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Welcome to Faith of Our Fathers. Today we feature Dr. Howard G. Hendricks in a tribute to Dr. Hendricks. Chuck Swindoll. No man has meant more to me and my adult life than Dr. Howard G. Hendricks, whom all of us know simply as Prof. My wife, Cynthia and I first met him in the fall of 1959 during my days as a first year student at Dallas Seminary. It was one of those love at first sight experiences between a student and a professor. Today, Howard Hendricks presents a talk on creativity. The following material is copywritten by and provided courtesy of the Moody Bible Institute.
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Well, the secret is out. Now that you have heard Gene yesterday, you know the secret of my life and ministry. My greatest claim to fame is that I'm Gene Hendricks husband, and that's what I'm known for. Increasingly often they ask, can we get Gene to come? We have to take you. Okay. I want to talk to you this afternoon on the subject the contagion of creativity. John Henry Newman said it. It's wonderful to have approval at the beginning of your message. John Henry Newman said it, fear not that your life shall come to an end, but that it shall never have a beginning. The life and ministry of many a Christian worker is well summarized in the epitaph. Died age 26, buried age 64. Their mentality is best expressed in the words, I came, I saw, I concurred. In fact, often we affirm our credo with devotion at the beginning of our worship services when we sing. As it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be, World without end. Our favorite song, we shall not be moved. Pastor said to me some time ago, hendricks, I find it easier to change the doctrinal statement of this church than to remove the flowers from the sanctuary. It's incredible that the most revolutionary force on the earth, namely the church, should be set in concrete, should be committed to the status quo. This afternoon I'd like to ask and answer three questions. The questions are why, what and how. I give them to you so if you fall asleep, at least when you wake up, you'll know where we are. And by the way, if you are prone to fall asleep, don't think, fight it. Just fold your hands, put your head down on your chest, take a few Z's. When you wake up, you'll feel better. But nothing drives me up the wall as much as watching students in a class going, So consider my age. First question, why? Why be concerned about creativity? Why even bring it up at a pastor's conference? What will it do? It'll do five things for you that Desperately need to be done. Number one, it will perpetuate the learning process. You see, as long as you learn, you live. And as long as you live, you learn. And if you stop learning today, you stop leading tomorrow. All of us had courses that have led to a degree but have never led to an education. Education is a process of passing from unconscious to conscious ignorance. And I believe that's why Peter said in the last letter he wrote, second Peter, chapter three and verse 18 continue, keep on growing in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus. Learning in the Christian community is a process, not a package. Secondly, it will help to meet the growing demands of a changing society. It used to be said there are two things that we can be sure of, taxes and death. But every informed Christian knows there is a third and that's change. Paul said in Romans 8, we are predestined to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. If that's true, how much change do you think you can expect? But we live in a society. We live in a society in which change is par for the course. And I would like to suggest for your thinking men, we are not preparing our people for for change. We are not teaching them that there is a vast difference between the biblical and the cultural. The biblical is non flexible, it's fixed. The cultural is flexible. The biblical is non negotiable. The cultural is totally negotiable. The biblical cannot change. The cultural must change. I spent some time recently in a church. This church has the finest program for 1946 you have ever seen. It's unfortunate we're not in 46 because they're loaded for bear. The final evening they asked me for a briefing. They had told me they were having financial problems. I said, men, I got a suggestion for solving your financial problems. Oh really? Why would you suggest. I said, I suggest you build a fence around this church and charge admission for people to come in to see what it was like in the last generation. I mean, we had us a discussion. Never forget we live and minister in a culture, not a vacuum. Third, creativity will infect your communication with a characteristic freshness and vitality. And let's face it, all of us can stand a severe dose of that. Interesting study was conducted some time ago. The conclusion, the higher your predictability, the lower your impact. Please note, they are not talking about morals, they are talking about methodology. And no one fleshed that out for us better than the Lord Jesus. He never approached any individual, evangelistically or otherwise, in exactly the same way. Do you remember the day when The Pharisees and the Rhodians got together an interesting combination in itself against a common enemy. Shall we pay taxes or not? They figure, either way he goes, we got him. So he says, you got a coin? Oh, Roger. Right here. He said, good. Whose inscription is on it? Caesar's wonderful observation. Said, then what's your problem? Render to Caesar the things that belong to Caesar, to God, the things that belong to God. Caesar's image is on the coin. Every Jew knew instinctively that stamped upon him was the image of God. Who thought up this dumb question? I believe one of the greatest needs today is for men and women, women in the ministry who project an image of being fully alive in Jesus Christ. Thank you, sir. A fourth thing that creativity will do for you, it will develop your leadership potential. You see, there's a strong correlation between creativity and leadership effectiveness. Leaders are not in a rut. They see further. They probe deeper. They think more incisively. That's why I'm instinctively drawn to Jeremiah. Oh, I know most people think of him as the man with a crying towel. But you need to know and do know that the reason Jeremiah was crying is that he knew enough to cry. He lived in an intoxicated society, and he's the only man who's sober. You ever ask yourself, what do you cry about? What do you pound the table about? What keeps you up at night? Because it is so deep a passion on your heart. The fifth thing that creativity will do for you is that it will overhaul your life. John, chapter 10 and verse 10, our Lord said, I am come. That you might have life. I mean, really live. Are you living or just existing? You enjoying the ministry or enduring it? Is it a delight or is it a drag? Somebody asked me one of those questions you wish people wouldn't ask you, said Hendrix. How many men do you know in the ministry over 55 who are still tracking for Jesus Christ? My friends, not that many. It is amazing how many men over 55 are sliding for home. They're reaching for the bench. They're thinking in terms of retirement. At the very time when they have the most to contribute to the body of Christ, they're checking out. Man, do we need you older guys desperately. One of the reasons that many of our young men are failing in the ministry, as we heard this morning, because they don't have older guys like you who really can take them by the hand and lead them on in the ministry. A second question. It's the question, what? What do we know for sure about creativity? Well, a number of things that ought to stab you awake this afternoon. First of all, we know that there's no one, no one without a significant creative potential, and that includes you. You may not be functioning creatively, but you have the potential. Nothing has been proven more by research and experience. I've taught children. I've taught young people. I've taught adults. I've taught senior citizens. I've taught a mensa group. I taught a retarded group. I taught principles of creativity in 75 countries around the world, and I've never seen an exception to this principle. And by the way, it has nothing to do with your age. It has everything to do with your attitude. Gene and I lost one of our closest friends, Mrs. Simpson by name, Went home to be with the Savior at 86. Last time I saw her on the planet was at a Christian Christmas party. You ever been to one of those? Avoid them like the plague. Everybody sitting around on a crate of eggs, trying to be pious and impress everybody. She walked into a room. She said, well, Hendrix, I haven't seen you for a long time. What are the five best books you've read recently? Which has a way of changing the dynamics of the group? She said, well, let's not sit here and bore each other with each other. Let's get into a discussion, and if we can't find anything to discuss, let's get into an argument. Last time she went to the holy land, she was 83 years of age. She went with a group of NFL football players. My most vivid memory is her at the top of a towel yelling at these guys, come on, men, get with it. She died in her daughter's home in Dallas. And she called me up and she said, howie, mother went home to be with the savior last night. I said, well, let me come over. And when I went over to the home, she said, you know, the most wonderful thing happened. I said, tell me about it. Well, she said, as I told you, she died in her sleep. But before she retired, she sat down and wrote out her goals for the next 10 years. May her tribe increase. What are you, 65? 75? 85, my friend, you got a wad of tire left. Well, that's too convicting. Let's move on. The second thing we know about creativity is that conditioning. Conditioning is the killer of creativity. And I want to introduce you to the three culprits. The first killers of creativity are parents, nice people like you, who constantly say to your kids, cut it out. Hey, don't ask such dumb questions. We don't do that. Isadore Rabi, distinguished Nobel Laureate, was interviewed by New York Times after receiving the prize. And the person interviewing him said, how did you ever end up becoming a scientist? He said, I couldn't help it. What do you mean? My Jewish mother. Oh, she was a scientist?
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No.
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Every day I came home from school, my mother met me at the door and said, so did you ask any good questions today? I don't know how many times I go to a church where kids tell me they can't ask the penetrating question. They can't ask their parents, they can't ask their Sunday school teachers. My friend, if you cannot ask your parents and you cannot ask your Sunday teachers, who in the world can you ask but the second set of embalmers, Our teachers in public school. Yeah, they paralyzed them there. In private school, not much better. And in Sunday school, you see, I get the product at the seminary and that's why this is so high on my priority list. One of the things I get my students to do in the first year is to engage in a creative project of taking a passage of scripture, putting it in a paraphrase, any form, music, drama, you name it, it's your, you're free to do it. The early days, when the classes were smaller, I would call for volunteers. And you know, the extroverts are like this and the introverts are like this. So I'm sweeping around, I see this kid, I say, hey man, you're on. Who, me? You. He comes up and he reads this three verse poem. I kid you not, in all of the years, I have never heard a poem that was so powerful. In fact, the students yelled and cheered and gave him a standing ovation. And as I looked at him, the tears are rolling down his face, fast becoming the poet laureate of evangelicalism. And I said to him, is this the first time you did that? He said, prach, this is the first time in public. I said, why? Well, he said, in my fifth grade, I had a school teacher who asked us to do a creative project and I built a little replica of our house and I brought it to my teacher. I was so excited. And she said, that's the dumbest thing I've ever seen. She crushed it and threw it in a wastebasket. But he said, somehow you convinced me, Prof. That when you said, I want you to go for broke, I'm going to give it one more shot. My friends, we've got an incredible brain drain in the evangelical community. Some of the most creative, talented, gifted people we are driving off because we don't know how to accept creative individuals in terms of where they are right now. Well, if the parents don't kill it and the teachers don't embalm it, then the television set will bury it. Television will shred your ability to read. Every year, our reading level at the seminary, every seminary across America goes lower. College and university graduates, they can't think, they can't act because they have become passive. And most of all, they've lost all of their creative potential. There's a book you guys have got to read. It's now in paperback. It's a secular book. It's called Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death. That ought to be required reading of every pastor because it'll transform your preaching and give you a new appreciation of what you're up against. The third thing I want to tell you about creativity is that the conditioning process can, can be reversed, but it's not available in a bargain basement sale. You see, creative people are willing to pay the price that non creative people are unwilling to pay. As I worked in the NFL, six different coaches convinced me there is absolutely no correlation between potential and reality. And I can remember Coach Landry particularly telling me, I get kids who got more potential than some of us who played ever thought of having, but they will never amount to a dime because they're not willing to pay the price. And the last thing you need to know about creativity is that it must become a lifestyle. It's not a turn on. You cannot sit down and say, I shall now produce a sermon. I shall now write an article. I shall now plan a conference. Creativity must pervade every area of your life. From your study of the word of God to your recreation, from writing letters, to writing articles, from wrapping presents to making love. Creativity is the name of the game. Well, the third and final question I want to ask and answer is the question, how? How do I develop my creative potential in my people, in my ministry? Let me suggest just a few ways. First of all and foremost, men of God, it begins with you. You are the model. See, it's impossible to lead people to change if you haven't changed or are not in the process of changing. You have to be what you want your people to become. I tell my students all the time, you want people to jump that high, my friend, you're going to have to jump that high. You want them to bleed, you're going to have to hemorrhage. And I want to give you three tests of a creative model. You better fasten your safety belt it's going to be a little turbulent air here for a few minutes. Hang on with me. The first test of a creative model is that you have a high tolerance for ambiguity. That's becoming increasingly more rare in the evangelical community. We got to get it all tied up in a bow. We've got to come up with the always, never. By the way, we're producing a group of people like that. And you see it in terms of schooling. Should I send my children to a Christian school? Should I homeschool them? Should I send them to the public school where they can have a witness? Well, you go to many churches, my friend, and that decision has already been made for you. And if you don't go the route that they have decided, they're going to drum you out of the car. We just had one of our men lose the church because the church has a Christian school in it. And he felt led of God to send his children to the public school. You don't do that. So now he's looking for another church. Because, you see, we're training a group of people who can go to the Lord and supposedly find out what God wants them to do. And when he tells them, then they want to universalize it and pour everybody else into their moat. See, most of us are not very comfortable with ambiguity. We're threatened by it, and that's why we are in trouble in terms of impacting our culture. The second test is that creative people are perpetually growing. They have, what I love to call an incurable curiosity fascinates me. The children go to school and a tremendous change takes place. For your information, children from the ages of three through six are incredibly creative people. They are in the 90th percentile and above. And after the first year in school, any school, it drops to 20%. See, we can't produce a Walt Disney because he went to school. A school where they couldn't, couldn't tolerate ambiguity and uniqueness of life. So the teacher said, now I want you to draw these flowers. So he draws these flowers. And she comes by and these flowers have faces on them. She says, walter, flowers do not have faces. To which he said, mine do. Here's a third test of a creative model. See how you fit this one. They're not afraid of failure. They're willing to run risks. I'm so tired of hearing Babe Ruth presented as the home run king. He is also the strikeout king. Don't forget it. Did he hit home runs? You better believe it. And he also struck out. So do creative people. The second way you develop creativity is by establishing a climate conducive to creative growth. But our churches are covered over with bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is the killer of creativity. And I can say to you categorically, in terms of your church, every time you write a policy for that church, you reach in and turn off the creative faucet a little more. See, in organizations where mistakes are not allowed, you get all kinds of counter behavior, and none of them are Christian. But we tend to be imitative rather than innovative. So we run around the country and we put on seminars. You remember the old seminars for busing. We went all over the place. Busing, that's the way to reach people for Jesus. Paul did it. Jesus did it. Well, Gene and I happen to be members of probably the wealthiest church in the city of Dallas, certainly the most educated. It was founded 40 years ago to reach the up and out in that community for Jesus Christ. Now, can you imagine anything more ridiculous than going down the most exclusive sections of the city of Dallas with your little bus? The guy's got an mg, he's got a Cadillac, and he's got a Ferrari, and you're going to go, beep, beep. What am I saying? Don't miss it. Am I saying that busing is not effective? Busing may be incredibly effective in your culture, in your community, but don't try to universalize it. Get down on your knees and begin to ask, lord, what do you want us to do in this community to reach these people for Jesus Christ? That's the ultimate test. But we don't prize individuality. We don't prize originality. We homogenize it. And I think the best churches in America today have a great motto. Nothing to prove, nothing to lose. You know, the churches that are doing the best work with young people or singles or senior citizens, ask them. They are the people who do not have the answers for working with these people. They said, we'll be glad to share with you what God has taught us. But you know, we've made every mistake in the book. You know the churches that have all of the answers to working with singles, the churches that are not reaching singles. Well, some of you are about to go into anesthesia. So before you go out, let me give you the last way to develop creativity, the environment in which God has placed you. And that is by encouraging incessant evaluation. I don't know how many times I hear somebody say, well, you know, I've got 27 years of experience. Uh, 27 times zero equals. It's not how Many it's what kind? You don't get better by experience. That's one of the great delusions in preaching. Guys figure, man, I've been preaching all of these years. Twice a Sunday and more during the week. Every year you don't get better, you tend to get worse unless you evaluate it. You ever sit down and listen to those tapes? You know what people have to listen to? When I taught analytics, I compelled a guy to come into a room. I played his tape, I said, look, if I come back and you're asleep, you flung. Amazing how many guides I found out like a light. And I've had guys say, Prof. You got the right tape on there? Yeah, that's the right one. You mean I sound like that? That's it. That baby never lies. Every time you say ah, it says ah. Every time you say you know, it says, you know. So finally, sitting out in the congregation, I want to holler. I know. Men. Never forget it. Change is not the enemy. Change is the opportunity. And what we need to do is to get more of our people involved in the process of changing. Because when they are involved, then they become more committed to helping bring the change about. The Church is preparing for a nuclear attack by gathering the wagons in a circle. That's the sarcastic comment of a pagan reporter of Time magazine. I want to read you something and I want you to hang on to every single word, because I'm not going to tell you now who wrote it. A religious mentality characterized by timidity and lack of moral courage has given us today a flabby Christianity, intellectually impoverished, dull repetition, and to a great many persons, just plain boresome. This is peddled as the very faith of our fathers in direct lineal descent from Christ and the apostles. We spoon feed this incipient pablum to our inquiring youth and to make it palatable, spice it up with carnal amusements filched from the unbelieving world. It's easier to entertain than to instruct. It's easier to follow degenerate public taste than to think for oneself. So too many of our evangelical leaders let their minds atrophy while they keep their fingers nimble, operating religious gimmicks to bring in the curious crowd who wrote it. A.W. tozer, 50 years ago. Men, it is a crime to bore a person with the word of God. You want to bore them? Bore them with Shakespeare, bore him with nuclear physics. All kinds of exciting subjects to bore people with. But, my friend, don't. For God's sake, don't. Bore them with the Word of God. And if necessary, as Spurgeon put it so graphically, get some kerosene and pour it over you and light a match and people will come to watch you burn. Thank you. Dear Father, your Word does not merely speak to theory, but to the reality life. I pray that you will not only give us a greater hunger and thirst to know the Word, but also to be transformed by it. We are living in days in which many men and women are broken at the wheel, desperately seeking purpose and meaning and fulfillment in life. We pray that you will make us good advertisements for the Savior and for the power of the Word of God. And we want to thank you in advance for what you are going to do because we come with great expectation through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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You've been listening to Howard Hendricks. Listen to Faith of Our Fathers each Saturday and Sunday to hear more great 20th century preachers.