graphic down­loaded from www​.graph​ics​fairy​.blogspot​.com Arted up by me at Pic Monkey

Cre­ative.  Typ­i­cally used as a descrip­tive word, such as, “She is such a cre­ative home dec­o­ra­tor.”   More and more, though, cre­ative is being used as a noun, as in Cre­ative:  “There is a ris­ing Cre­ative class.”

And then there’s  author John O’Keefe, who her­alds Cre­atives in his new book,  The Church Cre­ative.  A great read that envi­sions a 21^st cen­tury spir­i­tual rev­o­lu­tion with Cre­atives agi­tat­ing the col­lec­tive imagination.

Cre­atives are those peo­ple who see things dif­fer­ently than the rest of us. They are futur­is­tic, or pos­si­bil­i­tar­i­ans as Port­land artist, Kelly Rae Roberts describes her cre­ative self. Tra­di­tion­al­ists and Cre­atives don’t get along so good, as you can imag­ine.  The tra­di­tion­al­ist bemoans, “We are water­ing down our prac­tices,”  the Cre­ative declares, “Time to rethink what we know.” It is the courage of the Cre­atives that leads us to the changes that we need.

It is the What ifs that moved us from the rotary phone, to the push but­ton phone, to the cord­less phone, to the cell phone, to the smart phone, and it is the What ifs that will bring about the next evo­lu­tion of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. The What ifs ques­tions should be the ques­tions that move us for­ward, that move us to explore and grow. But it depends on how we answer the What ifs. When we’re con­fronted with the ques­tion, “What if we change?” We usu­ally answer that ques­tion in the neg­a­tive. What I’ve found is that Cre­atives answer the What ifs in the pos­i­tive. — The Church Creative

The Church Cre­ative by John O’Keefe. Look for my endorse­ment in the book!

I love this.  But I want to pause here and qual­ify some­thing : when we speak of Church please note that church is what­ever one makes of it. Church is a cor­po­rate gath­er­ing of Christ fol­low­ers and seek­ers who meet together in a build­ing;  church is a gath­er­ing that meets up in a liv­ing room or out­side in a for­est;  church is Sun­day din­ner with table fel­low­ship among friends and fam­ily.  Church is peo­ple doing life together.  

As we approach the sec­ond decade of the 21^st cen­tury, things in the insti­tu­tional form of church are rockin’ and rollin’.  I can­not count how many dissatisfied-​​disillusioned-​​discontent-​​dissident Chris­tians I’ve spo­ken with in the last eight years. There is an epi­demic of church refugees. This sounds bad. But in this grand  exo­dus the Cre­atives are emerg­ing with ban­ners boldly blaz­ing the What If’s.  Cre­atives are push­ing through the wilder­ness of doubt and cyn­i­cism to explore new ways of Being Church with one another. Cre­atives are our prophets, our holy men and women who dare to throw off the old and soar into the wild, unknown new. Their What If spirit says, “Let’s go!”

Cre­atives bring to life some amaz­ing things and the most excit­ing is this abil­ity to re-​​imagine the gath­er­ing of fol­low­ers they serve. For Cre­atives, noth­ing is off lim­its when it comes to re-​​imaging pos­si­bil­i­ties. Cre­atives are always ask­ing What if, because they’re curi­ous and because they see things very dif­fer­ently; most of the time they see things bet­ter. The Church Creative

I love this. Cre­atives may agi­tate and chal­lenge the sta­tus quo, but it’s from a pos­ture of hope­ful expectancy.  This is much needed in our jaded, over-marketed, scan­dal­ized mod­ern times. We need our Cre­atives to revive our child­like won­der with play­ful What If’s.  It’s that cre­ative dar­ing that will allow us free­dom to exper­i­ment, to explore, to fail and to try again.

Author and blog­ger, Jen­nifer Luitwieler, recounted on her blog today a mes­sage she recently heard from a Cre­ative who had this to say to the Church:

Mak­ing art is hard and painful. When things go wrong in cre­ativ­ity, they can actu­ally be going right.   from Jennifer’s blog

I want to apply this sen­ti­ment to the Church we find our­selves in (or exit­ing as is the case for so many of us!) —  Creating church is hard and painful. When things go wrong in church, they can actu­ally be going right.

So here’s the ques­tion:  What if Cre­atives were unleashed to make church new?  How does that look?  Are you see­ing that any­where in your sphere of life right now?  Are you a Creative?