I think… Wow – trying to think how to put it into words.

1. I think that that while creativity is a longing within each of us, conformity is a desire as well – so the most creative people among us are often forced to create with in the confines of the existing culture. For most churches, religious conformity is such a high value, that creative people often are highly restricted.

2. I think most pastors tend to be lower on the expressive, artistic/creative side – and over time that creates a non-artistic creative culture in the church.

3. Most church models tend to run everything through the non-artistic/creative pastor – to the point that changes in paint colors are bold moves, because the pastor never thinks about it and the people who do figure its not worth bothering him about. Unless the pastor can see the value in creativity AND help create a model that released creative people to be creative, creativity suffers. It’s often not always that the pastor doesn’t think about it – sometimes it’s more that in the church structure leaders have trouble seeing “practical” amid the “creative.”

4. Creative often has a cost side, and when established churches are putting together budgets it can be a challenge to create a “creativity” line item without also wanting to create some limitations that would in turn stifle creativity…

5. We have a very “traditional” view of the great movements in church history. The reformation, especially in the art world (the religious expression in the northern Europe of the same Renaissance taking place in the south of Europe) had huge creative implications that were often frowned upon or rejected in the church. Hundreds of years later they were viewed as valuable – but the artists in their time often felt ostracized by the church community of their time. We often look at the changes then and say to people – look, those things became important, so you shouldn’t argue against creativity – but the same reaction to change exists today as it did then. Sometimes, it’s only time that shows whether a change was valuable or destructive. Most churches have decided to take an institutional view that is unwilling to risk a destructive change – so we also miss the valuable ones.

I’ve talked enough