Try New Things! It’s a Game Changer.

The old saying says, “Necessity is the mother of invention,” but I sometimes wonder if adversity isn’t the mother of creativity. Much of creativity is problem solving and problem solving by definition requires a problem. Sometimes you don’t even know you have the problem, but sooner of later each of us will need a game changer. I’ll give you a personal example from my own journey.

The First New Thing: Ministry

After years of struggling to have an art career, I got way out of balance and was in idolatry to my career to the point where I laid it down. At about the same time, I felt the call to ministry, but this seemed to be an impossibility since I had a profound fear of speaking in public. Eventually I began to volunteer as the youth leader at my church, and found I really loved it, but there was a problem. My students, some of whom had been in the church longer than I had, had not retained the basic Bible stories. This terrified me and I prayed for a way to make my teaching stick. God give me an answer I didn’t want. Use art.

The Second New Thing: Art As a Ministry Tool

I didn’t want to use art. I had laid it down and for the most part, I was happier without it. Oh I missed creating, but I didn’t miss the self inflicted pressure and all the rejection letters. I didn’t want to get back on that hamster wheel. In many ways it felt like freedom, still the call was undeniable. I started to use art and it became a great teaching tool. I began to share my ideas online, and a few people began to contact me, first to do art in youth ministry workshops. This was new for me, but it did something powerful. It helped me to overcome my fear of public speaking. This led to something else. 

The Third New Thing: Writing

I never considered myself a writer, mainly because my only real exposure to writing was school writing assignments that often felt more like punishment or something to be pushed through than something to be enjoyed. I was the kid who rarely did his homework and I never thought of writing ever being something I’d ever want to do. Ministry changed that. I was using a teaching resource called Youth Leaders Only by Interlinc. The resource was cool. I’d get a quarterly box of Christian Rock CDs (at the time) and a quarterly DVD (also at the time) of Christian music videos. Accompanying these was a book full of Bible lessons, based on the music videos and a song from each CD. I loved these and so did my students, but there was a problem.

I would listen to all the music and think, “Man I wish the lesson was on this song instead of that one. My group would benefit more from that theme.” Eventually the lightbulb in my head turned on. “Look at their format and write your own lesson.” I tried it and it worked. Eventually I was doing it so often that I approached the company and became one of their writers. This opened up a whole new world of creativity for me, and today I write many things, including lessons, books and yes, even this article.   

The Fourth New Thing: Art Ministry

I started to see speed painter videos online. In my art career I would have found this very objectionable, I already had people that saw Bob Ross complete a painting in a half hour and wonder my I was trying to bill them for so much time. Now I was seeing people do paintings in a third of that time or less. In ministry I saw it differently. I had seen the power of art to help drive the point of a lesson home. I also knew people liked to watch people create art, but would knocking out a painting in less than ten minutes help to draw people into a message? So I tried it, first at my local church, and I saw it worked. This was the birth of AMOKArts.com my speed painting/speaking ministry.   

The Latest New Thing: AI Music

I have always loved music, and it has really touched my heart. Having a son who does community theater helped me to really see the power of music to communicate a message and tell a story. I even wanted to be a musician for a while, but I didn’t have any discernible musical talent. When I do my speed painting, I often paint to the church’s worship music, mainly because when I tried to speak and paint at the same time, it didn’t work well. It slowed the painting down, and it was difficult to concentrate on two things at once, which made the speaking incoherent. I like for the music and the art to reinforce the message and that wasn’t easy to find. The pace of the music was either too slow to paint to, or the music didn’t fit the message. My son helped me solve this. 

Enter Suno AI  

One day he walked into the room with his computer, and played a beautiful (at least at first) song. When it got to the chorus, it really caught my attention, because it mentioned Pastor Dave. Before long I realized this song was about me, and the way I paint and preach. I was so touched until it went into the verse about my alleged flatulence. You know how sons like to bust on their fathers, but I was intrigued. He explained that he had used a web site called suno.com and it was AI. Now I must confess when it comes to the arts I have a love/hate relationship with AI. I love what it can do, but I wonder how much longer we’ll need real artists. If I thought people questioned my rates with a half hour Bob Ross painting, imagine what this would do.  

I began to think of all the applications it had for my ministry, so I tried one of my own. I am doing some presentations on the fruit of the Spirit and I decided to plug in the fruit of the Spirit as a prompt. It came up with something pretty good, but some of the lines didn’t make sense. “Self control blooms like a tree???” When I noticed it allowed the writer to add his or her own lyrics, I was hooked. If this worked I could write painting music that fit with my message exactly. I wrote a few songs on their free basic service, which is only for personal use, and then switched over to their pro service for $8 per month and I’m off to the races. Once you enter the lyrics it takes less than a minute to give a fully orchestrated song. 

Here’s my fruit of the Spirit song, illustrated by yours truly. 

What I Learned

To be clear none of these things are new and I don’t claim to have invented any of them, but they were all new to me and they all changed the course of my life. They filled needs in me that I didn’t even know I had and each one expanded my abilities. Where at one point I only saw myself as an artist, today I am an artist/speaker/preacher/writer and lyricist. I’m still not sold on AI and I really wish I could hire musicians to write and play the songs for me, but for now, this will expand my reach in hopes of getting to that point. Trying new things can be a game changer, or maybe I should say how can you change the game if you don’t try new things?

Try new things. You never know where you’ll end up.