Value #5 “Creativity”
You’ll find creativity at the very beginning of our Bible. The statement goes something like this, “in the beginning there was nothing, but God made everything”.
You do not have to be a Biblical scholar to understand the creative nature of our God. In fact, a quick look around at the complex beauty of the world we live in is evidence enough for me.
I’ll never forget watching the sunset in the bush of East Africa. The sky was fire red, and the plains over which the sun was setting seemed infinite. It was moving.
The desire we have to create stems from the very creative nature of our God. As people, we seem somewhat compelled to create. Look at the great cities of our world, the vast amount of music and art that have been made. Every year we redesign the body styles of cars, and clothing styles. I could go on, however I believe you get the point.
This is so because we as people are marked by the undeniable thumbprint of the one who created us. And the one who created us invented creativity!
Why then does it seem that our churches can often be the last place we see creativity? I’m not sure, and I cannot speak for anyone else, but I can speak for Restoration.
At Restoration Church in Port Orange, we intend to be a church that affirms and encourages the God-given desire we have to create. We want creativity to influence the way we teach, worship with music, use existing art forms like media and care for our community. Basically, we want to see creativity in all we do.
The best way we as a church can labor towards being a creative community is to deeply honor and celebrate the rooted, historical, ancient history we have in our Christianity while creating a culture that allows for creative expression in all we do.
So, what do you think?
outside the gate 
Value 5 is AWESOME!!! God in creation is one thing I will never ever ever ever be able to fully grasp. But just watching a bird fly, the sunrise, or a tree blow in the wind gives me the chills. If our God can create all the wonders of this world imagine what he has in store for us later.
Actually, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about creativity as one of God’s attributes and how it functions in us, created in his image. In Genesis the mandate was given to his crowning of creation, man, to subdue the earth and multiply; that is, to numerically and geographically expand his image. It’s what theologians have called the Cultural Mandate. And so much freedom he graciously gave to do just that! I’m always touched to know that our God is a creating God and by extension, his people are creating folk. And he wants me, you, us, to be those folk. What better ethos for Restoration that we are given the freedom to be creative in ways that align with God’s redemptive purposes. He created an expanding universe? Okay, well then we are to be an expanding church; but more than mere numbers. Besides the stellar bodies themselves, they “declare the glory of God.” There’s an insightful article in “Christianity Today” by Lauren Winner about Gregory Wolf and the “Image”, the famed art journal that has treated faith and art. Winner cites novelist Bret Lott as saying, “…the evangelical church tends to view its adherents as ‘pieceworkers’ who are always looking for tangible outcomes: numbers of those saved or helped.” Lott insists that, “The making of art doesn’t necessarily work that way. The making of art is an end in and of itself; it is an act of worship in and of itself; it is an act of humility and joy at once; and, in the life of the believer, it is accomplished as a gift back to the Creator who made us–art for God’s sake instead of art for art’s sake, as it were.” A powerful statement, indeed, about how creativity is ultimately to the glory of God. And what a privilege we have as believers, as God’s “sent,” to be creators of something in whatever forms it may manifest itself in Port Orange. Numerically by making disciples for Christ’s Kingdom, of course. But, more than that: the process itself and how we do it will bring glory to the Creator himself. As we humbly submit our flawed collage to him for his sake, our hope is to be that for him, it’s a masterpiece and that he will take delight in it.