Creativity: A Certain Risk?

I’m sure it’s written in a rule book somewhere that to be a good missionary kid you have to read Peace Child by Don Richardson at some point. Well, I haven’t gotten around to it yet, but I did recently read the first book by his son, Paul. It’s called A Certain Risk: Living Your Faith at the Edge, published earlier this year by Zondervan. I received a copy of the book to review thanks to the Origins Project, a network of people who are passionate about Jesus, humanity, and innovation - in that order, I think.

By way of background, Richardson lives and works in the world’s largest Muslim nation, where he helps to run a network of innovative Christian schools. That right there warrants the book’s title, if you ask me.

In some ways, Richardson reminds me of John Eldredge, who has written about the Christian life being an adventure and how a lot of us settle for a pretty boring existence. He also reminded me of Erwin McManus with his one-word chapter titles like “Engage� and “Absorb� and “Release� and his talk of God’s dreams. The latter should come as no surprise, of course, since Richardson is connected to Mosaic and McManus even provided the forward. As for the former, whereas Eldredge tends to liken the Christian life to that of a gladiator or a samurai warrior, Richardson prefers to focus on the artistic side of things.

Quite a few of my friends are artists in one way or another. For any number of reasons I’m drawn to the creative type. I find their idiosyncrasies refreshing and fascinating, and honestly, I think I can relate to them because of it. I like artists. I like art. But I realized while reading this book that even so, I’ve tended to view art as somehow frivolous - somehow less important than real work, whatever that means.

Richardson draws our attention to Genesis, where we see that men and women are made in the image of God. And who is God? Throughout the Bible, our understanding of God deepens as he is called by many names and is alluded to through various metaphors and parables and, most fully, in the person of Jesus himself. But in Genesis, in the Garden, God is Creator. And it is in the Garden where we learn we're made in his image. We are creative beings by design, which ought to suggest that in our churches maybe we've been wrong to marginalize the most creative and artistic people among us.

Now, obviously we’re not all made to sit at an easel wearing a beret and contemplating the reflection of the sun on lily pads, but I think the creation account in Genesis has a lot to teach us about vocation and about our calling as creative beings.

As an artist whose medium of choice is the written word, it makes a lot of sense to me when Don Miller writes about our life being a story. He uses a literary metaphor, and that clicks for me. If you’ve been looking for a theological green light to rip the head off a lion with your bare hands or ram a spear through someone’s armor, Eldredge might be for you. Of course, anger management therapy might be for you as well. But for artists of all sorts, Richardson’s artistic imagery will help to spur a creative response to the work of God in our lives.

Richardson connects artistry and creativity with the mission of God. You might think he would have left the frivolity of art behind in southern California when he moved to southeast Asia. But you'd be wrong. In fact, it’s at the core of what God is doing through him, his ministry, and the growing, evolving church of first-generation followers of Christ we read about in the book.

Exceptionally written and inspiringly real, it’s a different sort of “missions� book in the best possible sense. I sure hope this isn’t the last we hear from Paul Richardson; I have a hunch it won’t be.

Let’s use a bit of imagination, take a step of faith, and strike out to explore the possibilities that God has waiting. How might we activate our own assets to create in response to the opportunities in the world around us?

PS - You should know that despite the Gandhi in me, I have in fact enjoyed Eldredge's books and have found them quite inspiring. They're not nearly as crazy as I make them sound. Consider my exaggerated characterizations "creative expressions." Much love, John. Let's go scale an ice-capped mountain in the winter in our bare feet. Arrrh.