Shifting Culture
On Shifting Culture we have conversations at the intersection of faith, culture, justice, and the way of Jesus. Hosted by Joshua Johnson, this podcast features long-form conversations with authors, theologians, artists, and cultural thinkers to trace how embodied love, courage, and creative faithfulness offer a culture of real healing and hope.
Shifting Culture
Ep. 410 Al Gordon - Igniting Your God-Given Creativity
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Creativity isn’t optional in this moment, it’s essential to what it means to be human and to follow Jesus in a rapidly changing world. In this conversation, I talk with Al Gordon about why imagination is under threat, how AI is reshaping our creative lives, and why the church is called to recover its role as a place that ignites creativity rather than suppresses it. We explore how the Holy Spirit fuels imagination, why wonder has faded in our culture, and what it looks like to move from inspiration to actually creating something that matters.
Al Gordon leads SAINT, a thriving church on a mission to bring hope to the people of East London. He’s the founder of RENAISSANCE, a global movement helping people encounter their Creator, be equipped as creatives, and empowering churches to become cathedrals of creativity. He is a trustee of Alpha International and is married to Olivia, an architect. Al is the author of SPARK: Ignite Your God-Given Creativity.
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A thoughtful, deep dive into one of the most talked-about movements in American history.
We can go through our daily life, cultivating, sparking our God, given creativity to help others experience the wonder of God. You know, great piece of music brings you to tears, points you back to the wonder of God, a great landscape, a great photography moment, a great story you tell. You know, a great piece of technology. It changes the world. Just loving people well, feeding the homeless, all those things point to the beauty and the wonder of Jesus.
Joshua Johnson:Hello and welcome to the shift in culture podcast in which we have conversations about the culture we create and the impact we can make. We long to see the body of Christ look like Jesus. I'm your host. Joshua Johnson, you know, creativity isn't a luxury right now. It's at the center of what it means to be human. Our world today is shaped by AI speed and endless distraction. So the question isn't just what we can produce, but whether we're still paying attention to the deeper work of imagination, of wonder, of creation. In this conversation, I sit down with Al Gordon to explore why creativity matters more than ever. We talk about the quiet erosion of imagination in our culture, the role of the Holy Spirit in shaping creative lives, and why the church might be called to become a place where new ideas are nurtured instead of shut down. We get into the practical side too, how to move from inspiration to action, how to build creative rhythms in everyday life, and why play, prayer and community are essential if we want to recover what we've lost, this isn't about becoming more artistic. It's about becoming more fully alive, fully human, and joining God in the ongoing work of making all things new. This is a crucial conversation in today's world, so join us. This is my conversation with Al. Gordon Al, welcome to shifting culture. So excited to have you on
Al Gordon:it is such a joy. Thank you for
Joshua Johnson:having me. Joshua, I like to dive straight in on these and so I just want to know why creativity matters now in the world that we're living in today.
Al Gordon:Well, that's a really good question, and it's the right question to start with. I'll take it from two angles, if I may, and we can go around the one too. One is the technological moment we're living in, and the other is the biblical calling of all people to be made in the image of God. And if we can hit the first, well, actually, let's take the second one first. There is a big lie out there, people say, you know, I'm just not creative. And we hear that the whole time, and when you drill a little bit into that, what they usually mean is, hey, you know, I'm not excellent at playing the instrument, or I'm not really at a painting, or I can't write poetry, or they compare themselves to others, if we really believe like we do, that we are made in the image of a creator. Every one of us created in the image of a God whose first thing we learn, Genesis, one, one in the beginning. God creates right the way through the end of story. Behold, I make all things new. Jesus says, Revelation. So therefore we are book ending this God who calls us into being made in His image. And that image is that of a creator. And that's kind of exciting. So as Brene Brown says, you know, I'm not creative. Doesn't work. It simply doesn't work. The question is, will you ignite that creativity? Will you learn how God would make you uniquely wired in order to reflect the story? So creativity matters, because we're made in the image of creator. First up, secondly, the moment we're living in right now is the most exciting moment to be alive on the planet, and we can come around this a little bit. But you know, if you take popular sociologists or writers like Yuval Noah Harari, the atheist sort of philosopher and commentator in his book Homo sapiens, talks about the idea this might be the last generation of humans because of the impact technology is having on us. Stephen Hawking is a great scientist. This is the advent of AI. The technological revolution we're living in right now is the most important thing ever to have happened to the human race. Now, we would argue differently, the resurrection is the most important thing to ever happen, or the incarnation. But you know, we're definitely living in this moment where creativity is massively under threat by AI, by the rise of superintelligence, by the kind of abdication of human volition in the area the creative space. So you put those two together, this is a really urgent moment for you and I to be having a conversation around creativity.
Joshua Johnson:I totally agree. And you're you're seeing this. What is it about AI that that that is harmful for our creativity, that eliminates some of this creativity that we have as humans.
Al Gordon:So I'll give you a context of this. The other night, I went out for dinner at a sort of posh, I don't know if you have if that word translates, but this sort of posh, like tuxedo, black tie dinner, and it's a friend of mine's 50th. And I'm walking into this room, my wife, and there's seated big tables of 10. And, you know, we never get dressed up and go out to like, a big like thing like this. I feel like it was prom night, and it was amazing. And we're meeting this other lady who's walking with us, who's who recently single, see no faith background, didn't know what I did, and she's walking she's like, I'm gonna We're having a great night. Isn't this fun? Here we are all dressed up, we're out. We've got babysitters for the kids. And then I said to her, you know, like, you know, talking about your life, she's, I'm out for a big night out. I'm I'm so excited. We go to our table, and on our table there's, like, place cards, and she seems she's sitting next to the name on the card is my name, Reverend Al Gordon. She doesn't know that's me. She comes at my wife, says, You're not gonna leave it I'm sitting next to the effing vicar. Didn't use the word, and I'm so sorry. You know, what a terrible thing. And she said, I hope you're not sitting next to the effing vicar. She's Where are you sitting? I said, Well, actually, I am the effing vicar, horrified by the whole situation, and disappears off the market of Margarita, the guy who's overhearing the story like Johnson says, that's the best thing I've ever seen. Is roaring and laughter. And I said to him, Well, what do you do? You're not, you're not, you know, you're not a vicar. He said, No, I'm in robots. I said, fascinating. Tell me all about robots. So he begins to tell me, there's two things you need to understand as a vicar, as a pastor, about robots. Number one, by the time you retire, there'll be more humanoid robots walking around the face of the planet. There will be human beings figure that one out. So what does that mean for church? Digit, do we have a robot service? Do we how do you pastor? What if a robot comes to Christ and they want to get baptized? How does that even work? Pneumatologist can write in a request an episode. Second thing he said is even more scary. He said the thing you need to understand about robots is the thing that is most under threat right now in the human experience is not the military. It's not the jobs market. It's not, you know, white collar jobs. It's human creativity. And I said, explain. He said, Well, look that the thing that humans are gonna get lazy at is flexing the muscle of original thought. But he said, ironically, it's the only thing humans are really good for. The algorithms that we create. Can only hallucinate. They don't dream. And again, this comes down to the Christian perspective. You know, on the day of Pentecost, Peter stands up, preaches that great sermon from Joel, and he says, young men will dream dreams. Young men see visions. The unique thing, made in the image of God, filled with the Spirit of God is we get to do the dreaming with God. And so this is a really urgent moment, and I think AI is going to change many things, both for good and potentially for less good, like all technologies, you know, the question is, Where will the church be when the wave breaks? So the wave is beginning to break. The question for us is, how do we make sense of that? And the question actually is, how do we make sense of human creativity. The church has a unique message in this moment.
Joshua Johnson:What have we gotten wrong about imagination as we're walking through this it's like the capacity to dream you just talked about. It's really imagination saying, What is new? Where are we going and imagining with God? What are we getting wrong? I think in the church right now when it comes to imagination,
Al Gordon:well, imagination is like the key superpower of the human soul. You know, without the imagination, you're really, really in trouble. And I think for us as believers, we need to learn how to harness the power of our imagination and encourage that. And it's a key. You know, CS Lewis would talk about before he was converted, talks about the baptism of the imagination, how that was so crucial to his experience of his spiritual life. And over and over again, in this moment, we are the thing that's really under threat is the imagination, the power of the imagination. And the imagination is your great interface with God. It's the in the in the kind of the garden the imagination that you can really encounter God and grow in your relationship. It's a wonderful, wonderful tool for interacting with God. Birdie have says this, God created the world by imagination. You know, imagination is a godly superpower that the imagination is getting squeezed out more and more by the culture we live in right now, when we're rarely bored. You know, today, the fact is, we're hypnotized by our pixels. You know, even, even maybe you're listening to this podcast, you think I've got a couple of hours to kill. In the old days, we'd sit bored, looking out the window, waiting for something to happen. You know, when do we ever do that? When do we ever allow ourselves to grow? And imagination is one of those things that is incredibly plastic. So neuroscience, we could talk more about this. Neuroscience is an amazing field that's growing the whole time. We're learning more about the power of the brain, but neuroscience is learning that imagination is one of those faculties that you can learn and unlearn. So an example this NASA did a study. They found that children under the age of I think it was 890, 8% of them qualified as creative geniuses when they did the study, and that flips to adults wearing 2% will qualify as creative geniuses. Now those. Same people. What's happening is there, there's a functional fixedness that comes in your mind when you stop dreaming and imagining, that you start going back to the old ways of doing things you're, you know, you're familiar with doing that thing, and so you lock down the power of the imagination to really impact you. So part of the work we're trying to do, and kind of, you know, what I'm passionate about is encouraging and inspiring and sparking the power of the imagination in the life of all of you, like you and me. You know people who are just like, hey, we're trying to get through the day. How can we enhance our imagination? The good news is, imagination is something you can do certain things to
Joshua Johnson:help grow. Let's talk about that. I was talking to my son. My son's eight years old, and I'm feeling this like creativity is one of the most important things that we need to have in our life. And I told him that creativity in the future will be the most human thing that we could do and the most important thing for you to cultivate right now so that you could be successful in the future as a human and I just felt it. But I want to know then, as this eight year old, how do I start to help craft that so that it goes into his entire life that it's not just a a child creative genius, but it is something that will then translate into adulthood, and he can be a creative, imaginative human being.
Al Gordon:It's, I think, the key question that education is going to have to wrestle with. I think formation is going to have to think about, I think, in terms of our abilities to encourage and equip each other, we have to learn to harness and unlock the power of imagination. So let me answer that. I think you know, one things I talk about in this, this new book spark, that I feel very passionate about, is, is, how do we help equip people? And there are practical things you can actually do to help with this. So we talk a little bit about the kind of five hacks, if you like, that we would work through with people. And you know, this material is designed to be a course as well as a book. So one is like pausing, like making space to be bored. That's the biggest thing for kids today, is encourage the discipline, the spiritual discipline of boredom, like pause, press the pause button. Mozart. Where does Mozart write his best music? It's not in the concert house. It's in the carriage between Vienna and Prague and Paris. As he's going across Europe, he's stuck in a carriage two days, and he starts to dream and imagine these bits of music fall into his brain. All of the great creative breakthroughs have come in the gaps. Ideas come in the gaps. Boredom is birthplace of brilliance. So encouraging your brain to stop and slow down and pause is one of the most powerful things you can do for imagination. So number one, be prepared to press pause. Number two, really, really importantly, to simply stop and make time to play again. Your eight year old will do this brilliantly today. The pillow thoughts that we build in our childhood will when they become the cities that we create as adults, the imagination that you have as a child is not wasted. It's you going through the muscle, the building, the muscles of the mind to help you imagine a different future. And God is very present in those spaces of play. Jesus, of course, says the kingdom of God belongs to little children. You know, that is one of the most profoundly important statements for human development and so encouraging playfulness. You know, it comes down to kind of you're not taking ourselves too seriously. You know, the lightness that comes with play. Albert Einstein famously said, play is the highest form of research. You know, his famous story, he's sitting on a tram in Bern, Switzerland one day, and he's going from the library to the laboratory, and he's daydreaming, looking out the window, and he sees sunlight starting to hit the tram and crisscross burns. Kind of street pattern. It's like New York has a grid. And he notices light shadow, light shadow. And he starts to imagine riding on a beam of light as he's looking out the window, dreaming about, what would it look like to move along a beam of light. Then he starts thinking, I wonder if light moves, and that's how most of the theory of relativity births. Einstein credited it as the imagination when he was just playfully thinking about a game. So there is great power in playing. George Bernard Shaw, the great playwright, says this, we don't stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stopped playing, so Hack number two would be around play. Thirdly, prayer, again, there's so much richness in this increasingly neuroscience. Fascinatingly, is finding that the part of the brain responsible for creative thought is the same part of the brain that's responsible for spiritual interaction. Therefore creativity is spiritual. When you do spiritual things, you're engaging in creativity and vice versa. That's a really powerful thing to encourage and remind ourselves, particularly kids. You know, there is not a dislocation between your imagination, playfulness and prayer and God, and that's an important thing. So again, prayer, reading the Bible, making yourself. Immersed in the story of God actually helps nurture the imagination. You know, certainly look at the great writers or the great artists or the great filmmakers. They're always looking to a bigger story than their than their, themselves. Then for me, a kind of key Fourth thing would be, would be people like surrounding yourself with people that you create with. You know, it's we live in this very dislocated world. Actually having friends that you can imagine and dream with and sit watching the sunset, and so building relationships, having communities that are creative, is really important. Rather, you know, education squeezes creativity into a certificate or a box. What if we just, you know, blew that on its head and said, Why doesn't the church become an amazingly creative startup incubator where we, we come up with crazy ideas, and we don't burn you at the stake straight away, you know, we, you know, we let people play with ideas and and in community, we let the imagination have run. And the final thing, it's really powerful, is purpose. If your imagination has a sense of purpose, you have a greater chance of achieving real breakthrough. There is a wonderful scripture in Acts 1336 where it says David served God's purpose in his generation. When he served the purpose of God, he fell asleep, but it's purpose is what drove David so many great breakthroughs happened. Like look at Gutenberg in the printing press. He had a really clear vision. You know, we think of Gutenberg as an amazing hero of technology and of Scripture, but if you look I again, I cover this in Spark, there's a fundraising letter. I found that Gutenberg wrote a fundraising letter he knew to a donor, asking a donor to pay for an early prototype of his printing press. And he describes in that letter how it wasn't a printing press. It's like, basically, it's not about the printing press. This is an opportunity. And I'll quote you a little bit. He says, this is the spring of truth that will flow to scatter the darkness of ignorance and cause a light to shine among men. He was so passionate about the gospel reaching people, he was like, this isn't a printing press. You're missing the point. So definitely having a sense of purpose. A wonderful theological David Bentley Hart has this great phrase around good and evil. He talks about how evil is simply a parasitical wasting disease, whereas goodness actually replicates and gives life and brings truth and hope and beauty and the imagination is one of those things that can give such power, such purpose, such breakthrough, but we need to nurture it and make space for it, pause, play, build good people have a sense of purpose and allow God to meet us in that place of encounter. Part of
Joshua Johnson:the role of Holy Spirit is, is this creativity, imagination going into also then purpose and vision and dreaming and imagination. And I know like the very first gift of the Holy Spirit in the entire Bible was about art and creativity. Yeah. How does the Holy Spirit just start to enable creativity in us, but
Al Gordon:it's a fascinating Bible study to do, and I commend it to you. And again, I cover this a lot. In Spark is the journey of the Spirit of God in the creative story of the people of God, first creative act in the Bible comes in Genesis two, where God invites Adam to name the animals. Like, why would God do that? It's the ultimate collab. Like, you know? He's like, hey, I want you know he knows what they are. He created the Aardvark. But he's like, Hey, Adam, come and name this. Are you sure you want to call it Aardvark? That's a nightmare for kids to spell, you know? But he's like, Yeah, great. Let's go for it. And it says, Whatever Adam chose, God went with. I love that. Then all the way through Bezalel, the first person who's filled with the Spirit of God. You'd expect Moses, Abraham, you know David, maybe some of the great you know, prophets, the priests, maybe to be the ones anointed by God. But instead, God anoints a maker, someone who works with design and craft and works with wood. I find that fascinating. I find it fascinating as well. When Jesus comes, we always say, hey, 30 years of obscurity and three years of ministry. Well, what if we've got that slightly wrong? What if the 30 years in the workshop of the Carpenter was actually part of what God was doing? That's his making. That was as much military to Jesus as it was raising the dead and healing the sick. So I think the idea that God is dislocated from creativity is a difficult one, and the church have got this wrong, by the way, so often, but when we get it right and we understand that the Spirit of God comes to anoint and empower creativity, and by that, I mean the creativity of all believers. It's the entrepreneurs, it's the mom educating a kid at home. It's the the nurse who's loving someone in the in the emergency room. All these things are deeply creative human acts. And to release the creativity of all believers, we've got to allow the Creator spirit the great ninth century here. Says, Come create a spirit. That's still to this day when they ordain people and make traditional nominations, that's the very creator, the hymn that they say, Come create a spirit, because the creator wants to keep that work of creation going through the life of you and I, the life of every believer everywhere.
Joshua Johnson:Then what does that look like for the church to be able to create that space and the the creative spirit that are will be there so that it is an incubator, and that we can actually then take the spirit of creativity into the world.
Al Gordon:Two choices. One is a picture where it's sort of church against creativity. And so often this has been the tale of church where we've we've not understood how to nurture the creative soul, and it's become a thing that's been sort of dislocated. We said, Oh, we're against that, or we don't like that, near that thing, and we don't know how to handle it. Of course, creative people are sometimes wired differently. You know that the data around what creativity looks like? You know the they often find it hard to fit into structures. There's often some neurodiversity. You know, depression, we know that suicide rates among creative people is three times out of the general population. Is really hard to create and to make and and yet, Pastor relief, we can learn to nurture and encourage and create safe spaces for people to come as they are and be loved and poured into and encouraged. There is great blessing, not just for the church, but actually for the renewal of all things, right, which is the purpose of this. So the other picture of it is where we get it right. There is an unlocking, and, in fact, an igniting, of God given creativity. So look at the Renaissance, the classic capital T, capital R Renaissance. There are lots of renaissances, but if you look at Florence in the 1490s there is an explosion of creativity that is really unparalleled to this day in terms of density and impact. Now, right at the heart of that, what people don't realize is there was a spiritual revival going on, a preacher called Savonarola who preached and converted many of those people that you would now know as household names, the Michelangelo's Botticelli, they were deeply impacted by the preaching of this kind of radical, fiery monk who called them back to repentance and holiness and consecration and the Spirit of God moved with great power the Reformers Luther would credit Savonarola as the first reformer. Now what that tells us is where the church gets under the outpouring of the Spirit on creativity and helps to pastor and nurture that we have an unfair advantage in terms of cultural renewal. And the reason I say that is because I think it's absolutely essential that we learn to ignite this creativity in this moment. Why should you know we were running a renaissance event in Renaissance, as your listeners would say, in San Francisco just last month, and we gathered nearly 1000 leaders, many of them in the tech space. I had, I interviewed, I chatted with a lady who works at anthropic, the kind of makers of the of the Claude AI platform. And she, her job within anthropic is to teach Claude spiritual disciplines and formation and ethics. I find that fascinating. They're thinking about, how do we give the algorithm, you know, sense of ethical, spiritual kind of landscape. And you realize in these moments, the world's money is following. You know, technologies. You know, digital technologies. But and startups are brilliant this. They see an idea, and they will put money behind creativity, they'll do incubation, and they'll create a sort of startup incubator. Now, the church everywhere should be the great startup incubator for the future, the new creation that is our purpose, and yet we always think of it as an hour and a half on a half on a Sunday rather than saying, How can we restructure our churches to be places that nurture creativity? The good news is it's not complicated to do you can do it. It just requires a decision of the will to choose to spark that creativity
Joshua Johnson:through that answer. Many times we talked about renewal, that then kind of means that we actually have to see something new happen within the church if we're going to have renewal, right? What are we trying to renew? And what posture does it take to see renewal happen?
Al Gordon:Let me, let me answer that a slightly long way around, because I want to get to where I'm going with this. When you look back at the history of the human race from pre history, there are three things that happen simultaneously. Firstly, you get a sense of technological revolution happening, and that technological revolution is always deeply impactful. The second thing that happens is you get a an accompanying spiritual renewal that takes place alongside it. The third thing that happens is you get cultural renaissance that follows. Now you can map those three things that happen sequentially onto any key breakthrough moment in human history. Give you an example, the. 40,000 BC, we have a big technological breakthrough called pyrotechnology. You know, the domestication of fire. We learned to like, well, fire was always around. We didn't invent fire, but we we learned to kind of control fire. And as a consequence, there's a big technological breakthrough. You know, all the wild, hairy, scary things were scared off. And we learned to, you know, there was a flourishing of human culture. Secondly, you'd expect a spiritual renewal, an absolutely bang on with the invention of pyrotechnology, that the human race, for the first time, start to bury their dead in elaborate ways, which suggests the emergence of a belief in an afterlife. So spiritual renewal, you'd expect also cultural renaissance. And sure enough, bang on, 40,000 BC, the first artwork the human race creates that we know of is formed cave paintings, figurative sculpture. They start to emerge. So you get spiritual renewal and cultural renaissance flowing from revolution and technology. Now map that onto any moment in human history. You can look at the invention of language technology, you get the scriptures that emerge in that time spiritual renewal, the formation of the great Abrahamic faith. You know that that comes from that moment. And you get from that cultural renaissance, the first poetry, the first laws, the codexes. And that is the flourishing of Near Eastern culture that you'll be familiar with for to the the capital R Renaissance, you should expect, when you see the Renaissance to have a spiritual renewal, there is a corresponding spiritual renewal and a technological revolution. We have the revolution of the printing press, which changed the world. You have the Reformation going on inside it a spiritual renewal, and you have the renaissance that was propelled by those two things to impact the whole culture. Fast forward to today, definitely the big one. You know, this is the moment where, you know, everybody is is saying it, nothing has ever happened in terms of our technology, of the human race. It is as impactful as the moment we're living in right now. You know, it is, it is utterly bewildering and terrifying at the same time, and hugely exciting, you know, so technological revolution tick. We should expect a spiritual renewal and a cultural renaissance to follow. Are we seeing evidence of those two things? Well, yes, the answer is, in the western, most secular places on the planet, right now, with the rise of what started with the internet, social media and now AI and super intelligence and machine learning, large language models, you're starting to see a generation emerging who would have a greater sense of spiritual hunger. So where we are in London, we're seeing a turnaround among young people. We're calling it. They call it in the press, secular press reporting about a quiet revival happening. And what that looks like is, again, I met two people on Sunday at church brand new came to church in their young kids who are just spiritually hungry. They've grown up in a online generation where they can ask chatgpt or Claude or the internet anything they need to know about anything, and they are deeply, deeply spiritually hungry. The hunger I've never known anything like this. We've begun to see a sense of the presence of God moving through the culture in London, people just we baptized more people in our little church saint in East London, which is a church plant. It's about nine years old now, but we baptized more people in the last year than we did in the previous eight years. There is an acceleration, you know, cumulatively, of like, you know, if you added up years one to eight, we baptized over 100 last year. Three, 400 have come to faith. There's, there's a multiplication factor. So I think we're in the beginnings in the West, and you're seeing this in the data, the Barna studies the Bible data. There is a spiritual hunger that's happening. We're beginning to see it tip into, I wouldn't say we're in revival yet. I think we're in pre revival. I think we're doing warm up laps. I think it's a mark one prepare the way season. But I don't think we're far away. Now, the question is, as leaders, and many of your listeners are going to be people who are leading church or thinking about this, will we respond in this moment with this vision to let the Spirit of God set fire to our ability to innovate and create, and if we get that right, the impact will be to the ends of the earth. There will be a massive awakening in our generation. So we're primed for a really, really exciting time to be alive. It's getting me
Joshua Johnson:inspired, and I'm getting excited. And inspiration is really key to where we're going, right? You have you talk about imagination, inspiration, innovation and impact as your four big key things that you're talking about in your book. Spark. And I was preparing for this interview, and I get sidetracked, not very often, but this one, I did because I started to dream. I started to imagine. And there's a dream that I've had in my heart for 20 years that I've been imagining this is going to happen, and it just bubbled up again, and it's like, I can't let it go. It's ridiculous. I think for most people, they get that imagination or the dream state, they get some inspiration, okay, but then the act. Actual putting it into practice and taking those baby steps to say this creative work that God wants to see birthed in the world actually needs to take form and take shape. How do you help people move from those first stages into a stage of actual creation?
Al Gordon:Yeah, well, it's a great I mean, firstly, what a great problem to have, right? But the reality is, like you say, when inspiration strikes, you got to move. You know, so many of us procrastinate. We don't step in and and the good news again, like the imagination, you can nurture. It's one things I try and cover in Spark, is this progression, like you say, from nurturing the imagination to actually starting to allow inspiration to happen. It's a lot like fermentation, you know, if you know, if you know fermentation, like you know, if you make beer or you make bread and you sourdough, your fermentation happens in the dark. It happens it's slow and it's pretty messy, and you don't necessarily, kind of, it's not a front row seat situation. It's like, hey, it just has to be hidden. But when it starts to that, then there's a human involvement. You know, it's interesting. With communion with the Eucharist, God doesn't give us grape and grain, he gives us bread and wine. That the result of human collaboration and the working of and the refining of wine, there's an element where, with when creativity starts to flow in your life. You've got a responsibility to start the work and to start to respond. So great line in one Chronicles 2820 and the good news. Translation says, start the work and don't let anything stop you. And I'm always saying that for you, like, don't like, just don't fail to launch. You know, don't procrastinate. Don't say tomorrow, Manana. Manana, we'll get there. Like, you got to start somewhere. So number one execution. Thomas Edison invented the light bulb. Said vision without execution is hallucination. I love that quote. You know, get on and make a start. So find a way you can start small and a bit like a funnel, if you imagine them a funnel, like you're pouring water into a bottle. At the top of the funnel is wide. You might have 100 moments of inspiration. 100 ideas, you reduce start to kind of reduce them down, then you're going to find that 10 you wake up the next day thinking, that's still a good idea, and then one will be an absolute killer breakthrough. So the point is, unless you have 100 ideas, you never get to that point of breakthrough. And some people give up. They go with one idea, and they try and get it all the way through, when actually volume creates breakthrough. There's a very famous study in a US university of a photography class where the professors split the class in two and they said to one side of the class, you were going to go away and the whole semester, I want you to come up with a perfect image. Each student went away to find the perfect image. The other side, he said to them, you guys. And they didn't know the corresponding assignment. They said, You guys, your assignment, this term, is to take as many photographs as you can, like just volume. At the end, they were invited to submit their best work, the one image guys had created, the perfect image, the volume. Guys had taken 1000s of 1000s and 1000s of images. Guess where all the prize winning images came from the volume, not, you know, scarcity. It's in the same way inspiration start the work and have lots of ideas, you know, let inspiration strike regularly, and then the next sort of thing is actually just to work really hard at it. You know, hard work is hard work. You've got to keep going. You've got, like, kneading dough, you know, you get a sourdough, and you work in the sourdough, into the into the dough. It takes time. It's my friend is a baker. Said to me, you were I was like, I'm trying to make a sourdough loaf. How do I do it? He said, The knead until your hands hurt. That with ideas, you've got to keep working them and turn them over in your mind. And artists sketch, pastors, practice your talks and write and see what sticks. So I think dedication, hard work, not giving up, not paying knowledge, and then thinking about adding that little bit of salt into your creative process. The thing that's going to set it apart, you know, Romans 12, two don't conform to the pattern. This will be transformed through a renewing of your mind again. God wants to do that in your life, creatively and staying sharp, keeping yourself, you know, on your toes. So the creative process is a process when inspiration strikes that you can work towards. It can help you. And then final thing to say is, don't be afraid to what they describe in literary terms. Kill your darlings. I've met so many people who are still writing their first feature film or their first book, honestly, and I used to work in film as I came across endlessly. This one, you know, one screenplay that the person couldn't let go of. There's a very famous story of a guy called Ron Moore who was a starch. I know your Star Trek if you're a Trekkie, maybe similar Star Trek fans, but Ron Moore was famous Star Trek writer, but he grew up as a massive Trekkie as a kid, and his favorite character was Captain Kirk. And he then eventually got a job in film as a runner, and then became a writer, and eventually got his dream job writing on the TV show Star Trek, dream job. And then they came to make a feature film. They were like, Ron, we want you to come up with a really amazing way to make this leap from the small screen to the big. Screen. And so he went away, started writing on this, and he did the bravest thing at the time. Is one of the bravest things in Hollywood, he killed Kirk. And in that first film, that Star Trek Generations, Kirk dies, and it was like WHAT YOU KILLED Captain Kirk. And he said this. He said, I wept when I wrote it. It was so powerful for him that is an amazing creative decision. And I think so many of us were so precious about our ideas, we don't, you know, we don't learn to refine and trim and prune. So think of that funnel. Think about having lots of moments, inspiration, refining them into ideas, then innovating, shaping and ending up with one thing that's really going to help create breakthrough
Joshua Johnson:you talk about, and you've talked about before, is that collaboration in your creativity. Doing it with friends, doing it with others is really important. Like, one of the things that that I have heard that I who I am, who God says that I am, is I'm a playful, collaborative that means that, you know, I'm I'm playful, I can create, and I like to do it with other people. Yeah. Problem is I work on my own at home, I'm by myself too much when I'm a collaborative person, yeah. What does it look like for because oftentimes we have incubation of ideas alone, yeah, how do we make that jump into finding our people collaborating with others so that we could actually see this come to fruition?
Al Gordon:I mean, it's a brilliant question, and I think part of it is identifying how you're going to create best, and the fact you're thinking about that and you're conscious that is really, really important. So it's certainly true in in life, that you know you have to seek out the opportunity to collaborate. And for those of us who are more kind of introverted, you know, maps, a lot of creatives are that they're writing. They're thinking that it's tempting to be in the library that's where you recharge, or you learn. You're going to have to find ways of stepping out of that comfort zone and create those moments where you can build into interdependence, creative interdependence. Of course, the Trinity is the great model for that, theologically, that we're not created to be sort of on our own. We're created to be invited this dance of love. Another great quote, let me quote this for you, is, I want to be part of the people that make meaning. I want to do the imagining. I want to the people that make meaning. That from the great philosopher Barbie in the Barbie movie, we're not created to do this on our own. We're created it with people. So I think finding opportunities to do things together doesn't need to necessarily be the thing that you're good at creating. But one things we do, these Renaissance events, that we do around the world now, is we actually create moments for play, like we do. You can go and learn to do wild baking. Go and make bread, and we cook it on a fire as part of a conference. I'm in the middle of London. It's like, how do you do that? Or people come and they learn to make stuff. They paint. We were in San Francisco last week, and they painted a mural, like with a graffiti artist. Legally, I should add down the side of the alley, you're being able to be involved in getting your hands dirty and playing starts to build friendship and relationships. So definitely get out of your your desk. Get out from behind your your screen. Go talk to people, even if it's not seemingly productive, hobbies, sport, life, friendship, like the great sequoias. You know, the trees that the tallest trees in the world, the longest living organisms on the planet. The secret of Sequoia is not its great height, taller than a skyscraper, but it's, it's, it's, it's interrelatedness. The roots of a Sequoia are only about 12 feet deep. It's their ability to network together and creatively. Um, isolation isn't going to help you. It's being able to work with others. So you know pastors who are thinking of how you help your people, talk to your people, test your ideas, get involved, get your hands dirty. Don't just lock yourself away. And when you do that, you start to find you're growing a lot more than you would do if you're on your own. So definitely, definitely open to do that. As I've
Joshua Johnson:been leading simple churches. I've trained church planters, missionaries. We look at Acts 237, through 47 a lot of what the early church was doing, what were they following? And we walked through and we could find like the general commands of Jesus and what it looks like to actually follow Him, be disciples of Jesus, and what the early church was doing. One of the things that we often skip over is the the place in that where they were talking about signs and wonders that they were the early church was really like enamored and were full of wonder. And I often think that maybe the church is stuck because we forgot the Wonder. We forgot to look at the beautiful things and to be wowed. How do we start to fill ourselves with wonder in the church again?
Al Gordon:Well, it is. Absolutely true that we're living in a wonder drought. There is a kind of a sense of cynicism and tiredness that's pervasive in our culture. And at the same time, you know, the God that we we experience through His Spirit and in His Word and through the the sacraments of the community of the people of God is a God of wonder, a God who is like, you know, I love that verse in Mark chapter 915 where they had the transfiguration. And I would have, you know, oh, to be a fly on the wall at transfiguration. But they've had this incredible encounter with God. And it's like, wow, you know, I imagine Jesus is glowing and his clothes are glowing. And you can imagine coming off that high Peter and James and John must have been like, we never, you know, you can totally appreciate people always, like, slightly mock Peter of like, oh, he wanted to build bu so he could stay on the mountain. I'm not going anywhere, please. Can we stay in the sense of the wonder of Jesus? But what happens next is fascinating. Jesus says, no, no, let's go. And they go down the mountain. And then in nine, Chapter Nine of Mark's gospel, verse 15, it says, As soon as all the people saw Jesus, they were overwhelmed with wonder and ran to greet him. And I find that fascinating, because Jesus, I don't know if he was like, glowing like you come back from spring break in Florida, you look amazing. Or there's something about the wonder, the beauty of Jesus, that at the time there was a fight going on between the disciples and the Pharisees, and Jesus walks into that, and it says, all the people saw Jesus. That's the first thing. It's like, how can we help everybody connect with the presence of God. That's the purpose of creativity, beauty, truth, goodness is to connect people again with the fundamentals that the heart of Christian theology from Aquinas. It was that great desire that we would pull back the veil and help people connect with the God of wonder. But all people saw him. When they saw him, they overwhelmed with wonder and the consequences. They run to greet him. I find that the most fascinating thing that that that the whole culture is impacted. It's not just like the religious elites, they come running to see Jesus, and that's what we long for, isn't it in our in our day, that people would, would, would, would experience the love of God that like the raw power of the presence of God. Now that looks different. Yeah, the glory of God, as Irene has says, As a human, fully alive, but wonder is a great it's a great signpost towards God that G, K, Chesson, who I love, is writing says this amazing thing. He says this at the back of our brain, so to speak, there is a forgotten Blaze or burst of astonishment at our existence. The object of both the artistic and the spiritual life is to dig for this submerged sunrise of wonder, and that's what we have an opportunity to do. You know, everyone listening to this, we can go through our daily life, cultivating, sparking our God, given creativity to help others experience the wonder of God. You know, great piece of music brings you to tears, points you back to the wonder of God, a great landscape, a great photography moment, a great story you tell. You know, a great piece of technology. It changes the world. Just loving people well, feeding the homeless, all those things point to the beauty and the wonder of Jesus. So, yeah, wonder key ingredient in a very, very cynical, burnt out, pixelated moment. Let's become kind of the let's release the priesthood of all creatives to find wonder and
Joshua Johnson:bring it to light. Amen. Let's do it then. So Al, what? What hope do you have for the readers of Spark?
Al Gordon:Well, you know, I, I feel really passionate about this. You know, I've been in ministry for PM, a Christian 30 years ago. I'm in my 40s now, and I think there's never been a more urgent time to release a fresh sense of creativity through churches to the biggest untapped potential is the creativity of all believers. If we get this right in this moment, the algorithm of the future will be written by men and women, boys and girls who are passionate about pursuing the wonder of God. So creativity right now is the most urgent task of the church to recover as part of our spiritual practice and shape. And that's not to make the church look good on Sunday. It's to make the church brave on Monday. So my prayer and hope for this is that it would really help people catch fire in the air of creativity, but not just the ones who already have already drunk the Kool Aid of creativity, but actually understanding that most of us who write off our own creativity are infused with divine creative potential, and that this spark of the Spirit would set that on fire. You know, it is in the Jewish mystical tradition, there's a word in the totsots which is literally means Spark. Think that when God creates Adam, he puts a spark in him, that that, you know, is the fire of the Spirit in our in our lives, the potential for God to catch fire. You know, Moses at the burning bush, the first thing happens, it's the fire of God. Comes the same in the upper room at Pentecost. It's the fire of and I think that fire of the Spirit that God puts in your heart as a human being, that that incredible creative potential when it's unlocked by God through the power of the Spirit, it means God is able to do immeasurably more than you could ask or imagine your life. You have more connections in the synapses in your brain than there are stars in the observable universe. You know, it is unbelievable the potential for human creativity to bring good, true, beautiful things into the world. The big question is, will we be brave about investing in this? My hope for Spark is that people will read it together. You know, we're setting up, I think, called spark circles. Each chapter is designed to be a small group resource so you can talk it through with three or four friends, or 10 or 15, you know, as a book group. But more than that, we hope to help catch set fire to people's, you know, life that they would read this and it would help be something that would really help them, as mums, as pastors, as entrepreneurs, as accountants. You know, we need the world to be full of God's divine creativity. Wherever you find yourself on Monday, that is the place God is calling you to set fire to your creativity, and the potential is vast. Well, I'll have a
Joshua Johnson:couple of quick questions here at the end. One, if you go back to your 21 year old self, what advice would you give?
Al Gordon:Be braver, don't be so afraid. Yeah, so much of the time my life has been held back because I'm worried what others will think, or have I got it right or and mistakes again, I got a whole chapter on failure and department. Mistakes are much better teachers than success. So if you're not making lots of mistakes, you're probably not going to be learning. So I'd encourage my 21 year old self to make more mistakes and be brave. I made plenty. You know, we all need that.
Joshua Johnson:We all need that that is so good. Anything you've been reading or watching lately, you could recommend,
Al Gordon:gosh, last film I saw, Hamnet, if you haven't seen that, where Jessie Buckley just won the Oscar. She was
Joshua Johnson:amazing, and she was full bodied.
Al Gordon:Yeah. I mean, if anybody you know parents out there, you can't really sit through that without kind of you snotty crying. I remember we went as a whole family with my, kind of youngest to my oldest, and they were sandwiched between mum and dad, who were just like blubbing, and they were so embarrassed. But I think, I think exposing yourself to great art is really, is really important. You know, the soul is, is brought alive by the reflected beauty in the creation. So Hamnet, for me, was, was actually fun enough the music and Hamnet some of my favorite kind of work. Max Richter is the composer. I've loved his work. So I think kind of hearing great photography, great storytelling, fun of Shakespeare. You know, I'm a vicar in East London. If you're ever in East London, listeners, please come and hang out at St. But one of our locations is in a church called St Leonard's Shoreditch, which is where all of Shakespeare's actors are buried and Shakespeare worship. There a Handel played the organ. There all these crazy things. It's a very old building, but that building where we meet on a Sunday as a church community, there's a plaque on the wall for the man, if you've ever seen Hamlet, the guy who plays Hamlet in the film, at the end of it, he's dead and buried in the church. So I find it kind of, you know, that's interesting that, you know, there's, I think, learning from the past as well is really important. So making sure you're you're reading up to date things being inspired by what's brand new, but also an eye to the past.
Joshua Johnson:So good, so amazing. Well, Spark, Ignite, your God given, creativity is available anywhere books are sold. Some people go and order that and get that. You can start your spark circle. You go to these Renaissance, little conferences that you're doing all over the world, which is fantastic that people could actually get their creativity sparked. How can people connect with you and what you're doing all these creative things? Where can people go and find more information about all that?
Al Gordon:Well, again, I can give you a few different ways to connect. I'm good on Instagram, so al gordon.co and that's also like a website. You can hit me up, send me messages. I'm really happy to chat more Renaissance. The website is Renaissance dot movement. And again, you can find us on Instagram or wherever you go social media. And Saint, again, Saint dot church in East London. That's our website for our church. So, yeah, please be in touch. I love hearing from people. I love conversations. I think, you know, like, like, you Joshua, I was like, you know, creating can be lonely. It's actually doing it collaboratively, and hearing from people and hearing stories is really encouraging. So please be in touch. Al gordon.co on Instagram or online. You can get in touch that way. And yeah, just thank you for listening. If you're still listening listeners, you know, you've done really well. 50. This is the British accent, yes. But most a lot, yeah.
Joshua Johnson:For some people, usually Americans are drawn in more by the British accent, so we like to listen longer with the British accent than an American accent.
Al Gordon:I've loved our conversation, Josh, thank you for taking time, and it's been a real joy. And I feel like I want to stay for another couple hours to pick your brains, but it's been a joy speaking. Thank you.
Joshua Johnson:Yeah, thank you so much. Al, it was fantastic.
Al Gordon:God bless you. Bye. You.
