from the dead… But most importantly , we share the belief that in and through Jesus, God is establishing his salvation in all creation. God is actively, personally, passionately, here-and-now invested in making all things new. And as people who have placed our trust in the Jesus way, we are joining in the artistry of new creation (ergo “Canvas”!) and inviting everyone to do the same.
Because of this vision of new creation, we value more than just worship -which we DO value very highly. We recognize that in the 21st century, the conviction that Jesus is the embodied offspring of the Deity, raised from the dead and coming again at the end of time to consummate God’s kingship in creation…is…welll…not so obvious. It turns out I hold that conviction now more than I ever have. But I also recognize that by so doing, I’m the weird one! And if others don’t share that conviction, I (and Canvas) certainly understand.
But even if we disagree about some finer points of theology, we can still share together in Jesus’s project of love. We can build authentic and genuine relationships with each other. We can work side by side to care for people in need. We can learn and study and challenge ideas. We can nurture our creativity, dreaming of new solutions to the world’s most challenging problems. We can encourage each other to find and exercise our unique gifts and talents. We can commit ourselves to the care of the next generation(s). If the Bible teaches anything, it teaches that God cares desperately about these things. And when Jesus called his followers to love God, self, neighbor, and even enemies, these are the activities he then modeled.
For my part, I share the Apostle John’s declaration that “God is love.” Love is the reason behind creation, the purpose to which we are called. It is the most valuable thing we will ever have and it is the last word in the story of the cosmos. And I believe that if we strive for maturity in love, to grow up into the fullness of ourselves, we find ourselves aligned with Jesus. As a wise friend of mine once said: “Genuinely love long enough and you trip over Jesus somewhere along the journey.”
Canvas is about the journey, about love in all its facets. We believe everyone has a unique contribution to make to the project of loving creation back to wholeness. And we want to be a community of new-creators, inviting everyone to make their mark.
Wanna know more??? Here’s the link to the Canvas website.
Or click here to be added to the Canvas e-mail list (get regular updates on events and activities).
