better than useful

I meant to write earlier about the Transforming culture symposium at our church but April has absolutely been a slammed month for us. All of the speakers were outstanding and I enjoyed interacting with some of the people who came to the symposium. Andy Crouch kicked off the symposium with a brilliant message on culture, art, worship and obedience. I sat next to Jonathan Dodson who took better notes and blogged about them. You can read his thoughts here. Crouch's most profound point, in my opinion, had to do with uselessness. We don't like the idea of uselessness, but art itself "cannot be reduced to utility" as he said. He claimed that art is not useful, but it is better than useful. Then he connected that same idea to the fact that the church is actually a patron of the useless. Worship, community and prayer are not useful, but they are better than useful. It was a brilliant message and I look forward to his new book coming out.