Avant-Garde Preaching

[00:00:00]I don't get it.

[00:00:03]And I have no qualms saying that I don't get it.

[00:00:07]There are some things in life that are quantum leaps in the development of societies, cultures, subset cultures.

[00:00:18]I don't get it.

[00:00:20]There are certain brands of clothes, I I don't get it.

[00:00:25]There are certain forms of stylistic creativity and art, I don't I don't get it.

[00:00:32]And I don't care to say I don't get it.

[00:00:36]I'm actually not trying to be vogue, I'm not trying to [music] be uh cool, I'm not trying to be cutting edge.

[00:00:44]I simply don't get it.

[00:00:47]And I'm allowed to not get it. I'm allowed to say out loud I don't get it.

[00:00:54]I I look at some styles of art and presentation of art, [music] some stylistic changes and I think I get it. Even Paul said there's changes in administrations.

[00:01:08]Like I get that. Styles, leadership styles.

[00:01:13]There are men [music] that have pastored great churches, done great things for God in the transactional model.

[00:01:21]My model is more of a transformational style and approach, but there's men that have done better than me with other styles of leadership.

[00:01:32]Even the kind of hands-off approach, let it unfold approach, brilliantly done.

[00:01:41]I get it.

[00:01:43]But there's parts I don't get.

[00:01:47]I don't get where art has [music] been degraded and the art of something has has degraded to the degree that the old world masters are mocked and made fun of.

[00:02:04]I like preaching.

[00:02:05]I am a preacher.

[00:02:07]I like different styles of preaching.

[00:02:10]I enjoy topical preaching.

[00:02:13]I enjoy expositional preaching.

[00:02:16]I love teaching.

[00:02:18]I love doctrinal preaching.

[00:02:21]I love inspirational preaching.

[00:02:24]But there's some forms of preaching I don't get it.

[00:02:29]And I'm not going to stand there while the emperor parades down the path with no clothes on and say wow.

[00:02:40]I'm not going to get it.

[00:02:42]I don't understand it.

[00:02:43]And I don't know that I want to.

[00:02:46]It's beyond me.

[00:02:47]It's beyond the pale and the grasp of what I can be and do.

[00:02:52]I am an old world soul.

[00:02:56]Now, I'm going to use art and the art of or craft of something to pull a few strings here.

[00:03:06]I want to talk about a book that has been percolating in my head for quite a while.

[00:03:13]And it's how to be avant-garde.

[00:03:16]Modern artists and the quest to end art.

[00:03:21]Now, one book review here in the Wall Street Journal wrote, "How to be avant-garde, glorious destruction."

[00:03:33]I beg to differ with them.

[00:03:35]I don't think the destruction is glorious.

[00:03:38]I don't think it's impressive.

[00:03:41]I don't think it's praiseworthy.

[00:03:43]In fact, I don't even think it's noteworthy other than a footnote in a society gone awry.

[00:03:52]But let me play it out in long form so that nobody thinks that I'm just being a grouch and I'm just firing off.

[00:04:03]The Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan forms up a piece of art, The Comedian, which consists of a banana duct-taped to a blank white wall.

[00:04:19]One work edition of the work was purchased at Sotheby's in 2024, I think it was, for over 6 million by a tech entrepreneur who later ate it on stage in Hong Kong.

[00:04:38]It wasn't the first time someone ate Mr. Cattelan's banana.

[00:04:43]A performance artist artist enjoyed the expensive snack when the work was first displayed in 2019.

[00:04:54]At an earlier iteration of that fair, after perusing the art on display, Morgan Falconer, an art historian and Sotheby's Institute of Art faculty member, found that much of the work trading in the red-hot art market, now valued at more than 60 billion dollars annually, left him cold and unmoved.

[00:05:24]All the wealth that nurtures it seems only to increase its aura of power and mystique and hence its distance from us, Mr. Falconer writes in How to Be Avant-Garde, a biography of the modern artists and who at one point or another had enough of the the status quo.

[00:05:48]So, I want you to, as an exercise, just an exercise, I'm not being vicious, I'm not being dogmatic, I'm not being a jerk, just an exercise.

[00:06:04]Would it kill us to just exercise our minds for a minute?

[00:06:10]What was it like for Mr. Morgan Falconer, the art historian, the Sotheby's Institute of Art faculty member, to stare at a blank white wall with a duct-taped banana to it and watch it go for $6 million.

[00:06:38]What was it like in his mind after he had spent a lifetime perusing Monet's lilies?

[00:06:47]Looking at different ones looking at Rembrandt's facial expressions.

[00:06:55]Looking at the vast expanses that were painted in the battle epics of Europe that captured a moment in history to define the defeats or victories of the conquerors or the conquered.

[00:07:16]What was it like for him to now switch off his well-tuned brain, his fine refined eye of expertise and have to gauge the value of a white wall with a banana taped to it?

[00:07:40]It was demoralizing.

[00:07:43]It was something that was humiliating.

[00:07:47]And it was something that brought him to a point of deep reflection to where he wrote about avant-garde. What is avant-garde, first of all? It is a French term, the advanced guard. These are the people who would go so deep beyond the enemy lines that they were beyond where the battle was actually held, and they were so far ahead of everybody else that they had no support, they had no and people didn't understand where they were, what they were doing, and what the context of their victories or their mission statements were.

[00:08:24]So, often times it is a French colloquialism to say, "Ah, they're avant-garde." Meaning, they're so far ahead of us that we can't even define what what real is and and what authentic or inauthentic is.

[00:08:41]Um Are they valuable? Certainly.

[00:08:45]Absolutely.

[00:08:47]Uh it refers out of its military jargon to troops sent beyond the front line and that that were galvanized by World War I. Okay?

[00:08:58]And so, they started using this term.

[00:09:01]Now, when when one man in 1917 created a a fountain, he called it a fountain, and he presented a urinal on a pedestal.

[00:09:16]Okay? They called him avant-garde.

[00:09:20]Meaning, oh, he's so far beyond the line of what we are as normal art critiques and and normal people who are critics of the craft, that because he's so far beyond it that nobody can really understand it.

[00:09:37]He's He's a visionary beyond the pale of contemporaneous expression or metric.

[00:09:46]And I've often thought about this as I've watched people use the craft that they have, whether it's music, whether it's uh preaching, whether it's public speaking, whatever it is, there is an art to it.

[00:10:01]Nobody's going to convince me that there's not an art to preaching or an art to leading or an art to being a public There's a There is an art to being a good podcaster. I don't know that I am. I just have a lot to say about a lot of things and figure that I can talk about books that I read and things that are on my mind and I can do it in a happy and joyful way that I'm not yelling at everybody, but I'm discussing and asking you to think deeply.

[00:10:38]Now, there's a massive difference between thinking critically and being a someone who is a critic. I'm not a critic.

[00:10:46]I'm not a critic of men. I I don't criticize. I'm not I But, I'm not going to stand there and stare at a banana tape to a wall and say, "Wow, this is exceptional."

[00:10:59]My Bible asks me to judge them which say they are apostles and find out whether or not they are.

[00:11:08]My Bible tells me that the Bereans were more noble because they searched the scriptures to see whether or not these things were. Have we become such such an echo chamber of our own praise and have we become such a mutual affirmation society that we have closed our Bibles and said, "Oh, if you didn't get that, it's because this person is avant-garde and they are so far ahead of you that you just don't understand it."

[00:11:41]Folks, I'm telling you in the world of Pentecostalism, in the world of emotionalism and sensationalism, we are living in the hour of the emperor and his new clothes.

[00:11:54]And if we are not careful, we are going to become a part of a sycophant society that lies and says this is great if it's not great. Get your Bibles out and open them up and see whether these things be true or not.

[00:12:13]If they are not true, then we have a moral obligation and a spiritual obligation to say, "The emperor has no clothes."

[00:12:24]So, let's get into what changed in the art world and then I'll talk a little bit about what's changing in our art and craft of what we're doing.

[00:12:36]Now, they wrote, the Italian writer Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, he wrote in the The title is The Founding and Manifestation or Manifesto, rather, sorry, of Futurism. The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism, 1909.

[00:12:56]A call to arms against the doltifying weight of the past.

[00:13:03]This is what he writes in 1909. He was like avant-garde. He was way out there in front of everybody else. But, this is his statement. We will destroy the museums, libraries, and academies of every kind.

[00:13:21]Set fire to the library shelves.

[00:13:24]Turn aside the canals to flood the museums.

[00:13:29]Marinetti and his followers wanted to move beyond the traditional cultural categories of art and artist, not only in salons and galleries, but also on the grandest scale.

[00:13:42]Instead of {quote} an armchair for the tired businessman, as Matisse called his paintings, avant-gardists wanted their work to become a motor for social progress.

[00:13:58]And so what happens is we find ourselves leaving Monet and Rembrandt and leaving the great artists of the Renaissance and we're standing here staring at a blank white wall with a banana tape taped to it and we have to say, "Wow, what art."

[00:14:21]I want to say I don't get it.

[00:14:23]It's not art.

[00:14:25]It's it's it's parody.

[00:14:28]It's a mockery and it's something to be ashamed of. Now, here's the problem with it.

[00:14:36]And this is where the the man Morgan Falconer. Man, what a name. That is like the most manly manliest name I've ever heard. Morgan Falconer.

[00:14:48]Um like I'm just Walker. I like when you think of Douglas Walker, there's a guy out walking around and maybe Douglas and if they can call me Doug, it's a guy with a shovel, he's out digging. Uh but Morgan Falconer, I like his name anyhow.

[00:15:05]How to be avant-garde, modern artists and the quest to end art.

[00:15:10]This man, who again, let me repeat, an art historian and Sotheby's Institute of Art faculty member.

[00:15:21]Years he had spent valuing art that he could set a price on. He watched this art sell for six million dollars.

[00:15:37]So, my question is if it got six million likes, is it art?

[00:15:46]Is it valuable because somebody paid six million dollars to own it?

[00:15:56]To eat it?

[00:15:58]To mock it?

[00:16:00]My answer today is no.

[00:16:03]It's not worth that.

[00:16:05]And just because it garners a sense of virality does not make it virtuous. Does not make it godly. Does not make it praiseworthy.

[00:16:17]I think the first time I ever heard anybody say that part was Tim Hadden.

[00:16:23]Virality and not virtuous, maybe or or maybe he he switched it around. Well, he was looking for virtue, not virality.

[00:16:32]And there there's a point to be made there.

[00:16:35]And I agree with his point, although I I didn't I didn't hear all of why he was making the point, and I just don't know to this day why he made the point, but the point was well made.

[00:16:45]But, what I'm saying today is just because I can get attention does not mean I have influence or leadership. You can go out in the street in a state of undress or distress and garner attention.

[00:17:01]I I It would take me like 5 minutes to go out here and have a billion people look at me.

[00:17:07]I I've no problem. I mean, criminals do it all the time. Psy- psychos do it all the time. You can go have a a million or a hundred million or a billion people look at something you did. All you got to do is do something big and loud enough. One guy on a roof with a bullet takes a shot at the president's head and he he has the attention of the world.

[00:17:30]One one guy assassinates a public speaker um in a university uh campus and the whole world wants to know what his name is and who he is and what happened. That's not influence. That's attention.

[00:17:48]And and the problem is is when we're uh trying to garner attention, we're abdicating our potential for influence.

[00:17:58]Preaching that is not based on the word of God, well, it's not preaching.

[00:18:04]You You are a preacher, you have a three-word job description. Preach the word.

[00:18:12]We're living in an age where it's it it's manipulation. It's aggravation of emotions to the point to where something fantastic happens to the degree that we're looking at the great art of preaching, of articulating the gospel, of proclaiming the cross of Jesus Christ, of proclaiming the power of the cross, and we're looking at a parody version of it of a banana taped to the wall. And my friends, I want to go on record and say I don't get it.

[00:18:53]And I don't really believe that I'm missing it. I don't believe that they are somehow the avant-garde who is so far beyond me, stupid ignorant little me, that I just don't understand it.

[00:19:08]No.

[00:19:10]No. Preaching the word is not what we do when we don't have a word from God. It is the word from God.

[00:19:19]It's not something to be embarrassed about. It's not something to be uh shouted down. It's not something to be uh sidelined. It is the exaltation of God through his manifest declared word.

[00:19:35]I'm worried about a culture who mocks You don't have scripture for this or you want Bible verse for that. Yes.

[00:19:45]I would like preaching to be anchored to a text.

[00:19:50]I would appreciate because I can't search the scriptures to see if whether or not your saying is true if it doesn't align with scripture.

[00:20:02]I can only say yes, that is not true.

[00:20:07]Does that make me a critic? No.

[00:20:10]It makes me somebody who refuses to stare at a duct-taped banana and say, "Wow. Brilliantly done."

[00:20:21]It's not. It's a mockery.

[00:20:23]It's a fearful thing that we have entered into when the word of God is so devalued and so debased that it no longer has the validity that we need in order to get what we want.

[00:20:43]I I was preaching not long ago somewhere and I preached on spiritual fracking.

[00:20:50]Now, um fracking i- i- is a hydraulic fracking is a way in oil extraction.

[00:20:58]Just as fracking drills and pressures underground rock to release oil and gas.

[00:21:05]And I and I seriously believe that it's harmful to the environment. It It leaves the earth in a scorched earth leftover.

[00:21:15]And and I'm telling you right now what I'm watching in Pentecost is not producing sensitivity. It's not producing deeper moves of God. It's numb.

[00:21:25]It's producing a numbness. It's emotions. It's intensity. It It's It's a certain beat, a certain rhythmic approach. It is making people numb, not more sensitive to God.

[00:21:42]And and so what what I want to say is that you if you're not careful you can farm, and I'm using that word carefully, you can farm your soul out to be a prop to a valuation of something that is no longer the art of worship.

[00:22:05]It's no longer the art of prayer. It's no longer the art of preaching. And it's no longer the art of the responsive preaching. It is nothing less than spiritual fracking that is leaving us spent, manipulated, cynical, and numb.

[00:22:25]It's not valuing God's body.

[00:22:28]It's not honoring God's wife.

[00:22:31]It's manipulating her to respond to some teasing antic to get something that does not produce.

[00:22:42]It doesn't disciple people. It doesn't indoctrinate people in the sense of linking them to the word of God, to the work of the spirit of God.

[00:22:52]We've got to get to a place where we are intolerant of the taped banana.

[00:22:59]That we are saying to ourself, this is not art. This is not spiritual avant-garde people so far out in the spirit world that the rest of us Bible-toting, Bible-thumping, Bible-searching lugheads who just want to do it in academia.

[00:23:21]That's not what I want to do.

[00:23:24]But, the Bible lays everything out that I am supposed to have the word of God hid in my heart that I might not sin against him.

[00:23:37]We're replacing something in Pentecost right now.

[00:23:41]I'm horrified that we're getting cheap sold.

[00:23:45]In fact, I can do this by a physical example.

[00:23:52]I don't even believe that the banana would last to the viewing of the next generation.

[00:23:59]Oh, there might be some kind of matter still stuck to the gooey adhesiveness of the duct tape that was splattered abrasively across the organic material of the banana.

[00:24:14]There may be some rotten residue of what used to be edible, but now is no more than just advanced states of decomposition that mocks the foolish masses who don't get it.

[00:24:31]Saint of God, I want to tell you something.

[00:24:34]You don't have to jump and run and worship because of antics and manipulation.

[00:24:41]You do what you're going to do out of the spontaneity of your own gratitude to God.

[00:24:48]I was just preaching in Yucaipa, and I was articulating my fear Sunday that we're losing our sensitivity to the Holy Ghost. We're becoming so abrupt, we're becoming so abrasive, so obnoxious in the manipulative art of getting people to react.

[00:25:08]That while they react, they do not respond.

[00:25:14]And because it has 6 million followers called US dollars.

[00:25:21]All who say it's not art hang their head in shame and say well you can't argue with it if it has that many dollars that like it.

[00:25:31]If it has that many likes on Instagram, if it has that many applause of men, it must be right.

[00:25:38]But that's not what we're asked to do.

[00:25:40]The question is does it align with scripture? Does it exalt Christ? Is it Christ exalting?

[00:25:49]Or is it a mere parody? I ask you in all humility, not not in arrogance, not in pride. Can we reclaim the nuance of the spirit world? The sensitivity, the flow of the Holy Spirit that says I'm not going to force you, I'm not going to manipulate you. God is a gentleman.

[00:26:09]And he is going to ask you to come under his lordship, under the headship of his body >> [music] >> and align itself with scripture.

[00:26:19]Again, we are not affirmed by how many buy it for 6 million dollars.

[00:26:26]It's not artful even though it's produced as art.

[00:26:32]I'm asking us to go back to the works of the Holy Ghost and see and ask what God is doing and become more sensitive every day.

[00:26:45]We do not have to stand [music] there and say well, I I I must not get it.

[00:26:51]No, I [music] don't get it.

[00:26:53]And I'm not ashamed that I don't get it.

[00:26:55]Bring back your Bible to the pulpit.

[00:26:57]Bring back the word of God. Bring back the [music] authority of scripture.

[00:27:01]Bring back Bible to devotion time. Bring back your Bible to work.

[00:27:06]I'll get that.

[00:27:08]I understand the ways and means of the spirit.

[00:27:12]But we're losing the attentiveness to the still small voice in the abrupt abrasiveness of man-made manipulative replacements for Jesus. Stay true to scripture. Carry the scriptures in your heart. Hide it in your heart that you might not [music] sin against him. And let the Lord be the Lord of all the kingdoms of your heart.