Here are some practical suggestions for improving the creativity in the life of your ministry:
1. Pray high octane prayers. I’ve kept a prayer journal since I was seventeen years old. I didn’t realize how often I prayed for creativity until, several years ago, I was looking back through the entries and noticed prayer after prayer asking God for creative energy and ideas. I believe God’s answers to those prayers have been very specific. Begin to ask God regularly for the supernatural power of creativity, and then be ready for the answer to blow you away.
2. Maintain a vertical vision. Growing up as a pastor’s son, serving on a church staff, and then planting a church, I’ve seen the ministry from many angles. And I’ve noticed that godly leaders catch their vision vertically, from God. When they apply this passionately and creatively, people are reached for glory of God.
Sometimes people surround you—power brokers or naysayers—insisting you change your approach to their liking. What happens, if you give in, is you move from receiving vision vertically to getting vision horizontally. When that happens, we’re in trouble. If you have a vision from God for reaching your community, let nothing dissuade you.
3. Become a pastor caster. Jesus voiced a radical invitation, “Come, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men” (Mark 1:17). Fishermen are creative. Have you talked to anyone who loves to fish? Have you seen all the lures and techniques? Light tackle, heavy tackle, micro lures, major lures, plastic worms, spinner baits, gigs in pigs.
Fisherman are always casting, always asking, “What will the fish go for?” To be a good fisherman, you’ve got to think like, and sometimes smell like, fish.
The temptation for pastors is to stop being fishers of men and become keepers of the aquarium. We concentrate on the collection in our own little tank, feeding them week after week the same fish food. That’s like sitting on a deep-sea fishing boat and saying, “Hey, look at the fish in my nice little bowl.”
When we concentrate on the fishbowl and neglect the ocean, we miss our calling.
4. Build in creativity time. What gets your creative juices going? For me, it’s connecting with creative people. Or sitting in a coffee shop, of all places, and, with a legal pad and the Bible, just writing. Or sometimes it’s driving in my truck and listening to DC Talk or Audio Adrenaline. These activities seem to unlock creative thoughts.
How about for you? Creativity often happens away from the office. When you change your usual environment and get a different perspective, creative thoughts have fresh, fertile soil in which to grow.
How about for those you work with? Are you building time just for creativity? During every staff meeting, we’ll push back and say, “Okay, for the next hour we’re just going to think creative thoughts.” Sometimes they’re great; sometimes they’re not so great. But we write down every thought and hammer it out.
That’s why I never have our staff meetings on the same day or at the same time. Sometimes we’ll go fishing with cane poles and that will be our staff meeting. Another staff meeting might be tie-dying a bunch of shirts.
“Ed, that’s kind of strange,” I can hear you saying. “You’re talking about the church.”
Yes, we need to do things out of the ordinary, maybe even a little strange from time to time. It ignites fresh thinking. When we are doing something different, thinking about something differently, innovative ideas occur. God uses nature. He uses people. He uses a variety of things for creativity, so build it in.
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