Creativity has always been an important value of Melville Junction. God is the creator and we are created in his image so we have within us some of his divine creativity. He didn't create a boring monotonous world for us to live in, but a vibrant, extravagant universe full of colour and light. The creativity within us is a gift from God, so surely it is appropriate that we use this gift to worship him in church as well as outside of it. We also have a responsibility to steward the creative gifts that he has given us.

Here's a clip from the talk "Jesus, the Cross & the power of God" NT Wright gave a while back at the Salt & Light Leaders Conference:

"We have lived for too long with the arts as the pretty bit around the edge and with the reality as a non-artistic thing in the middle. But the world is charged with the grandeur of God, why should we not celebrate and rejoice in that. And the answer sometimes is, because the world is sometimes also a very messy and nasty and horrible place. Some artists make a living out of representing the world as a very ugly and wicked and horrible place. And our culture has slid in both directions: so that we've got sentimental art on the one hand and brutalist art on the other. If you want to find sentimental art, tragically, the churches are often a good place to look. As people when they want to paint religious pictures, screen out the nasty bits. But genuine art, I believe, take seriously the fact that the world is full of the glory of God and that it will be full as the waters cover the sea and at present (Romans 8) it is groaning in travail. Genuine art responds to that triple awareness of what is true - the beauty that is there, of what will be true - the ultimate beauty and of the pain of the present, and holds them together as the Psalms do, and asks, “why and what and where are we?” And you can do that in music and you can do it in painting. And our generation needs us to do that, not simply to decorate the gospel but to announce it. Because again and again, when you can do that you open up hermeneutic space for people whose minds were so closed by secularism that they just literally cannot imagine any other way of the world being. I have debated in public in America with colleagues in the New Testament Guild who refuse to believe in the bodily resurrection and again and again the bottom line is when they say “I just can't imagine that.” The answer is, “Smarten up your imagination.” And the way to do that is not to beat them over the head with dogma but to create a world of mystery and beauty and possibility…like listening to a piece of music that, after you have listened to it, it is much easier to say “I believe in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit” than before you heard it. Maybe there are artists here today who are going to do that for your local community or maybe for the country, maybe for the world…in what you write, in what you play, in what you paint, in what you sculpt, in what you dream and turn into reality."

We have done several big creative Events this year: at Easter we did "Stations of the Cross - An Interactive Installation based on the Traditional Contemplation" and in July we did "Surface of the Deep", an exploration of the Creative Process based on Genesis 1:1-3. Check out our MJ Photo Gallery to see some pics of these events. We haven't done a Melville Junction Art Exhibition this year as we have the done for the four preceding years (we got a bit distracted producing our own Youth Worship Album) but hopefully we will do one again next year.

If you are interested in being involved in future Creative Events or Art Exhibitions please speak to Rebecca Rouillard or email team@melvillejunction.net.