{"id":31774,"date":"2022-09-10T15:43:33","date_gmt":"2022-09-10T20:43:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/andrew-peterson-on-why-the-church-should-foster-creativity-in-every-christian\/"},"modified":"2022-09-10T15:43:33","modified_gmt":"2022-09-10T20:43:33","slug":"andrew-peterson-on-why-the-church-should-foster-creativity-in-every-christian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/andrew-peterson-on-why-the-church-should-foster-creativity-in-every-christian\/","title":{"rendered":"Andrew Peterson on Why the Church Should Foster Creativity in Every Christian"},"content":{"rendered":"
Andrew Peterson – Eric Brown Photography <\/p>\n

By Aaron Wilson<\/em><\/p>\n

As a singer and songwriter, author, and film producer, there\u2019s no mistaking Andrew Peterson as a creative person. The mistake lies, Peterson says, in thinking you aren\u2019t.<\/p>\n

In his new book, Adorning the Dark: Thoughts on Community, Calling, and the Mystery of Making,<\/em> Peterson insists that creativity isn\u2019t reserved for a few select individuals, but that every person is creative.<\/p>\n

And for Christians, he says, the act of creating is also tied to redemption\u2014bringing healing to the world and glory to God.<\/p>\n

Peterson recently met with Facts & Trends<\/em> to share how pastors and ministry leaders can lean into their creativity while also nurturing a creative community within their churches.<\/p>\n

How can pastors be faithful to the exposition of Scripture while also using their God-given creativity?<\/strong><\/p>\n

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My job as a songwriter, or at least part of it, is to try to wake people up to how beautiful the gospel really is. But I have the luxury of refining my songs and fine-tuning my intros since I play the same songs night after night.<\/p>\n

Pastors, however, don\u2019t really get to do that. I bet they\u2019re even more aware of the terror of the blank page than I am.<\/p>\n

As a pastor\u2019s kid, I was amazed from a pretty young age that my dad could come up with something new to say every Sunday.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s like he was writing an entire album every week. That\u2019s hard to do. It\u2019s hard to keep coming up with new approaches to the old, old story.<\/p>\n

All that to say, I\u2019m speaking a little out of my depth. But I believe that anytime you sit down to write anything at all you\u2019re accessing a part of your God-given creativity.<\/p>\n

Marrying that creativity with scriptural fidelity means balancing the agenda of wanting to wake people up to the gospel and talk to them about what you\u2019ve learned about God\u2019s Word, but doing so with a sense of humility and a willingness to be led by the Holy Spirit.<\/p>\n

Yes, obviously you\u2019ve got something you want to say, but during the writing you\u2019ve got to hold onto it loosely. Allow yourself to follow the Spirit in writing the sermon so that it can surprise you.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not saying that this is easy. It\u2019s really, really tricky to do, and I don\u2019t think songwriting and sermon-writing are really all that different.<\/p>\n

How do you think pastors and ministry leaders might benefit from the themes you tackle about \u201cserving the work\u201d and \u201cserving the audience?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

When I talk about serving the work, what I mean is this: the thing you\u2019re making has a will of its own, in a sense. You have to allow it to become what it wants to be.<\/p>\n

Now, I\u2019m not talking about some weird, creepy, magical thing. It really comes down to the posture of the person who\u2019s doing the making.<\/p>\n

When we create, we need to ask ourselves if we\u2019re just trying to make ourselves look cool and smart. That\u2019s like bullying a thing into the shape you want as opposed to humbly midwifing something into existence.<\/p>\n

So that\u2019s serving the work. But you also have to serve the audience.<\/p>\n

That means simple things like intentionally avoiding the use of a word that makes you sound smart or just tickles your own fancy in order to generously and hospitably convey an idea to people\u2014because the idea is more important than you are.<\/p>\n

Not to overuse the midwife analogy, but you should try to become a midwife and not the baby that\u2019s being born.<\/p>\n

There are plenty of times in my own songwriting where I can look back and tell I was geeking out over a turn of phrase or how clever my rhyme schemes were rather than thinking about how to best love my audience.<\/p>\n

From a hymn-writing or sermon-writing standpoint, one\u2019s job is to love the audience well by getting out of the way.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not saying you don\u2019t bring yourself to the work, and I\u2019m not saying we should dumb things down; I\u2019m just saying I know I\u2019ve been guilty of showing off because I like words and I have some aptitude for playing with them.<\/p>\n

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And I know the difference in my own heart when I let my love for the craft trump what it is I\u2019m trying to say.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s part of the power of the writings of C. S. Lewis. I don\u2019t know if you\u2019ve ever read some of his academic writings, but the dude was smart. He knew stuff.<\/p>\n

But I don\u2019t ever feel dumb when I\u2019m reading Mere Christianity<\/em> or The Screwtape Letters<\/em>. I feel like Lewis is loving me well by taking these really big ideas off the top shelf and making them accessible to the rest of us.<\/p>\n

In Adorning the Dark<\/em>, you write about the importance of community in the creative process. How do you think churches can nurture this kind of creative community?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The story that immediately pops into my head is about the church we attend here in Nashville. It\u2019s a church plant not far from us, and when it started, it was 60 or 100 people.<\/p>\n

My daughter Skye was twelve years old when the church let her sing with the music team. Sandra McCracken was the music leader, and she kind of took Skye under her wing and gave her room to flourish.<\/p>\n

My son Asher learned to play drums in the context of the music community at the church.<\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s my oldest son Aedan, who\u2019s an amazing visual artist. He plays some music, too, but the art isn\u2019t as easily put to use in church service, but I remember once when our pastor was preaching a sermon on the Trinity.<\/p>\n

He contacted Aedan, who I think was 16 at the time, and said, \u201cHey, will you come up with a painting of the Trinity for me?\u201d Now, that\u2019s a tall order. How do you paint the Trinity?<\/p>\n

But it invited Aedan\u2019s gift into the story of our church. We really didn\u2019t know what the pastor had planned, but I walked into church one Sunday and the painting was on an easel next to the podium.<\/p>\n

The preacher referenced the painting several times over the course of the sermon and even took the painting down and passed it around to be admired by the entire congregation.<\/p>\n

I get a lump in my throat just thinking about it. What a tremendous difference this would have made to me as a sixteen-year-old! It never crossed my mind when I was sixteen that my gifting could be put to good use in the Kingdom.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t think about ministry at all when I was a kid because I knew I liked comic books, Spielberg movies, fantasy novels, and rock and roll.<\/p>\n

And so I figured I\u2019d never be a part of ministry. It just hadn\u2019t occurred to me that there was a seat at the table for nerdy kid like me.<\/p>\n

But I believe every single person who\u2019s sitting in the church has some creative gifting. And when I say creative, I don\u2019t only mean art. Everybody in the church has something really beautiful to offer.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s up to the leadership of the church to keep their eyes peeled and to think up things that make space for their members\u2019 gifts.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not as simple as saying, \u201cHey, you\u2019re really good at that.\u201d It\u2019s coming up with a way within the life of the church to invite them to flourish with their gifting.<\/p>\n

So the church is a built-in creative community. It\u2019s a garden where our gifts can grow best.<\/p>\n

Adoring the Dark: Thoughts on Community, Calling, and the Mystery of Making <\/em>is available now at Lifeway.com. Peterson is also releasing this year a new re-recording of his classic Christmas album, Behold the Lamb of God<\/em>, which is available for preorder now.<\/p>\n

AARON WILSON (<\/strong>@AaronBWilson26<\/strong>)<\/strong> is associate editor for<\/em> Facts & Trends.<\/p>\n

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Dig Deeper at Lifeway.com<\/div>\n
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Adorning the Dark: Thoughts on Community, Calling, and the Mystery of Making<\/h2>\n

Andrew Peterson<\/p>\n

FIND OUT MORE <\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Andrew Peterson – Eric Brown Photography By Aaron Wilson As a singer and songwriter, author, and film producer, there\u2019s no mistaking Andrew Peterson as a creative person. The mistake lies, Peterson says, in thinking you aren\u2019t. In his new book, Adorning the Dark: Thoughts on Community, Calling, and the Mystery of Making, Peterson insists that … Continue reading “Andrew Peterson on Why the Church Should Foster Creativity in Every Christian”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31774\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}