Move That Bus

I was channel-surfing recently and ended up on HGTV. Every show was essentially the same - a couple renovating an old house into something new and trying to do it as quickly as possible. Maybe I'm biased, but none of these shows will ever compete with the one who got it all started…

Move That Bus

In 2010, the hit TV series Extreme Makeover: Home Edition rolled into my hometown to surprise the Wagstaff family with a Rock-n-Roll vacation and a newly-renovated home when they returned.

The climatic moment in each episode is when the remodel has been completed, and the family is waiting outside with host Ty Pennington. The construction crew and community crowd have gathered in the street. The only thing standing between the family and their new home is the show's travel bus.

The crowd is chanting, “Move that bus! Move that bus!” as the anticipation builds. Finally, Ty leads the family is shouting, “Bus driver, move that bus!”

The bus slowly pulls forward and the cameras zoom in to capture the raw emotional response of Tobin & Jill as they see their new home for the first time.

Watch the final moments of this episode:

What always strikes me most about this moment is the sheer disbelief on the face of the family members. They know their home has been remodeled. They've seen other episodes of the show. They know how this works. And yet, there is still a genuine astonishment and wonder at that moment of the big reveal!

Why does this show and subsequent shows like it (Fixer Upper, etc.) hold such appeal with viewers? Because we admire and appreciate the prophetic imagination of the designers who can look at an old, run-down home and re-imagine it in a better and more beautiful way.

Walter Brueggemann wrote,

“The prophet engages in futuring fantasy. The prophet does not ask if the vision can be implemented, for questions of implementation are of no consequence until the vision can be imagined. The imagination must come before the implementation. Our culture is competent to implement almost anything and to imagine almost nothing.”

The Church should be a people of prophetic imagination. Not simply pragmatists and realists who accept a broken and violent world as the only inevitability. Instead, we ask the Lord to help us re-imagine the future in a better and more beautiful way.

Pastor and author Brian Zahnd notes, “When God wanted to capture the imagination of his people, He didn't send politicians to write policies, he sent prophets to write poetry.”

We'll never legislate our way to a brighter tomorrow. Instead, we need our artists and authors, musicians and filmmakers, teachers and leaders to use their gifts and talents to once again capture the imagination of our world.

As we join together to worship in our communities this weekend, let us petition the Lord to “Move that Bus” that we too might wonder at His Big Reveal and share it with our world.