Created Creative

Writing is my creative outlet. I love words. I cannot arrange flowers, compose, paint or crochet. That's no problem; others can. What's more, others also write. Many are much better writers than me. That's also no problem. It's not a competition. 

Every Harvest Festival we invite our church family to donate food items which are then passed on to local charities. This year we did something a little different: before the summer break our Eco Group invited people to get creative. Pieces could be in any medium and the linking theme was Creation, remembering God as Creator and the natural world around us in celebration of harvest. 

As well as arrangements of flowers and tins of peaches, we celebrated God's gift of creativity by displaying the many items people kindly contributed. We received enough to display images on large boards in the main church and coffee area, with smaller items on tables and in the entrance foyer.

The imagination and creativity was awesome. We had cross-stitched flowers, hand-drawn fruit, photographs of owls in flight, crocheted bees and fish, a lego duck and even a QR code linking to musical composition. We asked for anything non-perishable and not too precious to be left out for the whole week so that they'd be on display for two church services as well as being visible to the large number of visitors who use the building. 

Without a competition element, people of all ages and abilities felt comfortable submitting pieces they'd made and no one was excluded. This truly warmed my heart. Young people with special needs participated. Older ladies who are often silent shyly submitted beautiful pieces. Baptist ministers dropped off paintings. I loved the fact that gifted artists who might feel on the fringes in church were given an imaginative stage to glorify God. 

I've come to realise that honouring God is about our heart attitude, not about whether we can colour inside the lines. It is also about giving our best using whatever we have. I doubt God judges us when we sing, even when we are out of tune, if we are truly singing for his pleasure. I am also convinced he loves creativity. Our Creator God made us in his image to be creative too. That's something to get excited about, and to encourage in others.

There was a genuine sense of excitement when folk arrived on the Sunday morning and hovered around the works, reading who had created each piece and what it represented. People were challenged to look at the ways in which we observe God's awesome creation, as well as registering the giftings within the community.

It wasn't particularly difficult to arrange, but if you wanted to use this idea yourself in the future, do be aware that you will need to co-ordinate your set up with those preparing the harvest display and will need to supply fixtures such as hooks, command strips, small nails and hammer, staples and stapler, and some pieces of card to explain the content, medium and contributor. We mounted some pieces on larger pieces of card, so a slicer was useful as well. In preparation we gave regular notices to the church community in services and on the notice sheet and emails, explaining when we needed items and how people could drop them off and collect them.

 

Although it was humbling to be involved in this project around so many talented creatives, it was also exciting inviting others to worship God with their creative passions. I had hoped to write something to display, but in the end my contribution was a poster explaining the event, created with Canva and printed out at the local printers. 

Lucy Marfleet loves reading, laughing, her husband’s cooking, walking her dog and marvelling at how tall the kids are getting. She teaches Biblical Studies for Spurgeon’s College on their Equipped to Minister course and has a Masters in Theology from the International Baptist Theological Seminary. See her blog at www.lucymarfleet.com