Great artists have the ability to make something out of nothing. Potters, for example, can take formless clay and shape it into something functional and even beautiful. They see with different eyes than most people; they have a vision of the finished product while staring at what others might see as broken, useless or blank.

Jeremiah 18 describes God as a Master Artist who takes marred clay and shapes it into a beautiful vessel. Jeremiah’s prophecy illustrates the redemptive work of God, and therefore informs the role and responsibility of present-day ministry leaders.

Leaders, people who initiate and lead positive change, possess the capacity to sculpt things ... to shape the world around them.

As leaders, we possess the God-given ability to shape things.

Artist and potter Theaster Gates drove home this point in his March 2015 TED Talk. He took the artistic principle of making something out of nothing and applied it to his South Side Chicago neighborhood, which looked to most people like broken and ruined clay.

Gates led community transformation efforts marked by taking things and places that others had given up on and giving them new form and function.

This, however, is not just some new revelation from a modern-day artist-turned-community-activist. This is the redemptive plan of God illustrated for us in the Old Testament. The God who makes something out of nothing, who makes all things new, calls us as spiritual leaders to apply this principle to the people and places around us.

God wants us to look at the broken, formless, blank, often dirty situations and places and see what they will look like after He touches them.

The truth is, things aren’t always what they seem. As leaders, we possess the God-given ability to shape things. To work together with God to make something beautiful out of nothing. To put our hands to what others have turned their backs on.

This article originally appeared in the March/April 2018 edition of Influence magazine.