Artisan Faith

I love making bread. This is quickly (and easily) expanding to include pizza crust as well. Making good bread yourself is an easy and forgiving process, where even "mistakes" often taste great.

Like a lot of other things to do with food, there is a push to use local flours (with pizza, local toppings). This is opposed to buying bread made in factories, filled with unnecessary preservatives, that is uniform but bland, not only in comparison to locally made artisan bread, but objectively bland when a person takes the time to actually taste it.

There is an important parallel to churches here.

Sometimes our churches are like a franchise branch of a faith, sent down from corporate offices. Want to start a church? Here is the handbook that outlines what the building should look like, what employees/congregants should wear, what language to use; here is the magic formula for the secret sauce.

But what about a church that acts like the local baker, who uses local ingredients, takes risks, is always looking to improve her craft, learning from people who do things differently, appreciating what other bakers are doing, even if she thinks her way is better? It is a sad state of affairs when our ability to appreciate food from other cultures exceeds our ability to appreciate expressions of faith from other people within our own culture.

What kind of bread are you eating in your church?