Thursday, March 01, 2007

Missional - Risk and Creativity go Together

I got a great email from another friend, he adds this to the previous discussion:

Hello Jerry

I'm still following the blog, although I've not commented recently, and I'm finding it a really cool way to keep looking at new thoughts and ideas. It's also remarkable how close we are. I knew that I was one of many before, in theory, but it's great to see how many others there are out there…

I've been especially interested in your "Risk-aversion" and creativity blogs. I suspect you deliberately put the "Risk" post just before the "Creative" one to show how risk is an integral part of creativity. It is a risk to step out and paint live, to a set timescale. It could have gone horribly wrong. Maybe it did for that artist and maybe he's made many attempts and "failed". Well done him for getting up again and finding a new way to worship…

The church dislikes risk, and I think there's a direct link between that and our lack or creativity, And why we use a liturgy from 1600? last "updated" sometime last century. Even when I worked with a large "Forward thinking" "charismatic" missions organization I found repeatedly that ideas were turned down because they were a risk, especially when these ideas involved storytelling or theatre or anything except music. And if something you tried "Didn't work" then that was it: you never got to try anything else. I never did know what the definition of "Working" or "Not working was" but it didn't matter because I wasn't able to try. I also noticed that all the testimonies were "Success" focused as well. They all had a happy ending where the person speaking came deeper with God or the problem was resolved. I almost never heard a testimony of someone who was still having troubles/doubts/issues, so you ended up thinking you were the only "failure".

I learned how hard it is to work in a place like that so the team I'm working with now are being drilled to try stuff. And we've made mistakes, and some could have been avoided. It's hard for a team member who made a mistake onstage to get up again, and take on a fresh challenge, but they never get another chance and never get encouraged to try again, what's the point?

Thanks for the continued blogging.

Andy



So what do you think of Andy's insights?

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3 comments:

Bill Reichart said...

I agree, I once heard a pastor say that a church moves forward toward mission with momentum when there is an increase in discomfort (risk), fueled by vision, and led with anticipation and change (change is risk too!).

Risk, or an increase in discomfort moves us out and forward. And risk definitely is a spark for creativity.

David said...

Well, it wasn't exactly easy for the early church, but in there own way they were staying away from risk...as Jesus commanded them to go out into all the world, and they weren't really going, so persecution came, they spread...into all the world.

Not like I'm advocating persecution, but creativity tends to thrive in difficult situations. In hightened emotional circumstances.

Hmmm...just pondering.

David said...

Of course the opposite can happen to and we can all cower in fear.