Get Your Creative Juices Flowing: Contemplative Spirituality

Leading a children’s or preteen ministry requires a certain amount of creativity. It might be in the form of adapting/developing curriculum, event planning, facilitating small groups, recruiting/training volunteers  or a number of other things. Often, you’re required to be creative almost non-stop because you’re juggling so many projects at once. After some time, it’s easy for your creative juices to run dry.

Over the last year, I have been implementing some techniques to help keep my creative juices flowing. And the results have been astounding. I was going to share them all with you in one blog post, but as I begun to write, I thought it better to break it down into several.

Also, FourFiveSix.org recently did a series of blog posts on creativity. The posts were based off Jonah Lehrer’s book Imagine. Check them out here.

So, here is tip  #1 to get your creative juices flowing:

Contemplative Spirituality

The term contemplative refers to your inner life. A contemplative life is one that requires us to slow down, reflect, journal, pay attention to your feelings, take long walks, breathe, take notice of the beautiful creation around you, etc. All good stuff that us on the go Christians often overlook. A contemplative life is one that is richer, fuller, more rewarding, focused, less hectic, less stressful  and simplified. But it is only have of the equation.

The second part is to integrate our spiritual lives with our contemplative lives. By spiritual, I mean our relationship with Jesus. It means that we integrate prayer, reading our Bible, worship, meditating on scripture etc. with a contemplative life.

So, what does that look like? Here is what it looks like for me:

I walk or ride my bike almost every day. I also take time most mornings to sit, read, journal, reflect and have a cup of hot java with God. I don’t rush through a devotional time, but take my time, slowly. I take time throughout the day to breathe, pause and reflect on what God is doing in and around me. During these times, I am connecting with God, listening and talking. I breathe in and breathe out asking for God’s presence to surround me. I try to simplify and eliminate my to-do list. I try to keep my calendar balanced between work, family and personal life. I take time away every so often from work and family to simple do nothing – relax, have some fun and connect with God.

The church does a really good job emphasizing spiritual practices but often overlooks the contemplative side of things. If find that those in leadership especially struggle in this area. We go, go, go, go and keep on going. We’re launching & managing ministries that make a huge difference in others’ lives. We have an overloaded calendar, our families often get our leftover time and attention, and we’re stressed because we’re juggling way too much. Leading a ministry is non-stop. If we don’t take time to slow down, simplify, designate downtime where we connect with God, we will eventually crash and burn. That’s one of the reasons so many ministry leaders don’t make it in the long run.

Often we go to a conference or retreat and we experience contemplative spirituality there. We have some downtime and reflection. We connect with God. But then we come home and get back in the rat race. A different approach would be to integrate this into our every day lives so we experience a sense of balance and greater connection with God. We’ll enjoy a richer and more rewarding life with this approach.

How does this relate to creativity? It’s everything!

When we are rushed and overworked, our creativity dries up. When we’re disconnected from God, we close ourselves off from the author of creativity. But when we go slow, breathe in and breathe out often, have a greater sense of God’s presence in our every day lives – then our creativity is unleashed. Ideas pop in our heads without you even searching for them. God speaks gives you big ideas that have the power to change lives.

A great resource on this subject is emotionallyhealthy.org. Pete Scazzero, a pastor on the east coast, created the website and even wrote a book, which I highly recommend: Emotionally Healthy Spirituality.