Brian McLaren on Worship

Can't seem to remember how to make a pretty YouTube window appear in my blog posts. But I can still cut and paste links! So here's a link to a short, interesting discussion by Brian McLaren about what he calls "The Worship Industry." Many of the things he mentions--like the fact that worship that "works" for people often does so by being dishonestly upbeat--are the same things I have noted (though not yet posted) about why evangelicals have a hard time writing good novels, painting good paintings, and in general producing non-musical art that communicates to people outside of Lewis's and L'Engle's allegories for children. (As I discovered as a young wannabe evangelical writer, the moment you identify a truly good Christian writer--say, Dostoyevsky or Flannery O'Connor or T.S. Eliot or Walker Percy--you quickly realize that they're not exactly evangelical Christians.)

On a style note, I think this short film idea (along with what Rob Bell's doing with NOOMA, though I don't like those as much) is the sort of thing I should be doing for promotion of my book...if only I had a camera, editing skill, and access to a series of public-domain film clips. *Sigh.* I need a damn agent.