Masking tape was an important household expense when our children were growing up. Peggy and I watched in wonder as our boys created space guns and castles from masking tape, plastic liter bottles, and cardboard. Their imaginations had no limits on what they could create. What a fun time for us as parents!
Reflecting back, I’ve been asking this question, “When was the last time we used our imaginations in ministry?” Let’s be honest. Most of us associate imagination with the play-acting of children. After all, we no longer create things from masking tape and cardboard. When we relegate imagination to children it becomes a childish behavior not an adult one. This mentality forfeits a gift from God.
I believe that imagination is a lost disciplemaking tool.
“Why is it that professed Christians dutifully sit in church . . . and then go out to live like pagans?” asks author and pastor Warren Wiersbe. “I have a suspicion that one factor is the starved imagination. The truths of Scripture have never permeated their imaginations.”
What is imagination? Wiersbe describes imagination as the “image-making faculty in our mind, the picture gallery in which you are constantly painting, sculpting, designing and sometimes erasing.” Author Cheryl Forbes writes that “imagination is the Imago Dei” that marks us as God’s image bearers. Imagination is the creative act of making images that pull all of our senses into experiencing God’s truth.
The Puritan theologian and philosopher Jonathon Edwards writes that “[imagination] can enable the mind to grasp circumstances never actually experienced.” Like other Puritan preachers, Edwards wanted to evoke suavitas (Latin for “sweetness”) in people’s souls as they heard the promise of Christ. The sweetness of grace is experienced through the imagination.
God regularly appeals to our imaginations. Look at the spectacular images He paints in passages like Ezekiel chapter one or Revelation chapter one. These vivid pictures grab our senses to experience Him. Without imagination, walking with God would be like replacing our high def flat screens with a 1950s black and white television.
Unfortunately, the church often lives in a black and white world. When was the last time you heard a message or took a course on imagination? Theologian Eugene Peterson ways that the church needs “masters of the imagination.” I believe the Body of Christ needs a discipleship of the imagination.
How do we bring God’s gift of imagination into our ministries? Here are three practical suggestions.
1. Create word pictures. Metaphors, analogies, and stories create word pictures to communicate meaning. How do you create word pictures? Start by making “is like” statements; creating analogies to express spiritual realities. The Kingdom’s growth is like a mustard seed. Salvation is like drinking living water. Grace is like welcoming home a prodigal son. Word pictures incite our imaginations by putting well-known truth into new containers for understanding and application.
2. Switch places. We imagine new possibilities when we switch places. Take a moment and imagine thinking and living like your neighbor or co-worker. What is his or her experience with God? What would make the Bible come alive to them? What would attract them to start a conversation about faith? When we switch places we imagine how truth is understood and lived out through the eyes of another. Switching places helps us imagine new and fresh ways to minister.
3. Daydream about application. Picture yourself living out a passage of Scripture. For example, what would your life look like if you accepted Jesus’s invitation to “become a fisher of men?” What skills and training would you need to be a fisher of people? What lures are attractive and appropriate to fish with for people? What is one simple step you could take as a result of these questions?
Put this lost disciplemaking tool to work this week. Set aside ten minutes and allow your imagination to run wild on a subject using one of the above suggestions. Ask God to use these ten minutes to expand your faith and to appreciate His gift of imagination.
In his wonderful essay, The Value of a Sanctified Imagination, pastor and author A.W. Tozer writes:
I long to see the imagination released from its prison and given its proper place among the sons of the new creation. What I am trying to describe here is the sacred gift of seeing, the ability to peer beyond the veil and gaze with astonished wonder upon the beauties and mysteries of things holy and eternal. The stodgy pedestrian mind does no credit to Christianity.
The Value of a Sanctified Imagination, A.W. Tozer
May we become masters of imagination and harness its potential as we reach and disciple people where we live, work, or play. Let’s restore this lost tool to Jesus’s mission.
Want to explore further the relationship between imagination and disciplemaking? Check out my book Conversations with Josh About Art and Ministry.
