CREATORS COLLECTIVE

So many of us are already doing amazing creative work and it is because of that that we gathered together. We wanted to celebrate the creativity already happening at CCSPITS in such abundance and work together to see more of that happening out of our church. I really believe that healthy creativity is an essential part of church life.

In the book All That Is Made, it says:

“It matters that the first action of God was a cosmic, community art project.”1 

The Bible starts with creative action, and from that point we consistently see God and his people creating, making, and designing things. I believe that our creativity is something spiritually connected to God as he seeks to bring out more and more of that gifting within us.

So whether you use creativity professionally, have been working on creative projects for years or are just starting to think about it all, this is for you. This community is an open space to explore and create together.

IMAGO DEI

Let’s take a little look at the first line in the Bible. 

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 

The Bible starts with God creating. This is one of the first things we learn about God. That God is a creative, or rather, a creator. God created heaven and earth. God is an artist, a designer, a composer, a choreographer, an architect: creativity starts with God. 

God had this incredible desire to make things. To imagine and take action on that. And hopefully, you feel the same too.

Perhaps God’s greatest creative work, his masterpiece, was when he made people. When he made us. 

It reads in Genesis:

So God created man in his own image,

in the image of God he created him

male and female he created them.

We are made in God’s image, and so, like God, we are also creative beings. God has blessed us with the same creativity that he has. He made us to create as he created. And God has given each of us unique gifts that allow us to use that creativity in different ways. 

Often we use the word ‘creative’ to describe these kinds of people. However, you may have noticed that we’ve called this the ‘Creators’ Collective’ not ‘Creatives Collective’. This is because we prefer to use to word ‘Creator’. 

God is The Creator, and as we are made in his image, we too are named creators. 

When we label those who actively create works as ‘creative’ it turns their works, gifts, and skills - things they do - into who they are. It becomes an ascribed identity and divides us into those who are, and those who are not. It makes us think about ourselves based on what we do.

However, our identity is not in these things. Our identity is in God and who he says we are. And God says we are made in his image. We are his people. We are his beloved children. To be a creator is to say that our identity comes from God and stays with God. It is not changed by our actions, abilities, or anything else in this world. We are not defined by our work.

When we acknowledge that creativity comes from God and that we are called to be creators like him, we can start to think about how God creates. 

God creates out of love. He created the world and us to dwell in it out of a desire to bring a community and beauty into existence. God looked at his work at saw that “it was good”. God creates good work. 

Secular culture puts pressure on us to be world-changing, productive, or find economic value in our creation. As Christians, we hold an alternative determiner of success that goes beyond the largely Western system of usefulness. We ask: is this work good? Is this something that God would look at and say good stuff? If so, we have achieved the greatest success we can as a creator. 

As a church, we want to place value on our work beyond commercial or popular gain. And the determination of whether our work is good or not does not come from the quality or skill of the final product. Work is good when creativity has been practised in a way that honours and worships God and expresses the love and beauty of his kingdom in this world as we imagine the New Creation to come.

It is also good work when it is something we are given by God. We are told in Ephesians 2: 

We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

J. R. R. Tolkien, the writer of The Lord of the Rings and one of my biggest creative inspirations used the word ‘sub-creator’ to describe himself in relation to his work. By this, he meant that as humans we are created by God in his image, and therefore, our role is one of continuing to create within God’s creation. Carswell, a Tolkien scholar, writes that the “work of the subcreator is an additive work” in that a subcreator “by the supernatural vision mysteriously granted to him, works to beautify and glorify the world before him”.2

Perhaps, God gave us our gifts in creativity so that we might create within this world, contributing more to what God started. That we might create into the future with God. 

Artist Makoto Fujimura talks about this. He says: 

“I do not mean that somehow we have the equal weight of power or knowledge to co-create with God. God is the greatest, and perhaps the only, power there is, so what does it mean to co-create? It means to be invited to a dance, invited by God's grace to be on the stage, to step into a journey of New Creation that we do not yet fully understand. Co-creating is accepting the Creator's invitation to a feast and supping on what is provided abundantly to us.”3

God has given us the ability to create and a world to create in. He gives us a vision for the future. That is exciting stuff.

Going back to the verse in Ephesians, we are reminded that we are made by God and have a purpose. Our creativity is a gift from God and we are called to use that for good works.

This is not to say that we should avoid creating works that are challenging, controversial or that address the hardship of life. Our role as creators is to reveal how God is present in those moments as much as any other. And this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t strive to create works that are skilful, of high quality and aesthetically brilliant. 

As creators, God calls us to be cultural leaders and to have a culture listen we need to be telling the best story, and creating the best work. Thankfully, we already know the best story, that of the Gospel, and we have the insight, inspiration and collaboration of the only creator to reach perfection; the only creator to get no notes back on his work: God. We are also called to work hard at what we do. Colossians 3 tells us: “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men.” 

God names us creators to work with him to make good works to the best of our ability within the world that he created. 

COLLABORATION

So God’s creative practice is one that is formed out of love and creates good works. And his creative practice is also collaborative.

Let’s take a look at Genesis 1 again.

And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

So the Spirit of God was there at the beginning. This is often read as referring to the Holy Spirit himself. 

And then if we skip through a few books we find out that Jesus was also involved. 

John writes:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.

The Word is Jesus. The Word become flesh. 

So in the beginning, God creates the heavens and earth in collaboration with The Son and Holy Spirit. And because we are made creators in God’s image, we too are made to collaborate in a community. A community of God and each other. 

The first moment that the Holy Spirit is said to fill someone happens in Exodus 35 when the people of God are starting work on the Tabernacle. 

See, the Lord has called by name Bezalel the son of Uri, son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah; and he has filled him with the Spirit of God, with skill, with intelligence, with knowledge, and with all craftsmanship, to devise artistic designs, to work in gold and silver and bronze, in cutting stones for setting, and in carving wood, for work in every skilled craft.

The Holy Spirit fills Bezalel and unlocks gifts of creativity. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, he receives many gifts. Let’s just read them again:

Skill, intelligence, knowledge, craftsmanship, artistic designing, working with precious metals, stone masonry, wood carving, and the ability to work in every skilled craft!

Isn’t that incredible? 

And we too can receive those gifts and more. The Holy Spirit loves to collaborate with us in many different ways with this is one of those ways that we can sub-create with God. 

We create in collaboration with God not only because he created the world in which we create, not only through the vision or inspiration he gives us, but because creativity itself is part of who he is, it is with him.

So a creative act is also a spiritual act. It is us expressing who we are made to be through God himself. 

We collaborate with God, but we are also called to collaborate with each other.

Our culture’s practice of creativity is one built upon radical individualism and the myth of solitary genius. It tells us that creativity happens in isolation. But the truth is that we are made to create together in community with each other and God. So we choose to collaborate with our fellow creators, aware of the great power and joy unlocked in this. We hold to the truth that collaboration produces better work. 

While radical individualism seeks to erase this ever-present part of created works, we actively seek to build creative relationships and collaborate together on multiple levels.

Collaboration is a broad spectrum and we as a community want to see the full length of that unlocked here. This can be from simple words of encouragement to working directly together on projects. I’m excited to explore more of what this looks like through future gatherings and as we see the Creators Collective grow. 

We want to take the first steps to build a community that can help us all flourish in our creativity through the practice of being brave, generous and together. 

First, bravery. Making something and putting a piece of yourself into that thing requires bravery. Sharing our work with the world requires bravery. Facing the many obstacles in our way, overcoming failure and stepping out to speak the truth in our culture requires bravery. We are brave in telling a compelling alternative story and in having ambition for our work. Beginning creative work and also finishing it needs us to be brave. We want to be a community that is brave in rejecting the lies that we and our work need to be perfect. As a Creators Collective, we are brave in stepping out in faith and trusting in God to work through us. 

We want our creative practice to also be generous. We are thankful to God for giving us our gifts, and the ability to create and for creating us. When we complete a work, we want to acknowledge how we got there. By acknowledging that God facilitates our creativity, we then can see how we can be generous with doing the same for others. 

We create in order to give it all away and are generous with every part of our creativity: trade secrets, lessons learned, skills, inspiration and works of art. 

In the reading from Exodus, we find out that God also “inspired Bezalel to teach”. Teaching and supporting others are tied up with creativity. We hope that this community can be one where we mentor and support each other.

We can be generous as we create with a vision to contribute to the flourishing of humanity and to build and connect communities. Creative projects are ways to connect communities through all stages of the process and allow the whole community to experience God’s presence.

REDEEMING CULTURE

Finally, creators are called to redeem culture. 

As creators, we are called to build and grow God’s kingdom. To bring the hidden and invisible parts of God’s kingdom into the world, expressing externally the work God does within us. Everything we create with the Holy Spirit is a part of that.

Our society and culture today are in many ways far from God’s kingdom and how God originally created the world to be. However, we should not resist, ignore or distance ourselves from culture. 

Culture is created. It is formed through creative acts. To grow God’s kingdom means for us to exert our influence and redeem culture for God through our creative acts. 

We participate in culture through the way of Jesus. We have a spiritual influence and are called to create works and practice creativity in a way that actively redeems culture. 

To quote the book A Creative Minority, creators seek “neither to control nor abandon the world, but to love it to new life through redemptive participation.”4 

I really believe that we are at a hugely significant point for culture. God is ready to do something incredible and he is asking us to be a part of that. God wants to be present in the culture of East London, wants to meet people in that space and ultimately see it thriving in his vision for life. 

This is something that God is calling me toward personally: to be brave and generous in stepping out as a creator in the image of God to influence and redeem our culture.

But creativity and this task cannot be done alone. So I want to invite you to join me in this. God himself is calling us to creativity. Calling us to create with him and each other. He is asking us to build a community of creators focused on him so that together we can see beautiful acts of worship, huge spiritual victories and revival in our culture. 

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1. All That Is Made, Alabaster Co., 2019.

2. All Tales May Come True: Tolkien’s Creative Mysticism, John Carswell, Mallorn, Issue 58 (Winter 2017): 10-13.

3. Art + Faith, Makoto Fujimura, Yale University Press, 2020.

4. A Creative Minority, Heather Grizzle and Jon Tyson, 2016.

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be translated into any other language.