Oh and btw, it’s free. Get it here.

1 / Thinking about what your going to say more than how your going to say it.

That is huge. Our primary role is communication, so we’ve got to know what it is we are communicating before we figure out how to communicate it.

2 / Be habitual about creativity.

If you don’t make time to be creative on purpose you will never be on accident.

Whit talked about one of my all time favorite books, The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp, which is a must read for all creative professionals… I highly recommend it.

3 / Learn to serve your audience.

How can you and your team best serve them?

4 / Focus on the details.

God is in the details. Learn to focus on the tiny stuff that typically gets overlooked.

5 / Steal Things.

Ed Young Jr. said something similar in the first session by saying “you got eyes, so plagiarize.” I love the quote by Jean-Luc Godard that Whit used even better: ”It’s not where you take things from,  it’s where you take them to.”

Dissect the things that move you, figure out why they move you and use them in the church. Take things you see and put your spin on them and make them fit you.

6 / Creativity is a muscle. Work it out.

Working out once a week or month is not going to get your fit. Work it out daily. Always be creating even if it sucks.

7 / Read books on creativity.

Here are some of his suggestions:

• ‘Outliers’, ‘Tipping Point’ & ‘Blink’ by Malcolm Gladwell
• ‘The Creative Habit’ & ‘The Collaborative Habit’ by Twyla Tharp
• ‘MTIV: Process, Inspiration and Practice for the New Media Designer’ by Hillman Curtis

Here’s another that I’ll add in:

• ‘Addicted to Mediocrity’ by Franky Schaeffer

You can read more of Whit’s thoughts on creativity and that of his team here.

We choose our character.

In fact, we create it every time we make choices. Whether to cop out or dig out of a hard situation. Whether to bend truth or stand under the weight of it. Whether to take the easy money or pay the price.

+ Your character determines who you are.

+ Who you are determines what you see.

+ What you see determines what you do.

I ran across an article in Create Magazine awhile back and its haunted me. In it, author Bob Kodzis lays out our struggle to overcome fear in creative endeavors.

Fear is the Adolf Hitler of creativity killers. It is responsible for supressing and destroying more brilliant ideas than all of the other creativity killers combined. It is a core ingredient of the most potent creative poisons. Fear limits the volume and dilutes the quality of the ideas we generate. It radically constricts the judgement of creative directors, bosses and clients.”

There’s no doubt that fear is paralyzing, it’s the single most destructive element in our minds. It can and will stop you from creating. Maybe it’s the fear of failure, or of being laughed at, or maybe just having someone think it was a stupid idea. But if you allow that to stop you from creating then you’re short changing yourself and ultimately God. These are irrational fears. We create first off for an audience of One. He matters most. But what he sees is the intent of the heart.

Secondly its a matter of faith. Faith that the gifts and talents you and I have been given are from God, and that he has a design in mind for you and your talents. God is bigger than us. He truly is a know it all… and I’ve got to have faith in that. I’ve got to have faith in the fact that God trust me with His creativity and in that I should never be fearful. I should create.

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.  – Eleanor Roosevelt

What are creativity killers in your life?

Anytime Bella pitches a little toddler tantrum (which is almost never mind you – ha), she does the typical squeal, kicking, and of course the gymnast-like back bend. The last few times we’ve had this kind of quality time together and she gets to the part of the routine with that crazy back bend I’ve just started letting her. I used to try to stop her (mistake), hold her up and fight it, but the other day I decided to just let it be, and something amazing happened. She stopped crying. I noticed that she’d stopped because she was seeing those extremely familiar surroundings upside down. She had a new perspective and immediately she stop crying. It changed everything.

About a month ago, we played a little game around here called “musical offices” in which we basically just rearranged everyone’s world, and combined a bunch of offices into an open environment. So for the first time in 5 years I’m looking at new walls everyday, working in a brand new atmosphere, and its helped me tremendously. The change in my perspective and surroundings has helped me be more creative, more productive, and my days seem to moving a lot smoother.

Sometimes we just need a new way of looking at the world, a new lens to see it through, a fresh vision for what’s to come or even for where we are now.

How are you seeing your problems, your circumstances, or your future? How long are you gonna keep looking at them from that same ol’ perspective until you realize its just not cutting it anymore, maybe its time for a new way of seeing old things.

Beck and I start making small adjustments like buying local produce, changing out our light bulbs, using biodegradable diapers (which is a big deal) and keeping lights off to save energy. Most everything that we’ve done have been small things that overtime will make a big difference. 

All of this was stirred back up last week in a conversation I had with Chad and Shannon. Chad shared a couple of ideas with us that he had about the importance of taking care of our earth. He called it Environmental Stewardship, and I gotta say, I love that term. It’s from Tri Robinson, who defines it like this…

“Environmental Stewardship is the idea that we should care for, manage,
and nurture the creation we have been given.”  

 
Chad reminded us of a line from In a Pit in which Batterson said… 

“At the end of the day, success equals stewardship and stewardship
equals success.  Stewardship is all-inclusive.“ 

 

Stewardship doesn’t end with finances, its all-inclusive, it carries over into every part of life. Everything we have is a gift from God, and its our responsibility to take care of the gifts given to us. We’ve got to realize that God values creation, every part of it. And whatever he values we should value, right?
Tri points out that one of God’s first commands to Adam was to “tend His garden.” He challenges Adam and Eve to be caretakers of the gift of creation.

In our conversation last week, Chad mentioned that it would be so cool for a church to begin making changes that would reflect this idea of Environmental Stewardship… and I totally agreed with him. It’s a stand we need to take, as a church. And its something that I feel so strongly about that I’m going to be more conscience about it at Bay. 

I brought it up to Jeff today, so he went and did some checking and I was very excited to learn that the company we use (Jakprints) to do the bulk of our printing has already taken major steps in making printing “green” very easy. So all of our print pieces are now printed with Soy & Vegetable based Ink, most of them are on 100% recycled paper (with a every piece having a minimum of 30% recycled content), and the paper is chlorine & bleach free. 

Let me challenge the church leaders out there all the way to the stay-at-home moms… there are small steps that we can all take – I’m not saying you become a fanatic, only that you start somewhere. Whether its recycling or buying a hybrid car, we can all do something. 

Here a few resources to help you along the way.

• Deep Green Conversation
• Creation Care 
• The Green Routine 

So what do you think… is green for you?

We love to play dress up around here and Monday night Bella was rocking her Princess outfit with all the accessories: the tiara, the necklace, and of course the magic wand. At one point she had closed the door to the playroom and she was standing outside the door yelling, LET DOOR OPEN!

Just so you know, we don’t teach magic at our house, and since she’s only 2 I doubt that she’s somehow gotten into the whole faith-the-size-of-a-mustard-seed-move-mountain thing.

But for some reason she thought that she could just simply command the door to open and it would.

My life has been full of moments just like that. I could see myself immediately. Standing there (typically without the tiara and magic wand), looking at what seems to be the perfect door, and wondering why that perfect door, thats seemingly made for me, isn’t open.

So what do I typically do?

LET DOOR OPEN!

My compulsion is I’ve gotta test out every door. Whether right or wrong. I’m gonna give it a whirl. And every time I do its typically a giant step back.

Doors are opportunities, yes. But more often they are distractions. I think distractions knock louder than opportunity. But thats just me.

Maybe its my lack of confidence with where I am right now that I’m always wanting to do more, or something different, or even what it seems I should be doing. No matter how I look at it, it always becomes a distraction.

Just because there’s a door doesn’t mean you should open it.

Be confident with where you are and where you’re going, when God shows up and gives you a true confidence in a new direction then you’ll know to start flinging some doors open, but not just any doors, the right ones.

There is nothing wrong with change, if it is in the right direction.
-Winston Churchill

Something jumped off the page that I’ve got to share and ironically it doesn’t have much to do with Pop Culture and the Church. Tim uses an example of how truth can be found anywhere if we are looking for it, and in this case he found truth in a TV show called ‘Shark.’ ‘Shark‘ is about a big time attorney named Sebastian Stark who always wins in the courtroom, but rarely wins at home with his teenage daughter. He’s too busy and he constantly misses opportunities with her. Tim realizes that with 2 teenage daughters of his own he sees this show in a whole new light, through a lens that not everyone sees through. ‘Shark‘ speaks volumes into his life about the importance of his relationship with his daughters during these formative years of their lives. This is what he says,

“Sebastian is a hero at his office – but misses so many opportunities that only come through quantity* time with his daughter.”

I know, I know, the first time you read it you think, “What! thats not right, it’s supposed to be quality time not quantity time.”

Well, notice the little *asterisk*, he put that in there, so I look to the bottom of the page and this is what he says,

“*This isn’t a typo. You may think quality time is more important than quantity time. But you never know when those few minutes of quality time are going to happen. The only way to ensure that you will have good quality time with your kids is by spending large amounts of quantity time with them.”

How true is that? How long have we been living the lie that its all about a few minutes of “quality” time over serious amounts of time. We’ve got it all backwards, especially a lot of us in ministry. How many families are victims to “the ministry.” Kids growing up blaming God because they took a backseat to “the ministry.”

I’ve heard pastors say, “when you’re in ministry, and your busy taking care of God’s people, God will take care of your kids (since you’re never there).”

Dude, if I felt comfortable cussing on my blog, that right there would deserve a ton of colorful wordage. That is the most ridiculous pile of crap I’ve ever heard.

If you can’t or don’t take care of your family, then why would God trust you with his. As a Pastor, my first priority in this world is my wife and kids. PERIOD. End of story. And not in a few minutes a day of “quality” time, but in quantity… as in everyday, face-to-face time.

My promise to my baby girl and my wifey is that no matter what, I will be there with them. It’s that simple.

Your thoughts?

We have opportunities every day to put that little extra into everything we do. That small detail that most would overlook that takes us to the next level in excellence. It’s amazing how much the small things, I mean tiny, can make or break a design, a video, a sermon or anything else for that matter. A tiny detail, and not just any detail, but the one that is above and beyond.

These little extras are gonna take more time, but in the end its totally worth it. For me, it also means that I’m gonna need to start every project earlier. I know the rest of you aren’t like this (ha) but it’s an every week thing for me to skip these small things simply because I’ve waited till the last minute to work on my project. So I’m doing good just to crank it out, forget the polishing.

It’s these small things that set us apart. I believe the church should be the most creative and excellent place on the planet, we won’t get there by dodging the details.  It’s the persistence of the details that equal greatness, not one great act. 

I hope that made sense. What do you think?