{"id":5626,"date":"2016-08-16T03:47:10","date_gmt":"2016-08-16T08:47:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/validating-creativity\/"},"modified":"2016-08-16T03:47:10","modified_gmt":"2016-08-16T08:47:10","slug":"validating-creativity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/validating-creativity\/","title":{"rendered":"VALIDATING\n  CREATIVITY"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal'><b>Topics:<\/b> Calling; Children; Creativity; Defeat; Direction; Encouragement; Fear; Goals; Influence; Mediocrity; Parenting; Peer Pressure; Purpose; Self-worth; Vision<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal'><b>References:<\/b> Proverbs 3:27; Romans 15:2; Ephesians 4:29; 6:4; Colossians 3:21; 1 Thessalonians 5:11; 1 Timothy 4:12<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal'>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: \u201cHow many artists are there in the room?\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>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\u2019d 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.<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>All the schools he went to seemed to be involved in \u201cthe suppression of creative genius.\u201d They weren\u2019t doing it on purpose, but society\u2019s goal is to make us less foolish. As MacKenzie says, \u201cFrom the cradle to the grave, the pressure is on: Be normal.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>After his research, MacKenzie came to this conclusion: \u201cThere was a time\u2014perhaps when you were very young\u2014when 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt; text-align:right;line-height:normal'>\u2014Mark Batterson, <i>In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day<\/i> (Multnomah, 2006)<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal'>PART 5: EVANGELISM<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/validating-creativity\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;VALIDATING<br \/>\n  CREATIVITY&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5626","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=5626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5626\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}