We serve a community of people diverse in age, affluence and worldview and we love it! We embrace the way each person was designed and we believe that they have a special way they can impact the world around them. The most foundational piece of our lives and our business is our faith in Jesus Christ. We don’t expect our clients to agree, and we genuinely believe that each of those who disagree is worthy of the same love and respect as those who do. Our faith, however influences everything we do at CoCreate. It fills our vocation, and indeed our whole lives, with purpose and hope, with love and adventure. (We hope these four things are contagious!)
The name CoCreate can mean a lot of things. It can speak of our collaborative process to help lead our clients into a values-driven and purposeful financial plan. The name can describe how about how you have the power to determine the course of your future and when we journey together through your financial life, we actually create a path that can give you greater fulfilment and more ability to adapt when life hands you the unexpected. You might say, we create your future together. For us, CoCreate speaks of an even more beautiful calling.
This calling started before the beginning of time, where the Bible speaks of God creating the heavens and the earth. Too often when we read this passage, we read a scientific debate onto the text and miss the beauty of what learn about God and ourselves. The creation narratives in scripture were never written to explain how the world was made, but rather to reveal to us how we relate to our creator and to give us purpose.
In the beginning, God Created
the Heavens and the earth.
And the earth was without form and void,
and darkness was over the face of the deep.
And the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
This passage predates poetry, at least in the Ancient Near East, but it is certainly very poetic. When you read it in Ancient Hebrew it has a beautiful cadence. In it, we see the universe before creation. It isn’t described as “nothing,” (what some theologians would call ex nihilo) but rather as such utter chaos that it might as well be nothing. It’s substance in violent disorder—darkness flailing about. In the Ancient Near East, which included the Hebrew culture, water imagery carried connotations of intense power and destructive potential. Rivers and floods could tear through the land destroying what was in its path. Ships were wrecked by the violent seas—those who ventured there would often never return. This isn’t just a little water, it is the deep and it’s covered with the dark of night. And as the Spirit of God hovers over the waters, God speaks and there is light that limits the darkness to the night. God speaks again, and the violent waters are subdued by the land.
When God has finished his creating, he has made a garden in the midst of all of this. Its a place that’s been perfected. The violence and chaos that existed in the uncreated universe does not exist there. He created this to be a place of rest and a place for Humankind to have perfect relationship with him and with creation.
God created humankind in his image, purely equal, and bearing his authority in creation. The whole concept of the Image of God, means that we were created to be his ambassadors. God gave the first humans two instructions: to fill the earth, and subdue the earth. Normally we hear subdue with a violent and negative connotation, but what this passage is suggesting is that God’s creation is not yet complete throughout the universe. God reveals our ultimate purpose, to participate in subduing the violent chaos of the not yet created universe with him. We might say our most important calling is to CoCreate with God.
God want’s us to plant gardens, paint, build cities, create economies (benevolent ones, at least), make music, create communities. God’s ultimate hope is described as a city. And the most important and significant part of creation is that it’s a place that God walks with us everyday. He is present, and everything and everyone thrives in perfect unity as a result.
We have a choice to live out our creative purpose, or to violent chaos. CoCreate Financial exists to help people discover and live out their God-given purpose and turn financial obstacles to catalysts for doing extraordinary things.
We believe that everyone can participate in this Co-Creating, whether or not you align with the Christian faith that influenced us so much. There is a beauty, a purpose and an adventure for everyone waiting to be revealed for everyone as they pursue what they are truly passionate about. Every time I see someone run after the thing they were just made for, I see a little bit of the God who created me. That’s why we hope to be a part of these stories and Create a future…together.