Being creative connects us to God

I have been doing a lot of thinking about ways in which we can connect and know who God is.  There are the standard ideas, read your Bible, pray, go to church, hang out with other Christians, etc.. ideas all of which are good and I think do give us insight into who God is and helps us to build a relationship with Him.  However, I realized this week as I was working on youth ministry stuff for this next year that we often over look the idea that we need to be creative and find creative ways to express who we are in order to connect with God.

This all started as we have been working on a plan for Wednesday nights.  It started with the idea of not wanting to do the same old things that I have done before or have seen done.  I wanted to see Wednesday nights look and feel different.  The reality of this of course is it isn’t so much what it looks like that matters it is what it is about that makes the difference.  If we aren’t looking at who God is, who Christ is, and who we are then we are missing the point.  With that said I have been really wanting to shift our way of thinking to focus on how as a staff can we help students to experience and know Christ.  We have been processing this idea and one of the thoughts is to create space for students to be creative.  We want to use different art forms to help students express their thoughts, ideas, and themselves all as an act of worship.

Initially this idea was a result of a couple of things.  First, we have said all along that God created us to be creative beings and that we need to foster that creativity.  Second, having a church that is in downtown Vancouver and having a high school that focuses on the arts lends it self to incorporate art into what we do. Both of those reasons are valid and have been the driving force for a lot of our planning.  And then this morning it hit me like a ton of bricks.  There is something else about being creative or helping students to be creative that is the most important.  The Bible says in Genesis that God created men and women in His image.  Often we are called “image-bearers”, which sounds like something out of Lord of the Rings, but the term fits because it shows that we reflect some of the attributes of God.  If you think about that in the context of creativity it is even more significant.

There is no denying that God is creative.  All you have to do is look around and see that God has created something that is so beautiful, so amazing, and so creative to know that God is creative.  As “image-bearers” of God we too possess in all of us the ability to be creative.  That creativity can look different from person to person.  Often we think of creativity and art as paintings or poetry and we find ourselves saying, “I’m not creative.”  The reality is we are.  We all have the ability to be creative and it isn’t that we aren’t it is that we need to figure out how to express that creativity.  Also, we often look at someones creative work and make a judgement as to whether or not it truly is creative.  When we do that we can then miss out on the act of creating.  There isn’t a wrong answer when we start to be creative rather it is an expression of who we are and as a result allows us to reflect who God is.  It can be too that we haven’t found the creative outlet that we connect with the most.  Julie for example took a pottery class when she was in college.  While she tried hard to be creative in that class it was not something that she felt good about what she created.  I think her bowl looked more like an ashtray that didn’t hold cigarettes instead looked like a lung of a person who had smoked cigarettes.  It has been art forms like pottery that has caused Julie to say, “I’m not an artist, I’m not creative.”  However, Julie took dance growing up, and I remember the when she choreographed a dance routine for a worship service, it was incredibly creative.  And more than that it was a reflection of who Christ is.

How does this all tie together?  Becuase God is creative and because we are made in the image of God it would make sense that if we are trying to know God, to really know who He is and all of is attributes then we would need to experience God’s attribute of creativity.  By dismissing this need to be creative we are taking away on of the ways in which we can know and experience God.  Here is the cool thing, there isn’t a right or wrong when it comes to creating.  Creating is all about you being you and God being God and as you create those two come together becuase we are sharing in our “likeness”.  All of this is to say that if you are feeling dry spirtual, if you are feeling like God isn’t near and no amount of prayer or Bible reading seems to draw you closer, maybe what you should do is put down your Bible and Dance!