Congregational Creativity: Getting Out of the Box (Part 3)
If God is a creative God and humans were created to reflect that image, then all-God/all-man Jesus paints a picture of what a fully creative human being might look like. In the first chapters of Mark, we discover a few things about creative, out of the box ministry from the life of Jesus:
1. Creative ministry is fueled by prayer. Mark 1:35ff “Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.”
There are congregations that want to be on the cutting edge of creative ministry but they don’t want to put in the time to listen to the Lord. If a church is known as creative but is not deeply driven by prayer, it may be hip and relevant to someone, but it won’t be truly prophetic to the world or relevant to God.
2. Creative ministry does things in ways they have never been done before. Mark 2:12 “we’ve never seen anything like this.”
Jesus certainly did this; David did, too. David took on the giant with a method that would drive the “experts” crazy. He had confidence that he could do the job, in God’s power, by using stones and sling. NOBODY had ever seen a battle won that way before, but young David was anointed by God; connected to God; and his questionable but creative and obedient actions immediately turned the waning momentum in Israel around.
3. Creative ministry is not just about novelty, but carries spiritual authority. Mark 1:27 “What is this? A new teaching —and with authority?”
Doing something in a new way is only good if it is done with anointing and authority. Many churches are caught up in looking for what is new, what has never been done before, what can set them apart from all the other churches, but their ministries lack real authority. I’ve learned that something can’t just be a “new teaching” (or program or style, etc,) it must also come “with authority.” It must spiritually and practically impact people at their core.
4. Creative ministry elicits a response. Mark 1:17 “come, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”
Creativity is winsome. Creativity in ministry draws people into a conversation in which they are asking themselves questions about how they are going to respond with their lives. French writer Antoine de Saint Exupéry once said “If you want to build a ship, don’t herd people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” Both are important, of course, but the latter (an unquenchable desire to cross the ocean) will fuel the former (inspiring people to build a ship).
The goal of creative, prophetic communication is never to simply give information, but it must often result in powerful transformation.
Finally, a quote from Mosaic Pastor, Erwin McManus (who I think does an outstanding job of cultivating creativity for Kingdom purposes through the church he leads): “We risk too little; we dream too small. Each church has enough creative capacity in it to make a huge debt on the problems of humanity.”
If only we’d follow Jesus out of our boxes!