Recently, my Circular Congregational Church in Charleston (SC) pastor, the Reverend Dr. Jeremy Rutledge, posted a blog concerning “creativity.” This blog posting coincided with the opening of the new school year for most students, as well as our church’s new season of Christian education programming for all ages in our congregation.
Jeremy’s blog included an article suggesting that institutions, including schools and churches, often tend to “stifle creativity.” And Dr. Rutledge’s concern was whether that were true where even our Circular approach to faith formation is concerned.
Following the posting of this blog, the Reverend Rutledge stroked my ego by including me in a list of persons he considers “creative people,” emailing each of us to ask for our input, for us to join in a conversation on this important matter.
So here’s my contribution. I’ve pondered my response for a few weeks now and have organized my thoughts into the following seven categories.
1. I tend to think of “creativity” as the opposite of “conformity.” For example, as I recently watched the remarkable South Carolina State University marching band perform, it struck me that if one were playing one of the dozen or more tubas in so disciplined an organization, or any other instrument for that matter, “conformity” would certainly trump “creativity.” Otherwise, chaos would likely ensue.
Except that, in some organizations–‘though not likely the illustrious “Marching 101”–perhaps a certain degree of “creativity” may be necessary for one to “survive,” at least emotionally, or perhaps socially, maybe even economically.
For instance, my friend has obviously sublimated some of his “creativity” as a journalist in order to “keep his job.” ‘Though I suspect that such negotiating between the “idealistic” and the “realistic” has nonetheless involved at least some “creativity” on his part.
Is “creativity” then, in a sense, ambiguous? Requiring ever as much to “survive” as to “thrive”? At least where institutions/organizations are concerned.
“Creativity,” as I conceive it, has at least something to do with “thinking outside the box.” And notably “creative” people may find the “conformity trade-off” so seemingly necessary to organizational/institutional life and work–they often, it seems, find it too confining.
Except that someone has observed: “The hardest boss you’ll ever work for is yourself.”
2. It is, I’m afraid, merely a caricature when “creativity” is seen as somehow exclusive of “discipline,” even “organization.” My prime examples being arguably the two most accomplished “artists” in the history of western civilization: William Shakespeare and J. S. Bach.
Besides being a literary genius, Shakespeare was apparently also an astute businessman who seemed to function quite successfully in the commercial entertainment industry of his day.
While Bach, whose musical achievement some would consider eternal–my impression is that, as a working church musician, who cranked out timeless original compositions Sunday after Sunday–indeed, my impression is that Bach’s “creativity” may have been driven even less by his “muse” than by the fact that, as a husband and father, he was trying to support a particularly large family. Which makes me wonder how he found enough time to write such magnificent music, assuming, given all the kids he sired, that he surely spent a fair amount of time pursuing at least another important “creative” aspect of being human.
As for Bach’s interpersonal skills, as a church choir and orchestra conductor, what is it they say? “What’s the difference between a terrorist and a minister of music? You can negotiate with a terrorist.”
3. If I tend to think of “creativity” as more commonly associated with the “arts”–as per my previous examples–upon reflection, I think the term can also be applied to other human endeavors, including the “sciences” (both “theoretical” and “applied”), as well as to tasks that involve “managerial, organizational and human relations” strengths and gifts.
Locally, for instance, is the Ravenel Bridge a tribute to someone’s (many someones’) “creativity”? Or the 3M chemist/church choir member who serendipitously invented “Post-em-Notes.” In this “election season,” will “creativity” be a factor separating the so-called “winners” from “losers”? And what about the world of “sports/athletic competition”–from legal approaches to “training” to “offensive and defensive schemes”? Or the supervisor who can somehow get workers who don’t like each other to cooperate–how “creative” is that?
4. The ubiquitous Myers-Briggs Type Indicator suggests that Intuitives are more given to “creativity” than are Sensers.
My friend and minister-colleague was an interim pastor of a church that was debating the erecting of playground equipment on the church’s property. As he described the process, the Intuitives (the “brain-stormers”) had lots of good ideas on how this venture would heighten the congregation’s positive profile in the neighborhood. While the Sensers (the “fort-holders”) were more skeptical and persisted in raising such questions as, “What about our liability, or an increase in our insurance premium costs?”
5. I always thought the options that more abundant material resources provide tend to promote greater “creativity.” As in the piano lessons my parents insisted on providing for me and my sister; conversely, music lessons they were not afforded, given the less affluent circumstances of their collective childhood and youthful years.
Until I once worked in an inner-city ministry characterized by the community’s poverty. My senior colleague, who had worked in such a setting far longer than I, he pointed out how much “creativity” it took for some folk to merely survive with any dignity in such circumstances. Indeed, he re-framed the concept of “creativity” in a way I found compelling; in fact, an ironic insight I’ve never been quite able to dismiss.
Is that not unlike some kids figuring out something interesting and worthwhile to do with a ball or stick or jump rope or paper and crayons when the latest electronic game isn’t accessible?
6. Some families seem to promote “creativity” more than do others. My four-year-old grandson, for example–I can’t imagine a child whose “creativity” is stimulated any more than his. Except, if he’s ever going to “make it” in school, I suspect he will have to develop at least a bit more in the direction of “conformity.”
He reminds me of his uncle, my son, who got kicked out of at least three kindergartens, while spending much of his elementary school years in some form of “detention.” Until he got to the 6th grade, where he met a teacher who got his attention.
When she “called him down,” he got smart, claiming, “My dad’s a professional writer.” At which she replied, “I don’t care if your dad is Jesus, when you’re in my class, I’m the boss.”
She wasn’t an intimidator. Just the opposite. She delighted in his “creativity.” And that unique blend of affection and discipline on her part–it helped him develop some balance and focus where his manner and style of “creativity” was concerned.
7. I had an ethics professor in seminary who once claimed that “schools can be violent.” Referring, as he was, not to violent student behavior–which can also be true–but to how students may be “violated.” As in the words of a Sister Corita print that declares, with respect to a child, “Don’t stand in her/his light.”
That has hardly been my experience in school, but others have told me how it was otherwise for them, how it seemed that they were “violated.”
Institutions tend to be inherently idolatrous. Their preservation becoming the “end” that would seem to justify whatever “means” at any cost. Especially where individuality is concerned.
This is only qualified depending upon how more or less “authoritarian” whatever the institution may be.
In more “humanizing” institutions, a fair tension seems to persist between promoting “creativity” and sustaining “conformity.”
If Circular Congregational Church in Charleston would seem to be the least “authoritarian” where “church-life” is concerned, where promoting “creativity” in lots of ways seems to be inherent to the “church’s culture”–even theologically–still, the question Jeremy Rutledge raises is worth important consideration and reflection.
Or as someone has said, “The Seven Last Words of the Church” are “We never did it that way before.”
