Copying Isn't Exercising Creativity

During college I was pursuing an Art Education degree. Throughout my experience with art, I had never dabbled in painting. It was always drawing, either with pencil or ink. The semester came when I had to take a painting class, and I chose Watercolor. Watercolor is a painting technique that requires a lot of discipline. For example, once you go dark, you can’t go light. So, you have to work from back to front and light to dark. In addition to that, the difficulty came when we had to come up with original works, just for our exercises/daily assignments. This was a Tuesday-Thursday class, so to come up with an original painting from Tuesday to be ready by Thursday morning was usually pretty tough. If we ever did something that was not original to us, it would be an automatic failing grade!

Too often when we see something that someone else has done we want to mimic it. Using what they have already done means that it has already been done. Though that is simple, my point is that we limit ourselves (and maybe God) when we take the easier road to do something someone else had done.

When we do something someone else has done, now we’re the same. We lose the distinction. Imagine if every business that started with an “m” used the shape, maybe different color, of the McDonald’s® sign? There would be a nation filled with that shape and people wouldn’t know if they were seeing a McDonald’s® or a Montana Mikes®!

We tend to treat the things we try in the church like recipes we have exchanged. The problem is, the recipe uses standard and controlled ingredients. Flour is the same here or there, and so is baking powder. However, trying to copy what a church is doing down the street or across the country is limiting because we are not that church. Our town is not the same, our people are not the same, or our culture is not the same. We need to be creative in our approaches to outreach and ‘inreach’. We don't want to be the same as someone else. We don’t want to limit our creativity so much to just copy someone. Copying doesn’t allow us to exercise our creativity. Let’s get creative so that we can not be cast into the “sea of sameness” and not be limiting what God can do through us!