missio

You can check out Part I (here).

Matt Stevens is the worship pastor of Vintage21 church in Raleigh, NC. He delivered a talk at the Acts29 Regional Luncheon on January 10th. It was on the topic of Creativity in the Local Church. These are my notes:

Creativity is having the quality of being created, not imitated. It is the property of having originality.

As people, we are created to be creators, because we are made in the image of God. We start out imitating, but soon creativity emerges. Be a sponge for a while, as a church planter, but then you must be creative/original and apply what you know to the culture in which you live. A key question in applying creativity to the local service is this: where are You (God) leading us? Once you answer this question, creativity usually falls into place. Another guiding principle is to not sell God or your people short.

Creativity is a tool to be missional. It’s not “flavor” for the message, it’s another method. Creativity is also specific to the message which you are trying to communicate. Jesus didn’t ‘Christianize’ popular worldly parables of the day, He adapted the culture in which He lived and applied it to the Truth. A lot of times concerning this, we know what but we don’t know how. (I find this especially true for church planting)

Here’s three key points you have to grasp hold of in order to make creativity work in the local church:

• Start with the Foundation: Jesus Christ. Never, ever, start with the idea and then work backwards to the message. Always start with Jesus, and work from there. Also, don’t eliminate ideas because of creativity.
• Own the vision, let the rest go. This is similar to the right hand, left hand metaphor that Mark Driscoll uses. Know where you want the final product to lead, but not necessarily do you have to know the steps in between. Just know that it gets you there in the end. We, as leaders in general, have to put both our faith and our trust in people. If something is not contrary to the vision, get over it.
• Creativity is a missional tool. Use creativity to reach the audience, not to show off skills or “hip” factor.

Overall, I think the talk was very effective. We also were given plenty of time to network and communicate with other church planters, which I did very much so. It was a great forum for it. It was great to finally meet Tadd. It’s always cool, like Tadd wrote as well, to put a face with someone you think you know so well (but you don’t). And for those of you that really want to know: he’s as cool in person as he is online. It’s not a facade. Scott Word is an awesome guy as well. Didn’t get a chance to talk with him as much as I would’ve liked, but there’s always next time.