Book Review: Creative Matters

A few weeks ago, I picked up Creative Matters for free by downloading it here.  I was immediately impressed by the folks in the Creative Collective that desired to engage this conversation with the church by sharing the content for free. Jarrett Stevens, lead pastor of Soul City Church, facilitated the conversation throughout the book.  Other creative types such as Carlos Whittaker, Blaine Hogan, Lisa Gungor, and CJ Alvarado joined a large group of people in various ministry settings to make the conversation really come alive.  This book is a quick read and really does give you the feel of sitting down with a team for a great conversation about how to reach this culture for Christ.  Over the years, I have had the opportunity to lead worship vocally, with my guitar, and through visual worship with videos, images, etc.  I learned a lot from this book and hope that many of you will download the book and contribute to the conversation as well!  Below I have pasted some things I highlighted while reading…

  • You don’t remember your first interaction with God, but it was a creative act. He created you. Sure, your mom and dad had something to do with it, but it was Him at work doing what He does best—creating. You were created by a Creator God to be creative.
  • We reject Copy and Paste. We reject settling. We reject excuses. We reject creative atrophy.
  • You were created for more. You were created to create. You matter. Your work matters.
  • Creative Matters.
  • “We must accept that this creative pulse within us is God’s creative pulse itself.”—Joseph Chilton Pearce
  • The roots of the Christian story are inextricably bound with creativity.
  • God generously shares His creative abilities with His image-bearers and calls them to a life overflowing with the use of those gifts.
  • God wants to take humanity deep in the mystery of Himself, but for generations, Christians have stood on the bank of the river of His Spirit.
  • The Church’s pursuit toward relevance communicates and assumes that we’re following culture, even church culture, rather than shaping it. Though each church is building the kingdom of God, I believe the blueprints and plans he has for each individual church community will not look the same…and should not look the same.
  • If we dig below the surface of the Church’s desire to be relevant to the world and to Christian culture, we’ll first discover that at the core lies a beautiful heart to reach people that are currently unreached outside of the church body, as well as a deep love for those who are inside of the church community who live their lives asleep and unmoved by their relationship with the world and their relationship with the Trinity.
  • How much time do you spend thinking about what others are doing rather than exploring, improving and investing in your own calling? Are you contributing to the creative landscape or merely consuming?
  • “Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, ‘I will try again tomorrow.’”
  • Sometimes in the humdrum of life, jobs and responsibility, we shy away from being artists, because it forces us to reckon with what we’re not doing with the gifts God gave us.
  • Despite the propaganda pushed by many artists, inspiration is not a spontaneous, effortless experience. Creativity requires discipline; it’s a muscle that must be worked and stretched to prevent atrophy.
  • Those of us in creative professions mistakenly believe that we are being paid for our ideas. In fact, this couldn’t be further from the truth. We are getting paid to create, not ideate.
  • “The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying. Why is this important? Because when we sit down day after day and keep grinding, something mysterious starts to happen. A process is set in motion by which, inevitably and infallibly, heaven comes to our aid. Unseen forces enlist in our cause; serendipity reinforces our purpose.” —Stephen Pressfield, The War of Art
  • We drew the creative process out like a football field (I know, a sports reference, not in the wheelhouse of metaphors for most creative folks, but stay with me) .
  • The first 25 yards are all about Ideation. The place where it starts. Where big and crazy, expensive and often undeliverable ideas live. But if it weren’t for this first phase of the creative process and the people who have been created to contribute best in these critical first plays, our ideas would be safe, predictable and uninteresting.
  • The middle 50 yards are all about Implementation. This is where ideas happen. Where crazy, creative elements and ideas have all the excess, unnecessary, unrealistic and downright weird parts that could keep that idea from actually happening, shaved off. This is where people get involved. This is where things find a process or timeline. This is where creative solutions abound. This is where you figure out how you’re giving to find a Burmese tiger and more importantly, how you’re going to keep it from doing business on the carpet. Without this phase and these uniquely creative individuals, then ideas will stay just that…ideas.
  • The last 25 yards are all about execution
  • Creativity, like reading, is a discipline that must be fostered. There is no creativity gene, just like there is no reading gene; there are people who have learned to create and maintain an environment for creativity. Sure, we are born with different inclinations, but truly creative and successful people learn to foster their natural tendencies with a well- thought-out set of disciplines that sets them apart..
  • Do you have a laboratory for your ideas?
  • In the Church, the evaluation process is often ignored or loathed because of inaccurate or nonexistent criteria. No one can hit a target they cannot see.
  • My mentor, Mark Pierson, wrote this in his book, The Art of Curating Worship: “Visual silence may be even more important than aural silence when it comes to worship. A movie consists of a long strip of images separated by a thin black line–a visual silence. Without this visual silence the movie would be a blur of fuzzy images without clear movement or story. I have heard of churches that don’t use any environmental projections during Lent in order to have the community focus on the season and its story. They bring them back on Easter Sunday. That’s a very nice modern reframing of the traditional stripping the church building of all color and ornamentation that many liturgical churches do during Lent.”
  • When we repeat the same action over and over again, it can quickly turn into noise.
  • When we introduce silence, we preserve the message that the action was intended to serve.
  • How are you practicing the art of silence in your craft? And more importantly, how are you practicing silence in your own life?
  • We actually don’t create for ourselves; we create for God and for others.
  • Be brutally honest without being totally brutal.
  • Control what you can control.
  • It is the tension that comes from creating something from the center of your being that is neither product nor production, but is an outward pouring of beauty.
  • Tension is a big part of the creative process, and surprisingly we don’t hear enough about it. We don’t invest time in learning how to manage it and we certainly don’t always know how to harness it for good.
  • Much of our influence, growth and success as creatives has to do with how we respond to tension.
  • When the presentation is too familiar, it loses its effectiveness.
  • We live in a world in need of a Savior, so let’s design new and creative ways of communicating the Gospel.
  • God’s signature is creativity. All we need to rely on in our creative pursuits is Him.
  • Have bold vision. Avoid the mundane. Remember that today’s economy is not built on factory systems as much as customer care systems, so you have to humanize your environments. Create space and remove everything that is not necessary to achieve the simplest process. Develop space for people to chase their passion inside the organization. Allow for collaborative efforts to be formed. Eliminate silos. Basically, remove anything and everything that stifles the passion of the people who work in the organization.
  • The local church should be the hope of the world. It should be a place of spectacular healing, restoration and creation. We should be so stunning in our display of who we worship that all eyes become fixated on this uncontrollable force.

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