A few months ago, I was invited to be on the Ministry Architects Podcast. I’ve gotten to chat with them before, and Renee and I have been on projects together so this wasn’t a huge surprise, but the topic was. They wanted to talk about this blog. In particular, the host wanted to talk about its persistence. Where did my ideas come from? Was I scheduling these all in bursts of creativity? How did I keep creative energy flowing? What did I do when I felt creatively dry? The general theme of the questions wasn’t around the content of this blog, it was on how I managed to keep writing it.

I’ll admit that I struggled to give answers that would be useful to other people because writing this blog is about the only part of this job I’ve never struggled to do. I’m not saying they’re always great, or always on time, but coming up with things to say and wanting to say them? That’s the only thing I always want to do. 

But her question is pretty aligned with general conceptions about creativity. We think that creativity and creation emerges from a place of energy, of fullness, that creativity is the spilling over of an already full life. We tend to think that we need to climb out of spaces of emptiness, of low places, of exhaustion, and that once we are on a mountain top (or at least level ground) then we can create some extra to share. 

But we are creators made in the image of the Creator. And that Creator gives us a different image of creation. The Spirit of God breathes over the nothingness and ex nihlio our world emerges. The creation begets more creation, after the sea there is the land, and then the plants, the animals. Those animals change and shape the world around them, and then finally there is us. Made in the image of God, creators of our own. It is not out of a full and lush garden that creation emerges, it is out of nothing. The creation itself is what makes the garden lush. We think of new things emerging from a place of rejuvenation, from a place of energy. But what if the causation can go the other way, what if it is the creation of something, anything, that generates the energy for everything else?

Ministry Incubators founder Rev. Mark DeVries once told me to write for ten minutes every day, about anything I wanted, just to build the discipline of creating something. As I did, I realized what part of what Mark was trying to help me see, that it’s creative expression that creates energy and insight, not the other way around. Now, I can’t imagine doing this work without some kind of regular creative practice. Writing is where I make sense of the emails, the meetings, the complex web of people and ideas that I live in. 

You don’t need insight to create. Creating creates energy and insight. As religious leaders, we have the unique gift of a paid platform to process our world and our lives through an infinitely rich lens of theological underpinnings in the form of preaching, liturgy, children’s messages, and more. This consistent creation isn’t just a task on your list, it may be the task that allows you to give meaning and shape to all the others.  

If preaching doesn’t feel that way to you, find what does. Graphs, poems, artwork, a new program or system or social media post. Create an avenue in your life where expression, entirely of your own, is expected, predictable, not beholden to the crests and waves of how up to it you feel. Create create create, especially when you don’t have energy for it, especially when it’s bad.

I write blogs because I like writing. When I wasn’t paid for it, I wrote, and when I need to work through things that have nothing to do with anything I could ostensibly call faith or leadership or innovation, I still write, I just don’t write it here. Find a medium that allows you to access that part of yourself that is made in the image of an infinitely creative God, and you’ll be amazed at what comes next.