The Lie That's Killing Your Creativity with Al Gordon

Hey crew, it's Adam. I'm a husband, a father, a pastor, a follower of Jesus who just like you is trying to learn what it looks like to fully live and follow Jesus in the middle of real life. It is one thing to be someone on Sundays, but what about Monday through Saturday? And so here, we're gonna talk about faith and making a difference in the messy, ordinary moments where it's often the hardest to live out. Some weeks, I'll share what God is teaching me. Other weeks, I'll sit down with leaders, pastors, athletes, friends. There's no fluff, just encouragement and truth for your life between Sundays. I'm so glad you're here. Well, hey crew, welcome back to Life Between Sundays. Here we go. We are on here for episode 342. Happy belated Easter. Yes, we're coming off a long Easter weekend. The tomb is still empty. It is, hallelujah. Hallelujah, it's still empty. Yeah, how was your Easter? It was great, yeah, it was great. I preached seven times, and so by the end of that, I'm slightly delirious, and I can't remember my first name. Before I left on Sunday, I'm like, do you ever just feel peopled out?

I need to go home and sit in a dark room. I cannot meet, talk to another person. No, so it's such an honor to get to preach seven times, and to be able to share with everybody, but I definitely get peopled out by the end of it. I'm thankful that I'm not the risen savior, far from it, but just to be able to share it is pretty awesome. Yeah, Easter was fun. Yeah, it was a good Easter, really good Easter. It means more to me every single year. Yeah, I don't know what that, well, I think it's just getting more thankful for what Jesus has done in my life, so definitely been more meaningful. Yeah, cool. Do you have any traditions that you like? About Easter? Yeah, any family traditions around Easter? Well, we do, we eat red jello with bananas, usually, is a random thing that, yeah. I don't, never have done that to celebrate the risen savior. We do that usually on Christmas and Easter. I have always had the red jello and bananas, and my mom will do an adult Easter egg hunt for us. No way. Yeah, but this year she did not do it! What in the world? Yeah, I went to, yeah, so I guess it's not a tradition. I went over to her house after services on Sunday,

and she's like, yeah, I did an Easter egg hunt for the kids, so I guess the adults don't get one this year. I'm like, well. Well, this just stinks. Yeah, what in the world? I guess I'll eat ham and just my red jello and bananas and not get to eat anything. I do not envy your red jello and bananas. It's pretty good, honestly. It sounds terrible. And we had banana cream pie, because it's my dad's birthday. Happy belated birthday, dad. There it is. Yeah, he turned 58. Gosh, that's great. No, we did, so we do services, and then we do, I hide the Easter baskets for each of the kids. Are you good at hiding them? This year, Becky helped me, which is a new thing, hiding the baskets, and we did a pretty darn good job. Hudson, our oldest, he struggled to find his. Dang. For quite some time, we needed to do a little bit of hot cold with him for him to find it, so I was like, let's go. Are they small, or are they bigger? No, these were gigantic. I ordered them on Target.

The buckets, they were like three bucks a piece, and I thought they'd be these cute little tiny things that I could hide anywhere. I was like, my goodness, what do you think we're giving our kids? Like, baseball gloves or something like that? So, there it is, happy Easter. I woke up, and Sam got me an Easter basket for Easter. I like that. I know, and Easter Bunny came to my house. I'm like, oh, this is so sweet. Amazing, amazing. Yeah, with the Easter lily in it. There it is. And then I gave him terrible allergies. He was sneezing and coughing all day yesterday. It felt terrible. Happy Easter, Sam. It felt terrible. That's good. Do you have any other high-lows, buffaloes you wanna share? No, high was just Easter, the Good Friday service specifically. Had a friend join me at the Easter service, which was really, really cool and special for the Good Friday service. The low, we had both of our dogs sleep in the same bed with my wife and I, and that will never happen again.

So, do they usually sleep in our kennel? Yes, they usually are in a kennel. We were at our tiny little cabin up north, though, and so we made the mistake of allowing them. It was like having two college men sleep in our beds with us. That will never happen again. Like, two fraternity party men. Like, not in the right state of mind. Yes. It was not, I'm like, this is never happening. It was horrible. When 6 a.m. arrived, I saw it coming because I was awake. I'm like, we will never do this again. So, that would be my low. Otherwise, it was awesome. Okay, good. You enjoyed the time at the cabin. I love it every single time. I feel like you're always posting those little boomerangs when you're up in your cabin. Oh, it's so fun. It's great. Yeah, it looks relaxing. Yep, very, very nice. Okay, we have on today, Al Gordon. Yes. For your conversation with Al. Yep.

What'd you guys chat about? What were your takeaways? Yes, so Al Gordon, I've been in the same room, but I'd never really talked to him before. He is in London, outside of London, pastors a church called St. Church. He downplayed it. His church is unbelievable. It's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years old, like it's older than our country old. The churches, I mean, it's again, it's just fascinating, but it was just revitalized and it's super modern. So like hundreds of years old, one of the most modern spaces I've ever been in, like the floor lights up. There's all this abstract things while like there's people buried in the walls of the church because they used to do that. They'd bury. So it'd be like, there's little gravestones in the side. They have to be like careful when they were redoing the church. Yes. Like all kinds of historic things they needed to like follow and stuff, but it's just this very modern space. But it right now, like the Holy Spirit is just moving. What's this church called? St. Church. I mentioned it and he again downplayed it. If you're traveling to London, like I would add it as a must stop and see, like it's just such a cool, beautiful space. They have a brewery on the church's campus and a camp coffee shop on the church's campus. Like it's just gorgeous. We talked about creativity in the church, which used to be the norm and now is not the norm.

Usually when you think of the church, you're like boring. I know what to expect. We've done the same thing for a long, long time. But that wasn't what the church originally, it was the most creative place. And so we talk about his, he's got a new book on creativity. And I was just fascinated by this conversation. So specifically, if you are a creative or you know, a creative who loves Jesus, I hope you enjoy. But it's such a joy to get some time with you, Adam, and thank you so much for inviting me on the podcast. Just deeply honored. I was so impacted because I've been to your church twice, both with Brad Lominick. So just was just really ministered to just being in your church and just you personally. And so I've just, since then, I mean, I've just always kind of been, it sounds weird, enamored a little bit of like, what's God up to there? And so just deeply, deeply honored. Al, if you want to start, you're the Cliff Notes version of your story. Let's start there. So my story is, well, being British, I guess, talking about yourself is the most dullest thing. We always think, oh, but I am a pastor in East London, which is the fun bit of London. I lead a church called Saint, I'm married to Olivia, who's an architect. We have three kids. My background, I wasn't raised with a faith, became a Christian aged 18, radically converted, life transformed, and worked in film for my 20s, worked in ministry in my 30s, planted a church in my 40s, and here we are. That's incredible. The Jesus part of you, what did that, when did he come into the equation? What did that look like? Share that part of things.

Always known about God, like everybody, encountered him aged 18. And it was a powerful, you know, powerful experience of experiencing God's love. I was converted through a combination of my dad and a good friend who were telling me about Jesus. And I think I'd reached kind of 18, I'd kind of hit like a midlife crisis. I was like, you know, how do I, how do I function in the world? I think I'd had success in what I was trying to do, you know, I could see how my life was going to pan out. And I think just hit this moment where I was like, there must be more to life than this. And shortly after that went on an alpha course, and that changed my life, got involved in HDB and the church which alpha is based at. And so, yeah, it's been, it's been an amazing journey of just God meeting me as a kind of pretty broken teenager and experiencing his love and experiencing the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit. So, yeah, it's been, it's been a wild journey, 30 years down the line. Specifically, how did you, how did you actually get to an alpha course? Share that part. Oh, well, that was, so I turned up at my local church, which my mum was French and lived in South Kensington, where a lot of the French community are in London. So walked into my local church and my dad actually had said, Oh, you should try. My parents are divorced. My dad independently had said, Oh, you should try going to HDB. Sandy Miller, he'd known for a long time as a friend, growing up with him. So Sandy, I know it's been on your podcast. Yeah, I love Sandy. So I walked to the back of the church and I met Sandy and Sandy said, well, you know, great to see you. Are you, are you, have you become a Christian? I said, yeah, I have. He said, are you a Christian?

I said, yeah, I am. filled with the Spirit. I said, I think so. He said, let's pray for you. So I got prayed for. He said, are you a Christian? And then he said, third question, have you done Alpha? I said, no, what's Alpha? So he said, well, here you go, sign up. So we signed up and it was deeply impactful. Again, you know, just having that opportunity. And again, you know, for listeners, if you're a pastor running Alpha, the most powerful and strategic thing we do is that, you know, we've seen hundreds of people come to faith. Our church has grown. If you want to reach people who don't go to church, that's the tool. Um, so yeah, it was instrumental in my life and yeah, here I am. To think about showing up to church and you get to cross paths with Sandy Miller is, uh, I'm like, talk about God, God's hand in favor in your life. To cross paths with him would be quite a, quite a thing. So Saint, how did, how did Saint specifically come about? Um, yeah. How did that come about? So we planted a church. I'd always wanted to kind of be involved in serving and church leadership. I never really was like planning on church planting. And I think after a while, um, this God really broke our hearts for this part of London. So East London is like the creative bit of London. It's also what the poor bit of London, the poverty, um, and, and there hadn't really been, um, an opportunity to plant, but then I, I kind of had been through the pastor training process with HTB and had been very happy at HTB. But then I just, I used to prayer walk up here on my day off and just gradually was like the spirit of God is saying go. And so we went with a mission to reach a neighborhood where less than 1% of the population attend church in an old parish church like ours and started out with a handful of people, you know, 20, 30 friends came. We started this community working with a community who'd been here historically for a long time. And there's been a me here for 850 years. So it's not new. Um, we don't church planting happened back with the Vikings around for us. So, you know, it's, it's been part of a chapter of a story in a community here that, uh, it's been a real privilege to part of. So we started about nearly 10 years ago, but 10 years ago, this autumn and, uh, started with nothing classic church planting prayer, bit of faith, a lot of fun. Um, takeaway pizza, the whole thing, you know? So it's been a great adventure. You, Al, you mentioned, uh, didn't see yourself going into ministry past. What would you say to

someone how to, uh, two or three things to, if I'm in the, I don't even like this, the secular world, cause all of us are ministers of the gospel. How would, what would you say to someone who is like, maybe, am I supposed to be in ministry? This is something I don't talk enough about actually, as a pastor, I, my default is usually be the hands and feet of Jesus, be the light of Christ right where you are. And I've been convicted that I'm like, but there are some people who are called to be a pastor. What would you, what would you say of what to discern or how to know that? Well, it's, it is the most amazing privilege and it's the greatest, I have the greatest, I don't have a job. I've retired and became a pastor. It's just, it's like, you know, it's an absolute joy. And I do think we live in an era where you need the balance of ministry versus kind of, um, you know, calling to the workplace and the workplace, of course, the Hebrew word for worship and work is the same word. You'll know that. So I think there is a, um, for me, it came down, I can only say what it is for me. It came down to this, this moment of realization. I was working film and I actually was having coffee with one of my heroes in film. I kind of mentor and, um, you know, sort of top producer. And I was, he knew, he said to me, what do you want to do? I said, I want your job in 20 years time. He said like, you know, don't. And, and it was really marking. He was like, I'm on my third marriage. My kids and I don't get on that well. And I've got a bunch of Oscars, but, um, you know, and I walked away from that meeting thinking, oh, you know, when you go, you pull the curtain back and you're like, I could spend my whole life chasing a dream. What I really wanted to do is help people. And it was like Oscars people. It was like awards, recognition, producing film. That was my pathway. Or do you want to get to heaven with a collection of people whose lives you impacted? Now, obviously the right answer is people, because you know, you're, you're, if you're in film, your agent isn't going to stand at your bedside or your producer, it's your, your kids, your family, who you've, you've loved and helped. Um, so for me it was an easy choice because it was how do I make the most of the time I have and serve as many people as I can. And I do think it's a good, it's a good calling. It's a good calling to quit the day job and love people professionally. I mean, to be paid through that is a remarkable, but even if you're not paid, lots of pastors aren't, you know, I think we need to take that call seriously. Yeah, so good. So Al, one of the reasons that I follow you is because I just do feel like you have a pulse on what God is up to, what the Holy Spirit is up to,

as they're specific. How would you say that you're currently seeing God move in your church? Well, yeah. What would you share? You need to find some better people to follow. You've disqualified your question. No, no, no, no, no. It's true story. True story. I mean, I can tell you what we're seeing. We're seeing young people come to faith faster than ever before. We're seeing a sense of the Spirit of God working. I think we're in a season of preparation. I don't think we're in a season of revival yet in the West, but I think we're heading that way. And I think we're in a kind of mark one, prepare the way for the Lord, repent, you know, get on your face, go low, and really cry out to God. So we're seeing three things that have been marked. One is a sense of the presence of God returning and hanging around the people of God. When people of God gather, Jesus is in the room. We're seeing all the things that accompany that are kind of a grace and outpouring of God's presence that leads to an uptick of people coming to faith, that uptick of signs of the kingdom among us, people getting healed and set free and all those things. Yes. So definitely it's the presence of God. Secondly, I'd say there is a kind of return to a preparation for a move of God. And I think we are in the first stages. You know, the data, wherever you look, Bible sales or people attending church, we've seen it in our, you know, I had, you know, I always go by the last Sunday, you know, every Sunday we're seeing people come to faith and young people who are not, you weren't Christians becoming Christians and people being set free. So there is a sense of preparation in the church right now. I think we need to get ready. We need to get ready for an awakening in our generation, a move of God. And then the third thing that's interesting, I think there is a call to prayer that is marked. I think, you know, seasons of preparation, every great move of God is preceded by people coming together in the presence of God and calling out to God. It doesn't take many. But, you know, I think there is a real sense that God is calling his church back to press. We've been learning to pray. We do these prayer meetings with a couple of friends, churches in East London have just blown up. This weekend, we're preparing to welcome for kind of the next, the one we

got coming up this week. I think now over 3000 people, young people, mostly are booked in to pray. And we've had to add extra space and extra, you know, services. We're live streaming those things. So there's definitely a stirring. You know, Matthew Henry, I think it is, he says, when God is planning great mercy for his people, the first thing he does is set his people praying. And I think that's a season. So pastors, leaders, you know, don't get, you know, don't quit. Keep loving people. Get ready. I think the tide is turning and there's a wave of the Spirit coming across the church in the West, certainly, and around the world, where we need to get ready to catch that wave. I don't know if you're a surfer, Adam, but maybe you're listening, a listener, you're a surfer. Yeah, I'm not much of a surfer, but I do know one thing is that if you wait to start paddling when the wave is on you, you've missed the wave. So we got to, we got to start paddling now. That's so good. Al, this is, I don't know, is there anything that you're doing in your own walk with Jesus right now, that's maybe different? And feel free to challenge me big time. If you like, I don't know, again, I just, I, I just greatly respect you. And I just, I just don't know if there's anything like in your walk with Jesus that is new, fresh, or feeling more convicted of, or yeah, that's a, that's a kind of a weird question to ask. But yeah, I mean, I get the question. And I guess the hope behind the question is there's some secret sauce. I'm like, yeah, I fast every Tuesday. And I wake up 3am. And I, you know, I've actually, what I've done is I've had my Bible bound in the goat skin from the original goat. You know, I think the important thing you said there is my walk with Jesus and my walk is unimpressive, but Jesus is very impressive. And I think when we make more of Jesus and less of ourselves, then God has free reign to do what he wants in our lives. So my encouragement would be, you know, the thing I've been learning and unlearning actually is, you know, as soon as we put Jesus at the center of what we're doing, and I think that requires repentance actually, it requires a sort of letting go and a going low. You know, we always say water flows to the lowest

place. I think everything we're seeing in London and we are seeing God do extraordinary things in our community and right across, I think not just London, but across many parts of the world now. of move of God that I think is unprecedented. And I pray that we would not miss the way, but also I pray that we wouldn't take our foot off the gas to mix metaphors. And we continue to walk with Jesus, not with church, not with, you know, religion, not with big ideas of theology, or even like good things like practices of spiritual dissonance. Those things are great, but it's not Jesus. So I think having what the theologians would call a high Christology, you know, is really the thing for me. Like when I go right, it's because I'm with Jesus. When I go wrong, it's because I look around and I'm like, where are you God? Right. I'm sure. What do you think? What does that have for you, Adam? For me lately, it's just been, I feel so needy for Jesus. I feel so needy for his word. I mean, literally this, just before we started recording, I was out late last night, spoke to a group of college kids out of town and I woke up... It's your birthday week, so you're still partying as well, right? And so I just felt like I had to get out of bed early to sit with Jesus. And I'm just like, I just need, I need to spend time with you. Today's going to be full. I need to spend time with you. And then I've just been, I feel like I've just been quicker to confess any sin in my life. Like, I just don't want any foothold of any kind in me. Prone to wonder, Lord, I feel it. Prone to, you know, it's like, that's me. And so, Lord, would you just protect me? And would you, yeah, I just, I just feel so dependent on God. You said what I feel like I can't say enough. I said it to the college students last night, cause they, the person introduced me was way too kind. Gave me all, mentioned all these bells and whistles or whatever. And I just said, I've never been more unimpressed with me and in awe of God. You follow me for five minutes, you'll be greatly disappointed. I mean, so disappointed, but you follow him, he just gets better and more wonderful. And yeah. So that's, that's what I would, is, is there anything that you would say a challenge for leaders and general pastors when it comes to their private lives and, uh, any, anything that you would say there as far as like, how to not do stupid stuff. Before we go any further today, there are just some awesome partners we'd like to thank for making Life Between Sundays possible. Adam, we have partners. Yeah. Our first partner is First Interstate Bank. I've been doing my personal banking with them

since 2007, which feels really, really old. When I say that their mission is to help people and their money work better together. They have over 300 locations throughout 14 different states, which is wild from Arizona, Colorado, Washington state to the great state of South Dakota. If you are looking for a bank, whether for your person, just for yourself, your personal bank banking or for business banking, look no further than First Interstate Bank. I say it every single time, but Joy is who I talk to at First Interstate. She's a delight. FirstInterstateBank.com. Our second partner is Vernity Mitsubishi. Vernity is a growing employee-owned faith-based company that strives to deliver dreams and transform lives. And their goal is excellence in everything that they do. If you are looking for a vehicle, don't look any place else. Stop, stop looking anywhere else. What would you even do that for? It was super cool. So I saw my sister, uh, over the, the weekend for Easter and she said, Hey, I mentioned Vernity to a friend of mine. They ended up working with Jared, who I always like tell people to talk to. And they're like, she's like, my friend just had the most amazing experience ever. I'm like, of course it's Vernity. So no matter if you're looking for an Acura, a Mitsubishi, a Ford, if you're looking for a snowmobile or a boat for summer, the snowmobile for winter, the boat for summer, just to make sure that's clear. If you're looking for a tractor, they literally will have the kind of vehicle you're looking for. No matter where you live, they'll ship it to you. Go visit vernity.com. Yeah. I mean, most of the time, the, um, the sort of, um, the stuff that goes wrong starts in private. I mean, it always in private. So I think the, the, the thing I found for me that keeps me really, really, um, kind of keeping going, I think it's making space to rest. Well, and I think we're living in such a driven culture where, um, it is, it is incredibly hard to find peace and to rest. So I think prioritizing that space of rest, that place of family, a place of holidays are the word is holy, you know, their holy days. So I think for, for, particularly for your audience in the U S which is a pretty. Hard work culture, right? Making space to really rest and pause and, you know, one day all of us will not be doing what we're doing now. Yeah. You know, I hate to break this to you, I know you just turned 44, it's a sore subject, but, you know, when you're 88,

you may not be still doing exactly everything you're doing now. And if you're defined by what you do now, then you're going to find there's not much left when you don't do it. So I think having that place to cultivate the private discipline of rest and allowing God to meet you there in the secret place with your family, you know, just doing the things. I found that in my life seriously important. I mean, and I'm saying something that's been a really busy few weeks, I've just launched a book, it's been crazy. Like, you know, rest is something you have to like, it's okay to have sprints, but then you've got to breathe, right? So good, so good. That last part was right at this Yahoo. Okay, so your book, Spark. Ignite your God-given creativity. If there was ever something that I would want to hear from you specifically, it is that. Away from the Holy Spirit and God's kindness. You could write those two as well, but it's this. So your heartbeat behind the book. Let's start there. Well, I think if we can link the two, if you look at history, there are three things that happen in moments of great breakthrough. One is there's a technological revolution. It's accompanied by always a spiritual renewal and a cultural renaissance. So if you look at the history of the planet, anytime there's been a tech breakthrough, there's been a spiritual revival or renewal that's flowed alongside that, and there's been a cultural renaissance.

So I talk about this in the book, trying to understand that framing the days we're living in right now, we're living in a significant moment, obviously, of technological revolution. But if you look at the history of humanity, if you write back, do you know when the first technological breakthrough documented in the human story is? You probably know this. 40,000 BC, what's called pyrotechnology. We invent fire. Of course, we didn't invent fire. We learned how to use fire. And at that time, you know, the human race has figured out how to gather around the fire pit. You get two things that flow exactly the same time, 40,000 BC. You get the first ritual burials in the human story, the first suggestion that people believe in an afterlife and believe in something bigger. And alongside that, you get the first artwork that appears, the first cave paintings, the first figurative art at the same time. Revolution, renewal, renaissance. Map this onto the human story. The printing press, revolution, the biggest revolution up to the internet age. Renewal, well, we have what we call the reformation. It changed the landscape of the church. And do we have a renaissance? Capital T, capital R, the renaissance, flowed from Europe, changed the world creatively. And all of that together led to the modern world,

the shaping of the modern world. So why does that matter today? We're living in what people have described as the big one. Stephen Hawking, the scientist, describes the rise of AI and the rise of the machine learning, super intelligence age we're moving into as being the biggest and most important thing to have ever happened to the human race. Now, of course, you and I, Adam, would disagree with that because the incarnation is much more important. But he's got half a point. Technologically, it probably is the most important thing to have happened to the human race, period. Noah Yuval Harari, he's an atheist philosopher, a public thinker, to describe the generation we're living in in a book, Homo Sapiens, is the last generation of Homo Sapiens because our kids are already pretty much cyborgs. They have a screen or a pacemaker. Everyone today, you're probably wearing some wearable tech, a ring, a watch, maybe not, but you've got a phone probably in your pocket that's tracking your footsteps. We're already pretty embedded in our tech. We would expect when those two things happen that you would have with that a spiritual renewal and a cultural renaissance. Why does this matter today? Why have I written Spark? Why do I care about this? So here's the thing.

When there's a renaissance, when there's a revolution, the thing that the church needs to respond to is how do we fan into flames the renewal that God is bringing in this generation? We're already starting to see. We've already talked about it. And how do we respond to create moments of literally cultural creative renaissance? The reason this matters right now is we're living in the age of the algorithm. The thing that people don't realize, what is AI going to threaten the most? It's not jobs, it's not military technology. technology, those are important. The thing that's most under threat right now is human creativity. And we already have a population of humans. If you talk to most people in your church on a Sunday, you said, how many of you here think you're creative? Probably breaks into about a third and two thirds don't. Now the reality is, everybody is creative. Everyone is made in the image of God, a creator. What we mean by that is, we've made it into like the the kind of the elite of the people who excel at creativity. They get musicians, artists or painters or writers. Yeah, and that's a hard thing to get really good at. But the reality is when you woke up this morning, you made some creative decisions about what you wore. When you go and pick up your kids and they say to you, hey, you know, explain to me why this happened. You got to think creatively about how you communicate. If you take your wife out for a date night, and you choose a steak restaurant, you're going to think that's a creative decision you're making,

right? So every one of us 100,000 times in a working week will make creative decisions in the workplace. Yes. The church has this big lie that we've basically neutered the creativity of the body of Christ, by reducing it down to a thing that artists do, when the reality is every one of us is made in the image of a creator, we are all called to creativity. So this is why I wrote this book, I want to, I want you to stop saying I'm not creative. I want you to stop thinking, okay, my creativity doesn't matter. In the age of the algorithm, you your imagination, your ideas, and your creativity, whether you're a scientist, or a ballet dancer, are the only thing that makes us unique in the human moment. It's the it's the superpower of your soul. You're going to have algorithms who already can do most of what you can do faster than you can. The thing that makes you you and uniquely you is you're made in the image of a God who creates, therefore you are creative. And your mind your ability to create your your, you know, the superpower of the soul is original thought original imagination. What is the first thing God does in the beginning God created, and all the way through the story of the Bible, it is God's creativity, that redeems and rescues that anoints, bets love with the Holy Spirit that rebuilds the temple that remakes the world that right at the end of Revelation, Jesus says, Behold, I make all things new. So God is a creative God, we've got to kill the big lie, we've got to release the creativity of all believers. And we've got to spark that God given creativity in each one of us right now, because otherwise the algorithm will just dance off the data sets we give it, there'll be no original thought algorithms can only dream, they can't, they can't, they can only hallucinate, sorry, they can't

dream. That's something that human beings are for. You know, the day of Pentecost, Joel is quoted by Peter, Peter quotes the book of Joel, and you'll know that passage well, young men will dream dreams. That's creativity. It's a thing that's spirit releases in this generation. So it is urgent. I'm passionate about this, as you can tell. And I want to help. I want to help you stop saying I'm not creative. So good. Okay, so quick side note to everybody listening. If you go anywhere close to London, you have to stop by St. Church. When people are telling me like, I'm going to London, where should I go? I'm like, church wise, stop by HTB just because it's so iconic. And it's just so many just God things have taken place there. But St. Church, it is the most fascinating, creative, beautiful space that I've maybe ever been in. It's just absolutely phenomenal. Okay, so with with yeah, other churches are available to you definitely, Adam, you definitely need to get out a lot more. This space is so beautiful. And the mix the mix of history with I mean, it's just it's it's incredible. Okay, so make two questions. Why does it matter if we're creative as believers? Yes, maybe the first like, why? Why should I care? And then the second then the second thing, how do I start leaning into creativity? If I don't naturally think I'm creative? Like, I think for some of us, I'm probably more creative with my mind and visions. And I can see things that I'm just like, I know exactly. And even just whatever. But for a person who's like, I'm just not creative. I whatever. So why? Why does it matter? How do I start leaning in? Nothing new is ever achieved in the world without creativity. So

if you want to change anything, anything at all, you need to employ your creativity. And we all do this, we just misname it and we misattribute it for like, all the creative people. The modern notion of the creative, by the way, is a kind of post war idea. Before that, people talked about the creator. And those makers in Genesis are two words, creativity, there's the word a so which is like, like rearrange and making, and pulling things together, and the planets, God arranges, he aces the planets. But there's a word, barra, in the beginning, God said, let there be light, and he created. Now, God uses that word, barra, to describe how he creates humankind. He says, let us barra them in our image. And three times, the Trinitarian God says, barra, barra, barra, in our image. Now, that means that you and I are made in the image of a creator with the divine ability, with the spark of heaven, to create original ideas. Algorithms that are gonna dominate our generation will only react to data sets that are already existent. They are rearranging, they are aces at creativity. When you have the spirit of God living in you, you are creating the ideas that come into your mind, your imagination, come out of that barra newness that comes from heaven, it's like, bang. Now, here's the catch. Most of us have educated our creativity out of our minds. We've got familiar, your neuroscience has shown this, like, when you get used to doing something well,

like we learn our times tables in maths by rote, your brain just gets familiar, and it becomes what's called a kind of fixed neural pathway or a functional fixedness in the brain. Yeah. Now, interestingly, the brain is incredibly, what's called neuroplastic. So if you have stroke victims, they learn to walk again, even though the brain's not working, the brain is actually quite fluid. It's like neuroplastic. So you can learn to undo and compensate for functional fixedness, but you have to step out of your comfort zone. So why does that matter? Well, here's a fascinating study. NASA, the space agency, were looking at creativity because they were interested in psychology in terms of the astronauts they're going to send to space and how they build teams. And they found that among adults, typically about 2% of adults qualify for the terminology and the kind of demarcation of what they would call creative geniuses. So if you look around on Sunday morning at church and there's a hundred people there, two people in the room will be technically marked as creative genius analysis. What they found fascinating, they did the same study on children.

Guess how many of the children, 2% adults, how many of the children would rank as creative geniuses? Have a guess. 50%. 98%. Oh my gosh. Right. What happens between those children, the same people, 98% of us when we're kids who qualify as creative geniuses, in other words, our imagination, our ideas, the possible, the way we solve problems, what happens between that and the 2% of us who are left imagining and dreaming? What's happened is we've unlearned creativity. Now, here's another mind bomb. Neuroscience has found that the brain employs different neural networks for different activities. So when you're cooking, one part of the brain, when you're driving, another part of the brain, when you're thinking, when you're asleep, exercising, falling in love, all these things, the brain does different, you can literally say, oh, that's a pattern that would respond to that kind of activity. Yeah. When you create and dream and imagine, you can watch the parts of the brain that are employed in the neural networks, in the default mode network.

And you can see literally in the default mode network that the bits, the synapses that are firing when you're dreaming, imagining, and creating. Now, you can also map when people are praying, experiencing the love of God, in the presence of God, worshipping, praying, doing the spiritual things, you can map that as well. Here's the mind blowing thing. In a book called, How God Shapes the Brain, two secular atheist scientists uncovered this piece of research. The bit, the brain that creates and dreams and imagines is exactly the same neural network that prays and encounters God. In other words, your creativity is spiritual. And when you're close to God in prayer and in worship, and you're engaging the spiritual, it's actually firing your creative networks. So, well, that shouldn't surprise us. We're made in the image of a creator, right? We're made in the image of a creator. What is Jesus's primary activity here on earth when he's here in the flesh? We think, oh, 33, dies in 33, ministry at 30. We read the gospels. We're like, he raised the dead, healed the sick, preached the gospel, saved for the world, the cross, the resurrection. Yeah, of course. But for one 10th of his time, does he do that?

You know what he does for the other nine 10ths of the time, right? He's in his father's workshop. Carpentry. Isn't it Joseph? That's Joseph's son, the carpenter's son. That's a woodworker. You know, when God anoints Bethelel in the Old Testament, in the book of Exodus, he anoints him with skill and all the things to work wood, to work in wood. When Jesus comes, he's practising for nine 10ths of his time the creative expression of who God actually is. He's a creator. He's a maker. He's a shaper. And then the salvation bit is part of that. of Jesus to reach in and rescue and redeem us so that we might be involved in the creation and the recreation of the world. So why does creativity matter? It's not really possible to be a Christian and not be a creative, because to be filled with the Spirit of God is to be creative. You have the Creator living in you. So then the question is, have we negated that part? Have we told ourselves the big lie, pressed it down, repressed it? And the answer is usually yes, and the world is poorer for that. So the Kingdom of God is a matter of releasing the identity of God in people that we love and serve. So I just want to encourage you, you know, the good thing about neuroplasticity is you can unlearn the stuff that you've, you can relearn the stuff you've unlearned, okay? You may say I'm not very creative. You don't need to suddenly become Picasso, Adam. What you do is like, hey, when you're dreaming up a great episode for a podcast, or you're thinking about a great sermon series, or you're trying to help love that couple who are going through marital difficulties, God wants your creativity to be at the front of the toolkit. Let me find, let me take this from a different angle, and to access that

childlike wonder and faith. And of course, the Kingdom of God, Jesus, belongs to little children because they have a capacity for wonder, imagination, and play. That's, that's, that's incredible. Last, last question. The challenge, like, what would, like, what would your word be to fowlers of Jesus and how to unleash creativity in the church? Like, anything specific that you would say there? Or maybe it's at pastors and how to unleash your people to be creative. Yeah, well, look, again, get in touch on Instagram. I'll send them a link to Spark. You know, genuinely, this is why I want to help people. Because I think for pastors, it's really going to be absolutely essential in this next generation that we help equip people in this way and understand that creativity is something we need to release in the body of Christ. We need to release the creativity of all believers. And you do that by understanding some shifts. Number one, that creativity is a spiritual calling. You know, it is a calling from heaven. Number two, that creativity is a sacred collaboration. The church should be a place of collaborative encouragement. You know, if you go to San Francisco, we were there doing Renaissance last month in San Francisco. We do these Renaissance events, gathering creatives all over the world now. The one we did in San Francisco is fascinating because everyone there is working in tech and they're literally writing the code of the future. But the challenge there is like, you know, the big commercial industries, the money is following the big AI engines and the big tech companies. They're pouring money into incubating ideas in a secular space. But the church is the incubator of the future. Christians create futures. If we believe in the Bible, we believe in the now and the not yet and the in breaking of the kingdom of God, then the church should be like a startup incubator for the new creation. It should be happening in the sort of, you know, just in the secular tech spaces. So every church should be a sacred environment for collaboration. And the third thing is to see creativity as not just a spiritual calling and a sacred collaboration, but as a sacred connection to God that actually in creativity, people are going to encounter Jesus. You'll know this, Adam, you'll preach your heart out one week, but by Wednesday, no one remembers what you said, but what are they still singing in the shower? The song they sang on Sunday. Right. It's great. So we need to have an understanding that creativity is needed to help people connect with God. And it doesn't just mean like, Hey, we're going to kidnap all the, there are creatives listening who are in a church community. You'll be thinking, Oh my goodness, my pastor is going to hear this and he's going to come for me.

And he'd be like, Hey, I'm rounding up the creatives. We're saddling up. We're going to make Easter the biggest thing since the resurrection. And like, it's not about making Sunday cooler. It's about making Monday ignited with the Holy spirit. Like the success here, isn't people like churches full of creatives. The success here is creatives full of the spirit of God, reshaping the culture. So pastors empower your people. You've got to empower your teachers, your moms, your professors, your scientists, your artists, your makers, your business people with a creative courage to take risks and be brave. And that's kind of what I've tried to do with spark is like, here's a little manifesto. That's going to give you some practical tools that are going to help you unlearn some things you've probably learned along the way. And here's some things that are going to help you accelerate this process of releasing creativity in this generation. Thank you guys so much for being here and for listening to this week's episode of life between Sundays. We are just so grateful for a great Easter weekend for you guys for joining in. I was going to ask you, is there any like cool Easter stories that you or. or takeaways, or anything that happened over the Easter weekend that you're like, whoa, God was really moving. Oh, I feel like so many different things. The Good Friday service was just absolutely packed and was super powerful. But for me, my favorite part is seeing people make a first-time decision to follow Jesus. And so just being able to look out and see everything from high schoolers to people my age to older raise their hand, which in this part of the country, that's out of your comfort zone, you know, to make a statement, even just raising your hand. And so just seeing that is just so exciting because I can remember the day that I gave my life to Christ. And to think about being a part of that is my favorite part. So it never gets old, this thinking about someone's lives, like totally being changed. Yeah, and their families and their religion. I mean, literally, I just met with a couple today. And she said, everything about us has changed because of this church and because we met Jesus. And so you're just like, whoa, literally, we're married today because of it.

Otherwise, we don't know if we would be without Jesus. So that's just super, super powerful. That's my favorite part. So I hope you had a great Easter. Thanks again to our partners, First Interstate Bank and Vernity Motor Cars. This wouldn't be possible without them. Have an awesome, awesome rest of your day. God bless. Thanks, guys.