Trust and Creativity

fully rambling...chuckle. creative writing right? my mother is after to me to start editting...i may...one day.

Trust.
Creativity.
What are the first things that come to your mind when you think about those two words?

The first thing that comes to my mind is failure.
How we deal with failure and mistakes is actually the best measure of the level of trust in a community, whether that community be a family or an organization of thousands. When you trust people, you will always find moments when you’ll be disappointed...where someone has failed or really made a wrong choice. We can use it as a basis to not trust people...and end up using it against them...or we can learn something else.

Have we learned to love in such a way that people feel free to fail? Have we created places that are safe...where you can roll the dice, risk it all and make a mistake? Are we creating environments that are based on confidence in God and in people? Or are we creating places that are filled with fear?

Can we learn to create places that are full of love and freedom?

I am learning that the more people I love, the more I make decisions that are not based on myself. I look at people who lie, cheat, steal, murder, rape, etc...and in that moment of their lives, they’ve decided that their personal satisfaction as more important than all the pain they might cause everyone else their actions touch....

The more people you love the more difficult it will be for you to make lifes destructive decisions. Seems to me there is a Jesus message in their somewhere. I get asked lots about how to grow your faith. And I am learning it has alot to do with how much I value me. Mother Theresa said it like this:
If faith is lacking, it is because there is too much selfishness, too much concern for personal gain. For faith to be true, it has to be generous and loving. Love and faith go together, they complete each other.

I have been wrestling with this as a leadership issue. If we choose to trust and develop creative environments, what is the balance between freedom is control? How much control should i have?

What I am realizing is that every organization, group, community, team, etc. has places of tight control somewhere. All of us have had experiences with organizations that want to control the end product, which is not a bad thing. But what would it look like in our circles of influence, if we pushed for having control over the quality of people we trust.

When I trust a person’s character, I can let them have an immense amount of freedom—yes, even freedom to mess it up...cuz God knows i have destroyed a few things in my path once upon a time! And it was the wise and patient people that God placed in my life that shook their heads, winked at me, helped me clean it up, asked me what i learned, and told me to go for it again!

Unfortunately, so many of us are so afraid of making mistakes that we don’t; that’s why so many people that I have talked to say they are not creative. The creative process always dies in the atmosphere of fear. Because creativity and failure are twins. Maybe the problem is that there are not enough wombs of trust that birth children who dream of a different world...and have the courage to fail until they succeed.

Chuck Swindoll said, "In vain I have searched the Bible, looking for examples of early believers whose lives were marked by rigidity, predictability, inhibition, dullness, and caution. Fortunately, grim, frowning, joyless saints in Scriptures are conspicuous by their absence. Instead, the examples I find are of adventurous, risk-taking, enthusiastic, and authentic believers whose joy was contagious even in times of full trial. Their vision was broad even when death drew near. Rules were few and changes were welcome. The contrast between then and now is staggering."

In the leadership push of the last ten years, we have been taught to focus on excellence. The last couple of days has taught me something. Ready? When your focus is excellence, and your focus is execution—in terms of it having to be executed precisely so it’s efficient—excellence and efficiency actually become enemies of the creative process.

Maybe instead of talking about finding ways to be creative in effectively administering the mandate of the gospel...we need to be creatively finding ways to express that which is beautiful about the Gospel. Calling people who are weary, worn, overwhelmed and overcome by the darkness of sin to the majesty of a wondrous Savior who is able to bring His light into the darkest night. And when His light appears in the darkness, the darkness cannot stop it...redemption happens.

As the people of God, we are all artists. Our lives are the painting of God crying out to a world with His love, with the powerful message of redemption! Is it clean, sterile and disinfected process? no. Efficient? no, but really, art is never efficient...but it does move our souls. We are His masterpiece. What is more moving than a redeemed life living with joy and wild abandon in following the dream of His Kingdom?

I don't want to live with fear...trying to find rules and regulations to control "end products". We are stretching to base our entire life mission on the reality of Jesus actually transforms people. So much so that I feel no pressure to try to make people act or be a certain way. I’m banking everything on the fact that Jesus is the redeemer of broken lives. AND when we call people to Him, everything changes.

Maybe that's what faith is. Banking it all...on Him.