Raise Your Hand

I want to ask you a question I heard recently that that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about.

I heard it a few weeks ago at a conference in Washington, D.C. for creatives. The theme was Courageous Creative, and I originally went because of the book I’m writing. I got to sit in on a book-writing workshop, hear from world-class creatives, and fill pages of notes with ideas and advice that I’m already putting to work.

But one of my biggest takeaways had almost nothing to do with writing a book.

During one of the sessions, the speaker was talking about creativity when he asked the room the question: “How many of you are artists? Raise your hand.” A few hands went up.

He paused, looked around the room, and said something to the effect of, “Huh. Interesting. I wonder what would happen if I asked a room full of kindergartners the same question…”

Wow. It was a powerful moment as the realization dawned around the room: Every hand would absolutely go up.

Every kindergartner sees herself or himself as an artist. When I was six, if you asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I literally used to say, “An artist.”

But somewhere along the way, we stopped putting our hands up. At some point in our journey, we forgot what we knew as kindergartners.

Maybe it’s because we’ve reduced the word artist to a very particular set of activities. Artists paint with watercolors. They write poems. They compose songs. They sculpt clay.

But sitting in that room, something clicked.

I think I have grown up to become an artist after all.

I know. That sounds strange coming from me. I don’t paint. I don’t write poetry. I can’t sculpt anything. I’m not even sure you’d want me designing the flyer for your kid’s birthday party.

But I started thinking about what I do. I write mission statements. I design strategies. I craft sermons and leadership teachings. I obsess over finding exactly the right words to describe a future that doesn’t exist yet. I take complicated, messy ideas and try to give them language and structure and beauty.

I paint pictures with words.

Leadership is one of the primary ways I create.

For some reason, we tend to put leadership and creativity in different categories. Creativity is expressive and imaginative. Leadership is straight lines, processes, spreadsheets, organizational charts, and execution.

But that’s never really been how leadership has felt to me. Leadership is making and imagining. It’s walking into chaos and imagining order. It’s looking at a group of individuals and imagining a team. It’s seeing a struggling, lifeless environment and imagining how it could become a life-giving culture.

It’s staring at a problem everyone else has learned to live with and wondering if there might be another way. It’s walking into a community and imagining what it would look like for the Kingdom of God to break in, on earth as it is in Heaven.

It’s seeing something that doesn’t exist yet and then beginning the work of bringing it into existence.

Maybe that’s why vision has always been one of my favorite parts of leadership. Vision is the way by which we walk with our Creator God and dream of the possible future we wish to create together.

Before the organization changes, before the culture shifts, before the team exists, before the new thing is built, somebody has to see it. It is invisible before it becomes visible.

And that sounds a whole lot like art.

This realization also helped me understand something about myself that has frustrated me (and sometimes others around me 😅) for years: I have a really hard time copying and pasting someone else’s ideas and initiatives.

Believe me, this is not always a strength. Sometimes the wheel has already been invented, and I would save myself and everyone around me a tremendous amount of time if I would just use the wheel.

But I often can’t help myself.

I need to take the idea apart. Understand why it works. Wrestle with it. Rename it. Reshape it. Find different language. Imagine what it could look like here, with these people, in this moment.

For a long time, I’ve mostly thought of that tendency as inefficiency. And sometimes it probably is. But now I think there’s something else happening too.

I’m creating.

I don’t just want to implement someone else’s painting. I want to stand in front of the blank canvas myself.

Maybe that’s what we knew in kindergarten that so many of us have forgotten. Creativity isn’t reserved for people with easels, guitars, or notebooks full of poetry.

We were made in the image of a Creator. And perhaps one of the ways we reflect Him is by looking at the world as it is, imagining what it could become, and then helping bring that vision to life through leadership.

So, leaders: What are you creating? Maybe it’s a volunteer team. Maybe it’s a staff. Maybe it’s a church. Maybe it’s a business, a nonprofit, a classroom, a ministry, or an entire organization.

Whatever has been entrusted to you, your leadership has the capacity to create something beautiful:

A culture where people flourish.

A team where people become better versions of themselves.

A mission that moves from words on a wall to something you can actually see in the lives of people.

A place marked by clarity, trust, courage, excellence, generosity, joy, or love.

No, it may never hang in the Louvre. But maybe one day someone will step back, look at the people and culture and mission you helped create, and say:

Man, that’s beautiful.

And maybe the greatest thing our leadership can create is something beautiful enough that, when people see it, their attention is ultimately drawn beyond the artist to the Creator whose image we bear.

So, let me ask you a question, leaders:

How many of you are artists?

Raise your hand.