Everyone Is An Artist: Help Your Team Unleash Their Creative Potential

This guest post was written by Gabriel Wilson, Worship Arts Pastor at Lakeside Church and frontman of the band The Listening. Buy his church’s latest album, God Who Saves the World on iTunes here or purchase the DVD here.

Everyone is an Artist…not just you.

I know it seems strange, right? Everyone is an artist? “Not my staff, not my pastor” you might say…

Yes they are.

They just might not realize it–yet. Perhaps in order to realize it they need your help.

That’s our job, isn’t it? We are pastors of the arts. Worship Arts Pastors. Creative Arts Pastors. In the same way we facilitate a safe environment for creativity and expression during our weekend gatherings, we should do the same for our staff.

Instead of having a “creatives vs normals” mentality, it helps to realize that everyone is creative, but not everyone has realized their creativity to it’s full potential. Everyone sings songs, listens to music, daydreams, imagines, hums a tune, doodles, and more…

The only difference between so-called artists and faux-normals is that the artists have decided to dedicate their lives to the pursuit and development of their creative side. But that doesn’t mean that they’re the only creative people in the building.

Teaching Pastors are Artists

Teaching pastors are just as much an artist as a music pastor (sometimes even more so!). They are constantly creating word pictures to bring the Biblical mysteries into the light. They’re using allegories, analogies, stories, movie clips, song lyrics–anything they can possibly find–to bring a passage into a place of cultural relevance. That takes a lot of creativity.

In fact, let’s be honest… We’ve all seen teaching pastors with more creative mojo than their partnering Worship Arts Pastors, haven’t we?

Children’s Pastors are Artists

How about the kids ministry? Do you know how much creativity you need in order to keep church interesting for small kids? The songs, the stories, the games…a constant stream of creative energies & ideas are needed at a moments notice.

Kids workers are masters of creativity.

Facilities Staff are Artists

How about your facilities crew? Lawn care and landscaping is an art. Or how about the CFO and financial staff? I know it seems crazy, but the way they see numbers and letters is similar to how a songwriter hears melodies and lyrics — they will grind, budget, add and subtract until the books make perfect sense and the annual budget is complete.

I do the same with a song until that song is complete–grind, widdle, add, subtract, arrange, edit… You get the idea, right?

We don’t always appear to have a whole lot in common on the surface… But the truth is, our creative DNA is quite similar.

Imagine how amazing our church staff could be if we helped everyone see just how creative they truly are. To me, that’s just one of the jobs of being a Pastor of the Arts. If we desire to have a depth of creativity within our church community, we shouldn’t just work at inspiring our church members who come on the weekends. We should inspire our staff, too.

Question: What would change if everyone on your team saw themselves as artists? How can you help others discover their creative potential? You can leave a comment by clicking here.