I’m developing a 25 session course on creative ministry right now as part of a research project. My goal is to encourage people in ministry to embrace creativity and creative people to help the church more fully be the body of Christ and reach the world with the truth of the Gospel. I have a lot of things that I would love to teach, but my sense is before I can really promote this course, and really get people onboard, I need to address the elephant in the room. So many people will think this is not for them because they are not creative.
If you think this way about yourself, I think you’re wrong. I believe everyone has within them the potential to be creative, and especially every child of God. After all we are created in His image and He is the Creator of all things, therefore everyone, I believe, has some creativity in them. Of course the other reason I believe this is because children are almost universally creative. They make things upon as they go. They imagine. They play and they pretend. All these are extremely creative activities. The question then becomes, “Why does creativity seem to dissipate in many of us as we grow up?” I maintain it doesn’t.
Oh don’t get me wrong. There are outside forces that try their best to move us out of creativity. They act as if creativity is not a marketable skill. That the arts are a dead end to everything but starvation and that the best thing we can do in this world is fit in. We have an education system, that seems to want to train us all to be cogs in a machine where arts education has to justify its existence by proving it can make us better at something else. Creativity seems to take a back seat to conformity. All of this is most unfortunate, but nonetheless it’s fruitless, people are still creative and imaginative, they just can’t see it.
Anyone who has run our of money before they ran out of month, survived by being creative. Anyone who has ever made due with what they have has been creative. Anyone who has ever used any tool beyond its designed use has been creative. Then there is the dark side of imagination and creativity. If you’ve ever been afraid for no apparent reason, you’ve been creative. If you’ve ever been angry at someone for what you thought they might do, you’ve been creative. If you’ve ever had a lustful or impure thought, your imagination is still in tact, it’s just really, really corrupted. The good news is, it’s still there. You just need to reengage it.
You are creative, and my purpose in all of this is to refocus what you already have. You are creative. It’s in your divine DNA. Offer your creativity to God and watch Him do great, creative things in you.
AMOKArts 