I don't do full-on movie reviews, so this will go down as a semi-exception.
So I'm over at some friends' house to watch a movie. And in cases like this, I like to be surprised by what movie we watch, but when I heard that the title was Strictly Ballroom, I thought, "Wow, this should be entirely boring."
It wasn't at all. This quirky, dry-humored comedy really told an important story about the struggle between tradition and reform.
To sum it up, Strictly Ballroom's main character, a ballroom dancer named Scott, decides during a contest that he wants to invent his own moves. He begins twirling and jumping everywhere and the crowd absolutely eats it up. What's more, Scott intends on doing it again and again.
Everyone connected to the tradition of Ballroom Dancing [his mother, the judges, and the president of the organization] gets worked up in a frenzy over Scott's "crowd-pleasing steps." Their expressed concern with Scott's unorthodox dance moves are mainly two-fold:
#1- Teachability. Scott's moves don't recognize the existing strusture of Ballroom dancing: certain moves are "legal" and scored accordingly, others are "illegal". Judges use these to judge, beginners learn these to get better. The line in the movie that tippifies this is, "You can't teach those steps...:
#2- Sustainability. Scott's moves don't permit him to win an event. They are "illegal" and, therefore, cannot be measured for a judge to score. There are those who want to see Scott succeed, seeing him as the champion to take their "sport" into the next generation.
I see this movie as a terrific metaphor for what's happening with the established "church" as we know it right now. So many of the older leaders are concerned that this new expression of church will lose it's teachability because there is too much freedom. Also, that what they've built will be sustainable in this new context.
While I understand where they're coming from [even with own children, I want to teach them and I want to build things for them], I also understand the cost of freedom. If all believers are going to live as New Testament priests [1 Peter 2] and Ambassadors for Christ [2 Corinthians], then there must be more freedom than the current church establishment allows. The need for change is here and the Church has got to adapt to it.
In part, this is what Vox Church is about, a new kind of church for a new context.
Strictly Evangelical
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1 comments:
Cool Drew:)
I loved the part: "If all believers are going to live as New Testament priests [1 Peter 2] and Ambassadors for Christ [2 Corinthians], then there must be more freedom than the current church establishment allows. The need for change is here and the Church has got to adapt to it."
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