VALIDATING
CREATIVITY

Topics: Calling; Children; Creativity; Defeat; Direction; Encouragement; Fear; Goals; Influence; Mediocrity; Parenting; Peer Pressure; Purpose; Self-worth; Vision

References: Proverbs 3:27; Romans 15:2; Ephesians 4:29; 6:4; Colossians 3:21; 1 Thessalonians 5:11; 1 Timothy 4:12

For more than thirty years, Gordon MacKenzie worked at Hallmark. Along with challenging corporate normalcy at the card company, MacKenzie did a lot of creativity workshops for elementary schools. In those, MacKenzie would ask the kids up front: “How many artists are there in the room?”

The pattern of responses never varied. In the first grade, the entire class waved their arms like maniacs; every child was an artist. In the second grade, about half of the kids raised their hands. In the third grade, he’d get about ten out of thirty kids. And by the time he got to the sixth grade, only one or two kids would tentatively and self-consciously raise their hands.

All the schools he went to seemed to be involved in “the suppression of creative genius.” They weren’t doing it on purpose, but society’s goal is to make us less foolish. As MacKenzie says, “From the cradle to the grave, the pressure is on: Be normal.”

After his research, MacKenzie came to this conclusion: “There was a time—perhaps when you were very young—when you had at least a fleeting notion of your own genius and were just waiting for some authority figure to come along and validate it for you. But none ever came.”

—Mark Batterson, In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day (Multnomah, 2006)

PART 5: EVANGELISM