Forming creative communities
One of the things I have noticed that is difficult about forming creative communities in the church is that from the outset they don’t seem all that important. As important as we can think creative communities are, often we “creatives” are the only ones who hold them as important. Part of the reason others may not see them as critical or important is because of the lack of immediate impact and effect. Take for instance sunday school teachers…imagine they decide to not show up one week, just imagine the chaos that would ensue, especially in the children’s department and not to mention missing the lesson for that week? And what about the choir….if half of them decided to no-show? We could probably configure a pretty long list of people, responsibilities in the church that if not done, someone would notice. However, when it comes to creatives in the church, it is very likely that no one will notice if creatives don’t meet in communities for the purpose of creating art that is bigger than themselves. As artists and creatives we can’t let this idea threaten the importance of meeting in communities or threaten the idea that creating art is critical. It’s interesting to read the Genesis account and to see the story of a place that was encapsulated in beauty. When God created eden, he made sure to care that it was beautiful, not just a utilitarian place for life.
Over the last year in our church we have slowly been trying to form creative communities of artists. We have slowly started to develop photo teams, writing teams, media teams etc… all for the purpose of telling the story of God and our church in creative and redemptive ways. Recently we entered into the 168 project in LA, which helped to force us to create a short film in a matter of two weeks. Doing such a project really brought creative people of all types together in a short amount of time and seemed very beneficial to helping us form our initial community. Now that this project is over, our hope is to continue creating films and to continue developing artists in the church.
Its not always easy to put metrics on stories and show the impact they have. One thing we can know about pursuing this craft of storytelling is knowing that Christ was a master at metaphors and parables. Its very clear in the gospels that Jesus used parables as one of his primary methods for teaching. Jesus was often asked to perform miracles, but was rarely asked to tell a confusing parable and yet both were important. One we can immediately see the results and the other we don’t…..but both are important.
As leaders in the church, we must be about creating communities of artists for the purpose of telling stories. The stories we tell will hopefully be artistic, inspiring and move others to live out their faith in new and real ways. We won’t see an immediate effect/impact and we may never know how it impacts someone but that should not stop us from pursuing this call of telling stories.
About the Author
Brandon Riley Has Written 44 Articles For Us!
Currently I work at Sugar Creek Baptist Church as a Creative Media Producer. There I am apart of the Creative Communications team as well as the LYF Student Ministry assisting with creating and strategizing video projects and interactive media needs for both departments. When I am not at work or volunteering with middle school students, you may find me blogging at Part of the glue or creating media projects for organizations and other churches/youth groups Radiant First Productions. In addition to these side projects, I am also the Director of User Experience for Tuggle a ministry management platform. You can follow me on Twitter
