Beware Sinful Innovation and Creativity

Yesterday’s post on Christian Excellence has received more positive feedback than almost any other blog post I’ve ever published. For that, I’m very thankful. Incidentally, yesterday saw a tremendous spike in traffic as well, although I’m sure it was unrelated.

Continuing in the same thread as yesterday’s post, I feel like it’s necessary to address the attitude in some Christian circles that innovation and creativity ought to be avoided in the church.

I used to be one of those “get to the point” kind of people. I thought that the purpose of the church was to teach me stuff, and I’ll deal with sin in my own time (subsequently, I grew to hate “invitations” as I viewed them as a colossal waste of my time). Anytime I heard a pastor tell a story or give an illustration, I’d get mad. I considered it a waste of my time. Even the first few times I visited NewSpring and Marathon I was turned off at the idea of having to sit through a service and listen to these guys tell stories and illustrations. Like I said, I thought it was a waste of my time.

That is, until I realized what was happening. After a few times visiting NewSpring (and listening to their online sermons, looking for things to complain about, mind you) I started realizing how much of the information and application in the message I was retaining. I couldn’t believe it! All this time complaining about how big of a waste it was, and it ended up being better for me after all.

Obviously, the title of this post is sarcastic. There’s nothing sinful about innovation and creativity. In fact, I believe it’s God ordained. Let’s jump in…

God is Creative

Whether of not you believe that we, as Christians, should avoid “sinful creativity…” or not, you have to admit that God is a highly creative being. (Exodus 34:10)

I will do marvels such as have not been done in all the earth, nor in any nation; and all the people among whom you are shall see the work of the LORD. For it is an awesome thing that I will do with you.

Oh yeah, God was creative. Even to this day, we continue to “marvel” at the works that God did in the Old Testament. If God was not creative, how do you explain the 10 plagues, Mount Carmel, the defeat of Jericho, etc.? Yep, God was, and still is, creative.

Jesus was creative

While there is debate over the purpose of His creativity, there’s no denying that He was definitely creative. Think about it, instead of just miraculously making wine appear at the wedding, He had people go fetch water. After they fetched the water, he then *changed* the water *into* wine. Very creative if you asked me. Not only that, there are countless other examples: healing the blind man with mud, not healing Lazarus but rather raising him from the dead, on and on!

Bible characters were creative

My favorite Bible character, David, takes the cake on this one, and God said he was a man after God’s own heart. Not a bad compliment, huh? But not only creative, but innovative too! It was David who had the desire to build God a temple, it was David that broke tradition and ate “holy” bread (1 Samuel 21), it was David that danced before God in holy worship! David was highly creative and innovative, and he probably would have driven the starchy modern Christians CRAZY if he were around today! The list goes on, Paul quotes from poetry in his sermons, uses illustrations of the Greek Olympic games to help drive home Godly truth.

The reformers were creative

Although there are far fewer examples of creativity during the reformation/puritan times, there are examples of what I would call highly creative acts. For instance, Martin Luther could have very well “preached the simple gospel to the Catholic church, and let the Holy Spirit do the work“. Surely this would have removed any praise or accolade for “Martin Luther”, therefore guaranteeing that God get all the glory. Instead, Luther decided to post 95 well worded, harshly critical, and Biblically sound theses to the door of the church for all to see. TALK ABOUT CREATIVE!!! TALK ABOUT INNOVATIVE!!! Martin Luther set the bar for creative proclamations, and he paid the price for it too! Yep, that will sometimes mean that men will persecute you for effective and creative tactics, but God has called us, and set the example in His Word, to be creative.

But the key to every one of the accounts I’ve stated above is motivation. None of these men were motivated with “having the biggest church in the area” or bringing glory to themselves. Just the opposite, in fact. These men were obsessed with the truth of God’s Word and using these creative methods to point to Christ! These men set the ultimate example for us to be creative, but they also set the ultimate example for Godly motivation.

I’m not looking to step on anyone’s toes here. The point of this post is to be illustrative of the truth sometimes ignored in the Word. Listen, I’m no stranger to this. At one point, I considered joining the Episcopalian church, because I thought that they had the most reverent worship style. I know what it’s like to think that God deserves only quiet, intellectual worship. Obviously, I’ve come a long way since then. I hope these couple of posts help some people realize that sometimes we want to believe we are correct so badly, we read everything in the Bible as support for our position. Take a step back and clean your glasses. God’s a creative God, and we can please Him (Hebrews 11). Get motivated! God loves creativity for His glory!

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[tags]innovation, creativity, church innovation, church creativity, relevance, bible, christian, god, jesus, church[/tags]

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