Does Anyone Know What Creative Means?
Fred Smith
January 1, 1983
The word creative has become a cliche. Everybody uses it whether they can define it or not. Creativity is expected of ministers no less than of advertising copywriters and fashion designers. If you're not certified "creative," your future is in big trouble. The blunt fact, of course, is that no one is creative. We live in a closed universe; there is nothing new under the sun. What we are instead is inventive; we rearrange and reposition things that have already been created. Throughout this article I will use the words creative and creativity even though what I am talking about is inventiveness. This will seem more natural to our speech patterns. And I hope the Creator will not be offended. Creativity has to do with more than just the arts-painting, sculpture, music, architecture. In my view, creativity is survival. When an institution loses its transitional quality in a moving market, a moving culture, a moving world, it doesn't survive. The railroad industry wanted to stay as railroad companies rather than transportation companies. The transition was toward airplanes and private automobiles, but they liked railroading. Many went out of business. In the parachurch we have some excellent examples of using creative solutions to satisfy spiritual needs: Torrey Johnson saw wandering crowds of World War II soldiers looking for something to do on the streets of Chicago, so he created Youth for Christ. When secularism swept the West Coast campuses in the sixties, Campus Crusade was the creative answer. Bill Glass, All-Pro footballer, found prisoners wouldn't come to hear preaching so he started sports clinics for them. I've been depressed recently by a statistic from a major denomination: the average tenure of its pastors is now eighteen ...
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