Over the past year, I've watched the video, "Schools Kill Creativity" a couple of times. I love the perspective that Ken Robinson brings to the education system. Here are just a few of the interesting statements he makes:

• We stigmatize mistakes and end up educating people out of their creative capacities.
• Every education system on earth has the same hierarchy of subjects: Mathematics and language are always at the top, while classes that reflect the arts (dancing, drama, choir, etc) are always at the bottom.
• If you're looking at education systems around the world, it's easy to conclude that the goal is to produce university professors.
• We almost always evaluate someone's intelligence based on their academic ability.

Of course, I automatically filter these statements through the life of the church. Like schools, I think we do an amazing job at prioritizing knowledge above all things! When people can quote Scripture or give us the background to a book of the Bible we assume they are pretty spiritual. For some reason, serious personalities, introverts and highly educated religious people have ended up becoming the "model Christian". Yet Jesus NEVER talked about the value of how much we KNOW! He ALWAYS talked about the value of how much we LOVE.

This past week we started sign ups for our summer Growth Group season. I love how many different types of groups they are. It's important for us to remember that the groups doing some sort of Bible Study are not more spiritual than the ones riding Harleys! The way to evaluate spirituality is to ask questions like, "How did I apply what I learned?" or "How am I caring for and loving the people in my group?" or "How is my heart changing to become more like Jesus?"

By the way, here's the video I'm talking about...