Manuel Luz is passionate about worship, coffee, the Oakland Raiders, and the intersections of faith and the arts. A songwriter, author, speaker, and creative arts pastor, Manuel’s first published book, Imagine That: Discovering Your Unique Role as a Christian Artist (Moody Publishers) is a practical and personal theology of the arts. Check out his blog, “Adventures in Faith and Art” (www.manuelluz.com), or his four solo CDs (iTunes or CDBaby.com).
Many churches are beginning to incorporate live painting into their worship services. For those who haven’t experienced this, a painter(s) will begin with a large, blank canvas at the beginning of a service and paint throughout the worship time, sometimes through the sermon and even through multiple services. The painter (or other visual artist) is…
It was a blog post I’ve tried to avoid writing for years. But at some point, I knew I couldn’t not write it. The result was “The Issue of Age in Modern Worship,” which discusses the issue of how some churches are replacing their older worship teams and leaders with younger, more hip equivalents, and…
The “heart” of the worshiper is a key aspect of worship, but there seems to be some confusion about what that means. These days, the word “heart” is associated with emotion, experience, and sincerity. In other words, if someone says they mean something “with all my heart,” what they imply is that they really, really…
Scenario 1: An unemployed worship pastor confided in me recently. He had just candidated with a church and it seemed like a perfect fit. But after a successful interview process where he led worship at the Sunday morning services, the elders pulled him aside for a private conversation. “You’re perfect,” they confided. “But frankly, we’re…
Ever thought about how the room you gather in on a Sunday morning is used? How is the stage set up? What is the focal point of the room? Where do the seats point, and what is the accessibility of the stage? What artistic expressions exist in the worship space? I do. All the time….
A few years ago, I came home to find my teenage sons sitting with some friends around the dining room table, laughing hysterically at some books they were passing around. I knew something was up because when I entered the room, they all looked up at me with big grins on their faces. Turns out…
In Imagine That, I made the argument that the world is full of redemption stories, and that we are, by nature, drawn to redemption stories. From “Rudolph the Red nosed Reindeer” to “Finding Nemo,” from Homer’s Odyssey to Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy,” we are moved by stories of redemption. The Bible too is full…
met•a•phor ‘met-uh-for, noun, a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable. I was approached by a concerned visitor to our church after a worship service once. She was asking for clarification on something regarding the message that morning, and…
An artist I know recently mentioned to me how he hated going into Christian bookstores. Without mentioning why, I could understand his unstated acrimony. (It may be for some of the same reasons why I would feel uncomfortable watching a Biblically-based movie where Jesus appears as a European-descent white male with brown hair and blonde…
The piano was always a magnet to me, even at an early age. I began piano lessons at almost age five, and by age eleven, I was determined to become a classical pianist. But it was at fourteen—the year I discovered girls—that I left Mozart and Bach to begin writing sappy (and somewhat embarrassing) love…
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