Creative worship for the 'Uncreative'

I don’t play a musical instrument or paint, I’m not very practical and have never felt inclined to try most of the creative arts. In fact this is true of my wife and my three children. But actually God has made all of us creative. I create through my preaching and my writing. I do have some ability in drawing and even flower arranging (I’m not supposed to admit this in the north of England!) though I have never developed these gifts. I am happy to have others come with ideas and creative ability but often neglect my own modest capacities.

Creative worship is not my natural style but recently we got together as a family and instead of opening the Bible we spent an hour “being creative”. I gave some suggestions of things family members might consider doing and although there was an initial fear about what to do all four of us got on with our own creativity. I collected things from the garden, a piece of wood, some small stones, foliage and the only flowering plant in the garden at the moment. I made a kind of collage of these things as an act of worship. One of my sons made two very professional looking origami angels after some trial and error. Another son collected some sweet smelling foliage and wrote a poem/song which he bravely sang to us. This is more or less unheard of in our family. Another member of the family wrote some letters to friends and prepared a very special tea break as her act of worship. We ended with a table full of what we had produced including a picture taken of the sky that morning. God really met with us, it was a simple, different and actually rather freeing to spend time doing something we rarely if ever normally do.