Stress Management Through Creativity

“You need to get a hobby.” This was my wife’s advice after my last graduation from seminary. It was undoubtedly motivated by a desire that I not return to school again (she told me so), but it proved more beneficial than I ever imagined.

The summer after graduation, I started carving longbows by hand. Later, I added leatherworking as an indoor hobby when the weather wasn’t conducive to carving bows. The benefits were not financial but spiritual. After sensing the benefits of my creative endeavors, I reflected on those benefits and did a little research.

As it turns out, creative hobbies are good for us. Being created in the image of God, The Creator, our souls are blessed when we reflect His image through creativity. Two of the benefits of reflecting God in our creative hobbies are the reduction of stress and the increase of joy.

You Are Creative

“I’m not creative!” That idea is probably bouncing around inside many of you. The phrase may even slip out of your mouth. If that is you, I’m right there with you. You don’t think of yourself as creative or artsy. You didn’t thrive in art class, sing in choir, or join the drama team. But that doesn’t mean you aren’t creative or that God didn’t make you to create.

Some are especially gifted at creativity. God even supernaturally empowers some with the ability to craft things with exceptional skill and beauty (Exodus 36:1-2). In contemporary vernacular, we don’t describe talented artists as creative; we’ve begun calling them “creatives.”

Whether you are a “creative” or someone who thinks, “I’m not creative,” God made you in His image. Part of who God is, part of His essence, is to create. As His image bearer, some of that essence is in you. It’s not a question of whether you are creative, but how creative you are and how creative you are becoming. So, keep creating if you already do, and start creating if you haven’t.

Creation Reduces Stress & Brings Joy

In 2018, Lily Martin, et al., published a systematic review of 37 studies evaluating the impact of creative arts on stress management. Martin and her co-authors gleaned many insights from these studies, the most fundamental of which was that people who engaged in creative arts demonstrated reduced anxiety and better overall stress management. It was interesting to note that creating or generating was an important factor in reducing stress. Two of the studies reviewed also explicitly found that creating positive content reduced stress while generating negative content did not.¹

My own experience of hobbies certainly comports with these studies. I noticed a decreased sense of stress and an increased sense of joy when I spent time on my creative hobbies. At times, it was certainly due to distraction from the pressures of ministry that tend to flood every area of life. The peace and stillness of “mindless” activity was like relaxing a muscle that has been tense and knotted up. The creative hobby afforded an active way of “being still (cease striving) and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). 

At other times, ministry situations crept into my mind but in a way that was not overwhelming. Sitting at a shave-horse or workbench, mildly focused on a task, I freed my mind to slowly process things going on in life and ministry. It afforded me time to ponder with God and pray about the various stressors or ministry situations.

I could intercede on behalf of the counseling situations I was involved with, lift up the relational issues facing staff members, and lay down the never-ending concern of financing a ministry dependent on people’s generosity. I didn’t sit down intending to pray for those things but did not resist them when God brought them to mind. It was more relaxed and delightful than trying to cram it all into my daily prayer time with the umpteen other things on my prayer list. 

Besides the stillness and stress management that came from sitting and being with God in my creative pursuits, there is also an added joy that comes from accomplishing something. While we never reach perfection in our creation and can’t say to the same degree as God in Genesis 1, “It was good,” there is something powerful and satisfying when we can say, “It is done.” Our creativity is always dependent upon God’s. We don’t make anything ex nihilo. We must use the substances God gave us. In some way, creative arts, where we take materials God has given and make something beautiful and good, is a way of subduing the earth and exercising our dominion as stewards of God’s creation (Genesis 1:28).²

Five practical tips for stress management

Let me offer some practical advice as you consider adding creative hobbies to your life to alleviate some of the pressures of ministry:

1. Get creative with your creativity

Try out a few things to see if any spark a particular interest or passion. Try something you’ve never done before. Here are a few ideas to prime the pump: paint (watercolor, acrylic, spray), draw (pencil, colored pencil, charcoal, pen, and ink if you are really brave), sing, play an instrument, whittle, leather work, sewing, sculpting, throwing clay, jewelry making (wire jewelry, cutting stones, forging), polish rocks, write fiction, write poetry, write music, metalworking, etc.

2. Start small

It could be very easy to go overboard with some of these hobbies. If you think you might like to make jewelry, don’t buy a forge and gold bricks to melt down and shape (your wife will sign you up for a PhD in a heartbeat if you propose this). Try making wire jewelry where you twist wires into rings, bracelets, etc. If you love it, then buy the forge!

3. Don’t turn it into a side hustle

As soon as you turn it into a job, you add pressure, not take it away.

4. Don’t make it burdensome

Don’t set expectations, timelines, deadlines, or quotas. It took me over a year to carve one bow. Just spend some time here and there chipping away at your craft and let the end come when it comes (insert your own eschatological metaphor here).

5. Expect and delight in imperfection

Not even the greatest artists ever create perfection. Let your imperfect work remind you of your finitude and the only perfect one you live to worship. If you expect to be perfect or even good when you are just starting out, you will be disappointed. It’s not about being the best, being good, or being able to post amazing pictures of your creations. It’s more about the process than the product. 

We worship the divine Creator. We are His workmanship. He created us in His image. We become more and more like Him as He sanctifies us. One way we reflect His likeness is through our creativity. There are many blessings to living as God designed us. One of those blessings is the reduction in stress and the increase in joy we experience when we create like our Heavenly Father. 

©2024, 2025 Solomon Soul Care. Used with permission.

1. Lily Martin et al., “Creative Arts Interventions for Stress Management and Prevention—A Systematic Review,” Behavioral Sciences8, no. 2 (February 22, 2018): 28, https://doi.org/10.3390/bs8020028. ↩︎
2. Henry Morris, “Dominion Mandate,” accessed May 15, 2024, https://www.icr.org/article/dominion-mandate/. ↩︎