Creative WE! 

May 2, 2022 

We’re in the second part of our message series: The Creative Soul! We’re talking about Creativity. Who’s creative? Everybody is!  We’re made in the image of God the creator. That makes us creative! 

Being creative does not necessarily mean you’re an artist. Creativity is coming up with new ideas, it’s using your imagination. I think creativity is kind of like MacGyver! MacGyver was a TV show, where MacGyver would be in a difficult situation: like a bomb was about to go off, and he had to figure out how to defuse it. He would use his knowledge, his creativity and his Swiss army knife to keep that bomb from exploding! MacGyver always had a challenge he needed use his creativity on. If life was easy for him, he wouldn’t need to be creative. 

You and I may wish life was easy, that we didn’t have to work or worry. But then, we wouldn’t be creative. What makes the Christian church creative is our mission, the challenge before us. What is our mission? Matthew 28:16-20 is the Great Commission. Jesus said, Go forth and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey all I have commanded you, and surely, I am with you always, to the end of the age. Why is the Great Commission great? It’s great because the resurrected Jesus is up on a mountain, and these are his last words in the gospel of Matthew, the last words Jesus spoke to his disciples. Why is it called a com-mission? Because it is a co-mission. We are to do it together. We encourage and urge one another on to our mission. Go forth, discipling, baptizing, and teaching, God says. We do it with each other and with Him. He is with us in this always. 

Jesus sends us out, he says, “Go forth,” because living in God’s love and following Jesus gives us true life, hope, peace and joy.  We have a great God who loves everyone, and we can’t keep that life changing news to ourselves. 

I think the Great Commission is a challenge! It’s like a bomb will go off in 10 minutes! We’re MacGyver, and how do we stop it? This is a challenge! How do we make disciples, baptize, and teach all that Jesus commanded? It will take all our creativity! 

I love church, and if you’re here, you’re probably here because you think church is awesome! But people outside of church sometimes complain that church is boring. They say it’s too rigid. There are a lot of rules. It’s judgmental. They think church is a place where people say, “No, you can’t do that!” If it’s fun, you shouldn’t be doing it! 

I think people have that false belief because they have experienced a church or churches that got sidetracked from the Great Commission! They’ve seen Christians who thought the mission was to follow the rules and regulations. That is boring, and no fun. If we are a church on mission, trying to follow the Great commission, we are creative and surprising! We don’t just have a mission. We are ON a mission. The clock is ticking! There are people right now in our community without hope. We have an urgent challenging mission! When we get on that mission, amazing things happen! 

When I served as a pastor in Oley, in Berks County, I asked the confirmation class to do a servant evangelism project. This was what we did. We decided we would wash windshields of people’s car. For FREE. We wouldn’t let them pay us! We would tell them we are here to show them God’s love in a practical way. I gave the youth cards to hand out, if you can’t remember “to show God’s love in a practical way,” just hand them a card.  

We asked a busy pizza restaurant if we could offer to clean people’s windshields when they parked there. We also gave each woman we saw a carnation, since it was near mother’s day. 

People were surprised! They offered to give the youth some money for their kindness, but we said no and handed them a card. 

I was inside the restaurant for a moment, and a youth came to get me. He said, “There’s a guy and he wants to talk to you!” I went out there, and the man said he was so impressed to see youth doing this. He thought it was amazing. He wanted to pay for pizza for them. We were planning to eat pizza after we did this. But I said, “No, we’re just doing this to show God’s love in a practical way.” He insisted. Finally, I said, OK! He seemed to really want to pay for pizza!  

I wouldn’t have thought that just washing windshields, would have the impact it had on people! It was something we all remembered. When the church is on a mission, we’re most creative and we surprise people! 

A few years ago, there was a church youth leader who was planning a back-to-school youth event that he wanted to get the word out about. The problem was, he didn’t have money in his budget for sending out flyers and cool invitations. What could he do? He was on a mission! There are a lot of youth out there who could use what a church offers: a safe place to have fun with life-giving people. He came up with an idea: he got his MacGyver on and came up with the idea of origami invitations! He copied invitations then folded them up in an awesome way and handed them out. 

Soon he got a call from the school about his invitations. He thought they would complain that some of his invitations were given out at school, that’s not separation of church and state. But that wasn’t it. The school called because all the school students wanted to learn how to make the origami invitations and were taking them apart and helping each other figure out how to do origami while they were supposed to be paying attention in class! The youth pastor had come up with a genius way to let everyone know about the event! It got everyone’s attention! When the church gets on mission, we’re creative and surprising. 

In the Acts of the Apostles, the first church leaders had to make a decision. Were they going to require people who were Gentiles, non-Jewish, to follow all the Jewish rules, in order to be Christian? For a while, you did, you had to become Jewish, and there were a lot of ritual and rules to follow, like men would have to get circumcised. But James, one of the leaders of the Church, said in Acts 15:19: “It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God.” His decision meant the Christian faith isn’t about getting bogged down with rules and regulations. The early Christian church was all about their mission! They were surprising and creative. 

Michael Frost is a very mission minded pastor. He met a Southern Baptist pastor who told him he has a neighbor who regularly has margarita and poker nights in his garage. All the men in the neighborhood go, but this Southern Baptist pastor said, when he’s invited, he always says no. He thought this was a great testimony to his faith. 

Michael asked him, “How often has your neighbor asked you questions about your faith?” “Never,” he said. “And how often have you shared anything about your faith with your neighbor?” “Never.” 

That’s what you would expect a pastor to do. It’s not surprising when a pastor says no to margaritas and poker. 

So, Michael challenged him, “Next time he invites you for over for Poker and Margarita night, go! The Baptist pastor went. He just drank soda and that was ok. He ended up having more conversations about faith than he’d had in years! A pastor going to Margarita night was a surprise! The guys were intrigued and interested in talking with him. 

When the church gets on mission, we’re surprising and creative! My challenge for you today is to read the Great Commission, which is in our bulletin, Matthew 28:16-20. Ask yourself: how can I surprise someone with God’s love? 

We all wish life was easy. But it’s when we have a difficulty to overcome that we are most creative. And then we’re proud of how we overcame. It’s the same for the church. We’re on a mission, we’re MacGyver. People want unconditional love, amazing hope, and unmerited grace. They long for God, but don’t know how to get to God. It’s a big challenge, but when we get on mission God is with us always in this, helping us go out and share his love in surprising and creative ways! 

Amen.