Hello, we’re Lynn and Mark Barger Elliott. Blue Lobsters Creative was born on a dock in Provincetown when our family came across three blue lobsters in 48 hours (see below).
Since then as educators, counselors, pastors, a professor of leadership, and an award-winning filmmaker, we have attempted to point to and describe the joyful, faithful, and hopeful aspects of life, both those seen and unseen. Albert Einstein called this the “mystical,” others have called it the miraculous.
We offer resources such as books, workshops, courses and the Miracle Year Project. We also consult with universities and other organizations.
About Lynn
I am married to Mark Barger Elliott, my amazing life partner, and together we have raised three adult children who we celebrate, cheer on, and love to visit in D.C., Chicago, San Francisco.
I am a Presbyterian pastor and have served in five congregations. I am a consultant with the Compelling Preaching Initiative, funded by the Lilly Endowment and coordinated through the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship.
As a professor, I taught Ministry Leadership, Intergenerational Theory, and Youth and Family Ministry for 13 years at Calvin University on their campus and the Handlon Maximum Security Prison.
I am an author. In 2025, I will be publishing Grief is Art: 17 Ideas on How to Invite Art to Heal our Pain and Loss and On the Other Side of Healing: 51 Reflections on What We Discover as We Heal. I also contributed to Intergenerate, a textbook on Intergenerational Ministry.
I am a podcaster and have produced podcasts on topics such as The Art of Grief. In 2025, I will launch the Miracle Year podcast. I was interviewed on the Forever Forward podcast and a clip from that has been viewed over 600K times on TikTok.
I have a Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary, a Bachelor of Science degree in philosophy from Wheaton College, and certifications in End-of-Life Doula Professional training from the University of Vermont, in Nonprofit Executive Leadership through the Mendoza School of Business at Notre Dame, and in the Create a Happy and Meaningful Life course at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business Executive Education program.
About Mark
Hi, I’m a writer, paster, founder, coach, and filmmaker.
I’m married to Lynn Barger Elliott, my amazing partner in life. We have three grown children who inspire us every day and live in D.C., Chicago, San Francisco.
I co-founded Blue Lobsters Creative, the Emotional Architecture Center, and the Miracle Year Project.
I am a Presbyterian pastor and have served in five congregations and love to teach about faith, purpose, emotions, miracles, and finding joy and gratitude within the gift that is our life.
I am an author. In 2025, I will be publishing Grief is Art: 17 Ideas on How to Invite Art to Heal our Pain and Loss and On the Other Side of Healing: 51 Reflections on What We Discover as We Heal. I have also published Easter: 21 Stations, Middle of the Maze: 5 Secrets to Finding Your Way and Creative Styles of Preaching
I’m an award-winning documentary filmmaker. Lost Boy Home tells the story of a Sudanese “Lost Boy” who returns to South Sudan to search for his parents. The Last Songwriter tells the story of streaming’s impact on songwriters and stars Emmylou Harris and Jason Isbell. I’m also an author of a book of poems, finding the middle of a maze, and on communication
I graduated from Cornell University, Princeton Theological Seminary with a Master of Divinity, and San Francisco Theological Seminary with a Doctorate in communication.
As a child in Nairobi I was almost eaten by a lion; as a teenager, I published poems in national magazines and took games off a future Wimbledon champion; in Oxford, I gave a TED talk on the miracle of finding three blue lobsters in 48 hours; and I’ve finished seven marathons before street sweepers closed the course. I’m a writer, pastor, coach, speaker, consultant, and award-winning documentary filmmaker.
Our Blue Lobster Family Miracle
One day in Nantucket we visited a small aquarium and saw a blue lobster scurrying about in a six foot round pool. A young woman informed us a blue lobster is an anomaly: only one out of every 2 million lobsters is born blue.
I mentioned to my then 12 year-old son that statistically this meant the next time he would come across another blue lobster he would be about 2,700 years old (loosely counting days).
Twenty-four hours later, strolling along a beach in the port village of Provincetown, our family happened to walk under a dilapidated dock, the kind with missing boards and stray posts. Our heads were positioned downwards as we scanned the beach for slipper shells and horseshoe crabs, but what we came across, of all things, was two more blue lobsters.
These weren’t swimming in an aquarium, but were sitting together on a weathered post, side by side, facing us. Now, if encountering a single blue lobster is a one in a 2 million event, how do you calculate the odds of stumbling upon three such lobsters within twenty-four hours? Two of them arranged on dock posts, as if displayed in a museum. As if someone had put them there for us to find.
BLUE LOBSTERS CREATIVE 