These 3 creative companies have great principles that could be valuable for most ministries.
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Leadership
Creativity can be a difficult task when done individually, but when done as a group this difficult task can become even more difficult.
You will face criticism for the things that you do. You will create something that people don't like. You will be forced to make a difficult decision that upsets a family. Somebody won't like the music choices you make for weekend services. Criticism is inevitable in ministry because it is impossible for you to keep everyone happy. When you are faced with criticism, how do you respond?
Have you ever referred to your church as you "church family?" The church is a family. Regardless of our race, our family background, or our socio-economic status because of Christ we are one family. And when somebody joins a local church they are becoming a part of a family. They are not connecting themselves to a pastor, a building, or a program but to group of believers that have committed to doing life with each other. And as with any family there are a lot of family dynamics that come along with becoming part of a new family.
In order for any retreat to happen, volunteers need to be willing to come as leaders. I am blessed to be able to have an incredible team of volunteers that help make all of our retreats incredible. Our students experience incredible life change on retreats because we have a team filled with adults that want to do nothing more than care for students. Leading up to many of our retreats, I often hear from parents, "Do you need chaperones?" While the question is a well-intentioned statement letting me know they are willing to help, there is a very significant distinction that exists between the job of a chaperone and the job of a shepherd.
I saw this venn diagram on Chris Jones' blog. It shows really well a way to look at what you are doing and also helps us answer the question, "What should I do?"
I've never been much of a fan of bringing in "professional" speakers to teach students in our ministry. And I'm pretty sure that most of our students don't really care much either. That being said, I am a big fan of using "guest teachers" within our student ministry. The main difference between the two, in how I'm defining them, is that the professional is someone brought in that costs money and has no connection to your ministry; the guest speaker is someone that is a volunteer within our ministry and already has strong relationships with the students. I think that using guest teachers is not only helpful to myself as the leader, but I think it's a very important component to our teaching times.
4 Reasons to Use Guest Teachers
1. You need a break. Teaching every week of the year, sometimes multiples times a week, can be a huge burden. That's a ton of messages to develop, create, and communicate. Allowing someone else to teach and yourself to have a break will help you to stay creative and a few weeks ahead.
2. Kids like hearing other people besides you. Having other voices speaking to the students is a huge value; as students get used to your speaking, it becomes extremely valuable for other teachers to come in as another voice reinforcing the same message.
3. You can train new preachers. The best way to get better at preaching is to preach more. If you have people on your volunteer team that like preaching and teaching or college-age students that are considering ministry, you have an incredible opportunity to help teach them how to preach.
4. You're not the only one with something to say. As you start developing leaders within your ministry that have a heart for preaching, not only will the develop skills but they might also have things on their heart that they want to share with your students. Let them share what's on their heart and work with them as they say it.
What are some other reasons that you have found to use guest teachers?
Photo Credit: Ganatronic
Youth ministry is a fun job. When I was in high school, I started thinking about youth ministry as a job because of it. The student ministry had an incredible impact on my life, and I could potentially get paid to go on all kinds of fun trips. Why wouldn't I want to do this? My initial thinking was accurate; doing youth ministry, I do get all kinds of incredible opportunities for fun experiences and actually get paid for it. But anybody who is in youth ministry will tell you, it's fun but doing it for a career requires more than just liking the job.
Around that time in high school all my friends started volunteering in the middle school ministry at my church and I wasn't invited. Like most high school students, not being included with my friends was very upsetting. When I was in high school, there was no chance that any of the leaders would've looked at me at thought, "This kid is going to do youth ministry." It really is not surprising I was not asked to serve because no one would have ever thought that I would have any interest of ability to spend time talking to middle school kids. For some reason I thought I should do youth ministry so I got the courage to ask if I could also serve in the middle school ministry and everything changed.
I tried it out.
With any job, getting experience is key. For me, being in a healthy student ministry was the best experience I could get. As I served on a team that functioned well together and built relationships with the leaders that became great friends, I grew significantly as a leader. I loved youth ministry and did everything I could do be around it, and I learned a lot because of it.
I fell in love with the kids.
Over the course of volunteering in middle school there was a significant shift that happened. Initially youth ministry was something that could possibly be a fun job, but after having the chance to attend a middle school winter retreat I felt like I loved the students. I hadn't felt that before, and it changed the way I saw student ministry. I couldn't wait to spend time with them and get to know them. Youth ministry is a very fun job, but if it's something you want to do for life it has to be more than fun, you have to love the people you serve and the people you serve with.
How'd you get into youth ministry?
Photo Credit: Majorie
This video by the Fuller Youth Institute does a great job of pointing out what often happens in churches. It's a great reminder that as youth workers, we should be finding ways to integrate our teenagers into the life of the whole congregation. What are some ways your church is trying to help students within your ministry be integrated into the overall life of your congregation?
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Pixar is one of the most creative companies in the world. They consistently push the boundaries of technology, release hit movies, and tell touching stories. I have loved Pixar movies since I first saw Toy Story and I continue to love both their movies and their approach to being a creative organization. In the Church we may not be creating movies, but a significant portion of our work is about telling the story of Christ and life change within our midst and finding creative ways to do so. Because of this I think we can learn a lot from Pixar's approach to fostering creativity.
Empower the creatives.
If there are people that are trying to be creative within your church organization, whether they are trying to be creative in their planning of a worship service, their student ministry, or the management of a staff, it is important that they feel empowered. In most studios, specialized deparments generate movie ideas while another department works on making those ideas into a film. At Pixar the job of the development department is not developng the movie, but finding people who will work well together, keeping their team healthy, and helping them solve problems.
Perhaps the best way to help our creative teams is not finding more inspiration, but helping them to work well together. Empowering the creatives is less about teaching them to be more creative and more about helping them as a creative team. The student ministry team is empowered not when they realize they have innovative ideas, but when they can work well together.
"If you give a good idea to a mediocre team, they'll screw it up. But if you give a mediocre idea to a great team, they'll make it work." - Harvard Business Review on Pixar
Show Unfinished Work
At Pixar there is a group of people consisting of eight directors called the brain trust. The idea is that the group can get together and show a work in progress and follow up with a discussion about making the movie better. Because of the amount of trust in this group of people, they refine creative ideas without an ego preventing critical feedback and without hesitancy from the other members to not pull any punches.
When is the last time you were able to bring a raw, unfinished idea to your team and work it out? Having a peer culture allows for good ideas to be developed into great ideas. It allows everybody on the team to offer the insight and challenges. What would it look like for you to present your sermon series idea before a "brain trust" of people to help you work it out? What if you were able to write music and present it to a "brain trust" within your church? What if you could take your student ministry retreat idea and work through it with your team and knew that doing it together would make it significantly better?
NewSpring Church does some of the best testimony videos that I've ever seen. I think that one of the best things that we can do to help people realize the mission of the Church is by capturing the stories of our people whose lives are being changed and making those known. I've been following many of the videos produced by NewSpring in their "A Story" category and they all are phenomenal.
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Where does an idea come from? What is it that sparks the imagination so that it creates a painting, a screenplay, a poem, or a song? I am fascinated at what it is that makes one day seem like a day where creativity spills out of my brain and other days it feels like scratching nails against a chalkboard. I don't think there is a trick to make your day an idea-filled day, but I have noticed a few places that seem to help me generate ideas.
Ideas come from ideas.
We may like to believe that our ideas are completely original and purely from our own imagination, but the truth is that instead our ideas are likely connected to other peoples' ideas. This doesn't mean we are stealing their ideas, in fact, it's not even close to that. But the reality is that ideas, whether good or bad, inspire us to think of other ideas. We may have an idea for a brilliant sermon series that was inspired simply from a word mentioned in an interview on TV. It came from another idea; although there is no way anyone could ever figure out what the inspiration was. You might have a bad idea for video clip to use, yet when discussing it with the team, it triggers somebody else with an idea that fits perfectly. This is common. Ideas inspire more ideas. The more ideas you come up with, the more they will inspire. The more creative inspiration you consume, the more ideas you will generate.
Ideas come from hard work.
Some days it feels like all your ideas are terrible and there is not a creative bone in your body; those are critical moments in your creative work. You may not come up with any usable ideas on a day like this, but the creative work of putting ideas on paper improves your ability to generate ideas, and as we learned from the previous point, it may inspire other ideas on another day. Creating, just like most other skills, requires us to work on it and improve the craft. We will come up with great ideas if we go through the hard work and improve our abilities of creating by creating even on the uninspired days.
Ideas come from doing other stuff.
Have you ever had a moment in the middle of the night when you had a brilliant idea? I have, and I've also had moments where I felt the idea was so brilliant that I could not possibly forget it...only to wake up the next morning only remembering I had a great idea and not remember what it was. There is something about not working specifically on an idea that allows the brain to be creative. I'm sure there's some science behind it, but all that I know is when I do things completely other than what I'm creating, it often allows my brain to be more creative. What are mundane everyday tasks that you can do that will allow you to stop working on your ideas so your brain can be creative subconciously?
Where do you notice ideas coming from?
Photo Credit: Steve and Sara
I recently watched this video of John Piper and Matt Chandler discussing preaching. Matt Chandler is one of the best preachers that I listen to so I love any chance I get to hear his thoughts and wisdom on the subject of preaching God's word. If you cannot see the embedded video, watch it here.
When you see a glowing apple on the back of a laptop, what does that tell you about the computer? When you drive by a restaraunt with golden arches in front of the building, what do you immediately know about the food being sold? The branding and design help create an immediate association between the product and the context it is presented in. Certain images, shapes, colors, and stories are intertwined with a product, such as a computer, so that when somebody sees a white computer with an apple on it, it is not just an average computer but it's an Apple Macbook.
Design Matters.
When I purchase an iPhone app, one of the key factors in my decision-making process is the design of the icon; who would want an app with an ugly icon? I even recently chose to upgrade to a new thermostat based on its excellent design. We have no problem thinking about design when it comes to certain items like apps or even a thermostat, but how often do you think of a preacher as a sermon designer?
"It's easy to dismiss design - to relegate it to mere ornament, the prettifying of places and objects to disguise their banality. But that is a serious misunderstanding of what design is and why it matters... John Heskett, a scholar on the subject, explains it well: '[D]esign, stripped to its essence, can be defined as the human nature to shape and make our environment in ways without precedent in nature, to serve our needs and give meaning to our lives.'" - Daniel Pink
Designers spend countless hours crafting furniture that is both useful and significant. A designer who designs couches, must design a couch that is actually comfortable to sit on (useful) and also strive to design a couch that stands apart from the rest (significance).
There is no argument that the Gospel is the most useful and significant message on earth, yet how often do you view your sermon writing as an art? Preaching both serves our needs and gives meaning to our lives, yet how often have you thought about your time writing as a time designing? When you choose the words you say, you are designing the sermon. When you choose what stories to tell, you are designing the sermon. When you choose the fonts to use on the screens, you are designing the sermon. And that matters significantly because the message matters significantly.
Design Does Not Differentiate the Church.
Norio Ohga, former chairman of Sony, said, "At Sony, we assume that all products of our competitors have basically the same technology, price, performance, and features. Design is the only thing that differentiates one product from another in the marketplace." I love design and would love for those who communicate the Gospel to have design that stands above the rest, but design should never be what differentiates the Church.
The Gospel should certainly inspire great artists and great designers. The art of inspired designers is not meant to differentiate but instead to point to that which differentiates the Church. While design may be the differentiator for companies like Sony or Apple, the thing that differentiates the Church from any organization or any other religion is that the Church is the bride of Christ.
Photo Credit: Filmvanalledag