What does the church have to do with creativity? And what does creativity have to do with the church?
In this video, Brett McCraken communicates the theology of God being a Creator who loves to create beauty.
Creatives in the Church can help remind churches of the importance of beauty, the need to have joy, laughter, spacious places, sabbath, abundance, the superfluous. Art and beauty are superfluous, they just are, they don’t need to be, they don’t have to exist, but they do exist. They don’t operate out of pragmatism, they’re not trying to do something efficiently, they operate out of abundance and they testify to a God of abundance. Our God, after all, is a Creator who relishes extravagance. Just look at the ten thousand species of birds in the world, there didn’t need to be that many birds that are all different from one another. Or the 400 thousand species of flowers, each of them with different texture, color, shape, scent. Consider the diversity of food, taste, and spices. From cumin, cayenne, to nut, to turmeric – they didn’t need to exist. God could have just set the world up to where humans could survive off of bland paste-like substance to survive. He could’ve set things up that way! But He didn’t! He created thousands of edible plants, animals, and spices from which millions of culinary combinations could be made. He created humans as his image bearers with the capacity of creativity to think up these combinations of taking this spice, this plant, this animal and creating beautiful food.
Our God is a God of abundance, not scarcity. He’s a God of abundance, creativity, and beauty. We as Christians need to act like people who serve a God like this, a God of abundance who delights in giving good gifts.
