Creativity Should Not Be Controlled
Yesterday, instead of me speaking (since I’m taking a break from it for a while), we invited anybody to read something they’d written. For about an hour several people got up front and read what they’d written. Everyone was astounded. The quality of writing was amazing. There was poetry, journal entries, song lyrics, short stories, proverbs, and things that just can’t be categorized. The youngest to read was my daughter Casile, 15 years old, and the oldest was Joyce, in her 70s. There were people up there who are normally quite vocal and play a pretty visible and audible role in the life of the community. They weren’t surprises. But there were others who never make a peep and hide in the shadows who got up and read some of the most amazing stuff. We were shocked!
This is what I think: when you do something that doesn’t follow the norm, like reading personal journal entries in a religious setting, then something happens. It’s like all of a sudden things are being said that don’t sound religious, don’t have religious overtones and aren’t even at all moralizing. Some of the poetry that was read had to do with physical abuse of a child. Another of the beating of a woman. Some had to do with our blatant disinterest in Darfur. Some had to do with love. One had to do with the death of a sister. One had to do with wanting to die. One had to do with atheism and doubting, questioning and abandoning a god that never seemed to exist to begin with. One had to do with a tubal pregnancy and grieving something that was never even seen. One had to do with wanting to stop this race and just enjoy the view from here. One was a friend’s tribute to another woman in our congregation just diagnosed with Altzeimers. One had to do with depression. And I can fairly say that although they didn’t contain religious vocabulary for the most part, they were very religious in the sense that they testified to something larger than themselves. We all left amazed, encouraged and filled with a sense of awe. Everyone left feeling more creative or the desire to be.
Creativity cannot and should not be edited or controlled or directed. I don’t think most of the people who read thought, when they were writing, “What would God want me to write?” They just wrote what was heavy on their hearts at the time. As a result, it was free, risky and incisive. But because of that it did something. It crossed boundaries. It walked through walls. It altered our reality. We left changed.
The fine art photograph is the creation of my friend Jorgen Klausen.
If you liked this post, or would like to use it, please buy me a beer!Tags: art, beauty, community, creativity, naked_pastor, poetry
I wish we can have that kind of openness in our church too!
Good post. We have had similar things take place while meeting with the church and it is always really neat to see how God manifests Himself in people and how people struggle to see Him through the mess and beauty that is humanity.
it was one of the most beautiful things i’ve witnessed in a long time. i hope we do it again.
On a similar note, every week, our pastor opens the floor to let people respond to the sermon, where people are welcome to ask questions or even challenge the pastor on his perspectives. It has created a tremendous atmosphere of openness. We’re a small church — about 50 people on regular sundays, and the sense of community that has resulted is very encouraging.
It takes a lot of guts to say “I didn’t understand what you mean by conformity to the patterns of the world“, or “I don’t know what the difference between objective and subjective.” We have these questions and comments come up regularly — people are less afraid to be free to ask and challenge. It really creates a feeling of community that I think everybody appreciates.
What’s handy is that the pastor isn’t the one responsible for answering all the questions, so the pressure is off of him to be the “bible answer guy.” For the most part, the elders play a role in the Q&A for the technical answers, but everybody in the small congregation has an answer from their own experiences, and everybody is free to share.
Sounds like a community to me! Good stuff, I wish I could have been there.
WOW! I would love to do something like this in our church! Maybe I’ll try it with my Sunday School class first. I am teaching teens. A daunting task, but they are truly lovely kids.
Good stuff! The setting may not have been religious, but is that really a bad thing? It sounds like an open platform was made available for people to be as God intended them to be. I might argue that this is definitely one aspect, and probably the most important aspect, that is missing from the church today. Sounds like you guys truly have an authentic community, and I applaud you for that.
this sounds absolutely beautiful david. proof, if any were needed, that it isn’t just the noisy ones who are gifted.
i love a beautifully designed garden… but i still prefer what god’s wild flowers do when simply given the space. so many different colours yet they don’t clash… amazing.
One of the most important periods of growth in my adult life took place in the early 1990’s when I would often meet with friends around a kitchen table regularly for food and fellowship. The conversations we had in those days were truly life-changing as we essentially defined much of what faith and life were really about, looking at so very many different things.
The idea is not new – we read in the gospels about the many times where things happened in or around a meal – and the reason is pretty simple: God wants our union together to be that natural, to derive from something that genuine. It’s what being the body of Christ is really all about.
I don’t know if you remember my posts, but this is what church is supposed to be. No leader, but all involved, all teaching, all learning, all together, all the time. COMMUNITY has the base word COMMUNE. All coming together to help the whole. Not:
Pastor
Associate Pastor
Worship Leader
Deacon/Elder
Sunday School Teacher
ETC>>>ETC>>>
The leader of the church is to be the Christ. No one else. The Christ lead your church service, that was why it was beautiful. The one in charge, was allowed to be in charge. You are one of the very few who are willing to give up the authority, to one who should have it. It is not human nature to give up positions of power, even to the rightful owner. This is wonderful to hear.
I think that sounds great – we also do something similar in the church I attend(ed) – people had the chance to talk about their week, their lives, about anything – I rather liked it. This sounds very similar – and I think it is very community building – which is what the church is ’supposed’ to be. Sounds like a great idea.
Nate – you said, “this is what church is supposed to be. No leader, but all involved, all teaching, all learning, all together, all the time.”
Just from a biblical standpoint, there is a call to lead, and a call to teach. And Paul specifically states that not all should be teachers, on account of stricter judgment from God upon them, which indicates that there are those who are teachers, and those who are not teachers, and likewise there are those who are leaders and those who do not lead.
I think the hangup is when “leader” is used interchangably with “boss.” That isn’t biblical leadership; biblical leadership is servant leadership. Interestingly, Paul even defends wordly leadership in his “God has appointed all governments,” indicating that we, as believers, submit ourselves to the law of the land. There is no talk of leaderlessness or anarchy. The notion of emergence in christian community shouldn’t be absent biblical leadership; pastors are still called to pastor, after all.
As always, and inspiration.
if it’s controlled, then it’s not creative.
Creativity should not be edited? Editing is part of the creative process. A good novel without editing is sometimes a really bad novel. A good movie can be destroyed by bad editing.
i agree fred. i’m sure a lot of editing went on before they got up front. although creativity coaches insist that you shouldn’t edit your first draft… of whatever it is… i guess what i’m saying is that their should be freedom of expression… something like that
I love it that you recognized you don’t have the last word, and that there are dozens of voices in your church that need to be heard. Even the uneloquent ones, the new ones, and the marginalized ones – especially – need to be heard.