TrueLife Creativity Teams

Our TrueLife (TL) creativity team has been in the process of looking at what our DNA should be as Creativity Teams?  Through the process we have come up with “play ground rules” a manifesto of what will guide all of our creativity teams in the future.  The concepts that I love is that we give people within these teams a voice to share and to contribute to the bigger plan that God is doing in the midst of TL.  This opens the door to allow the church to function within their giftings and interact and reach the city through those giftings.  Where some church cultures suppress new ideas and innovation, TL creativity teams draw out new thinking (through those within the community) as it helps to build bridges to the culture, cultural creatives and through the process it develops community through our journey together.

I guess what motivates me secondly is God has a pathway within our community to shape and form us.  For ages churches  have been copies of other churches, people have thought; if I can only do what that “Big Church” is doing I will build a name for myself, but the reality is that we build a name within our communities by acting and functioning together as a community.  A place where people’s voice can be heard and a place to serve and share the gospel in a practical manner to the city that God has called each of us.

I guess I am sharing all of this just because I am excited to be in a place where I fit, I belong, and God can fulfill something special through our creativity teams.  I know we aren’t the perfect church, but as God directs… lives will be changed!

Lastly, I want to thank Mark for being obedient to allow this concept of creativity teams to be part of our community.  It is a joy to serve with you!

Think Different

Do you remember the Apple“Think Different” campaign?  As I begin thinking through church development, I notice that many churches take the approach of memicing churches that they are modeling their churches after.   While using principles and ideas to enhance what we are already doing as a church is fine in my opinion.  To mimic and try to reproduce to scale what successful churches are doing is limiting our creative ability that God has given each of us and lowers our divine potential.

The key to church development is not to be like or even out do other churches.  We must begin creating environments within our church that forces us to be creative and think different.   We don’t think different to just be different.  We think through different applications of ministry concepts to be more affective in reaching people.  Imagine how affective our churches could be in reaching people within our community if we begin engaging our creativity within our church community.  Within TrueLife we have creativity teams that we use to help our ministry teams.  In doing this, the creative potential is unleashed and new ideas and concepts are birthed.

We were all created to be different, so let’s be the original people God created each of us to be.  We can change our world one creative idea at a time.  Think Different!

My Office

During one of my last creativity blogs I mentioned that I was redesigning my office to help set the stage for our creativity meetings.  So here are some pictures that I have taken to help you see how we put together story boards for our ministry (Or any area that you are trying to brain storm.) to help your team visualize where you are going as a ministry team. It is also a great way to keep everyone on your team on target.

We have a white board for brainstorming sessions.

This story board is used to see the annual direction of our ministry. 

The purpose of this board is to target individual ministries and brainstorm the effectiveness of the ministries, goal setting and even future ministry dreams. 

Marketing Through “TEXT” messaging

 

I stumbled upon a great marketing strategy as I was driving past an apartment complex.  “Texting for more info.”  I starting thinking through how signs can be more then just promotions, they can be interactive!  Image driving by a church sign and it says TEXT this number for more info.  People would be able to retrieve personalized information to their phone with no attachments or felt pressure to be part of the church or event.  This is a great use of technology within today’s culture to help people connect with each other.   

If you think of any great marketing strategies let me know! 

Creative Atmosphere?

As we are developing our creative teams, each of us desire that creativity oozes out of our team as we meet together.  I have found that some of my best creativity has been initiated when I was away from the brain storming meetings.   So the big question is how do we create a creative atmosphere? How can we access the most creativity out of each team member.

Creative People

The first step is very obvious, make sure that during your meeting you have creative people.  Creative people are all around us.  They are the visionaries, the people who have an oceans of ideas and concepts rolling around in their mind bursting to get out. 

Preperation 

To set the stage for creativity we need to think through what we need to bring to the table during our brain storming time.  Have you communicated to your team in advance the focus of your meeting so that they have time to think through ideas and even bring concepts to the creativity meeting?  Imagine if you were meeting to think through staging and multiple team members brought visual staging ideas to the meeting and those concepts led to the perfect set up for your staging.  Giving your people time to process ideas before the meetings helps the atmosphere as a whole to be filled with more creativity. 

Open to New Ideas 

No blocking!  For those of you who are not familiar with blocking, blocking is anytime during a brain storming session that an idea is shot down.  If you want to lower your creativity then ignore this idea, but when we create an environment that we are open to any and all ideas we spark more creativity.  This also gives your team a sense of safety.  So ideas that we bring to our meetings may be far from achievable, but sharing those ideas may be the key to unlock our ability to reach the group of people we are trying to reach. 

Know Your People

When we are part of a creativity team each of us need to know who is on the team – know their abilities and what triggers their creativity.  I know I am the most creative in the morning while drinking a cup of coffee.  It really helps spark my creativity!  Each person on your team will be different, but the more you know the more opportunities you will have to help draw out their creativity. 

If you can think of any other ideas that helps you create a Creative atmosphere.  Please let me know – leave comments:)

Choosing Your Creativity Team

As we assemble a creativity team it is important to know what we are looking for.  We don’t want to choose just any person.  Some foundational guidelines you will want in place when you are choosing individuals for your team are:  is the person trustworthy, able to work well with others, and won’t get offended if their ideas aren’t used.  I know this seems very basic, but I have seen people put together teams where they have had individuals that took away from the team.  If those people are not teachable it will impair the creativity of the group.   

The second part of putting together a team is knowing the purpose for your team.  Some creativity teams are for ministry assessment, sermon preparation, and others for designing, etc.  Some people are more creative in certain areas due to being involved in that field or just because that is the way that God has gifted them.  You would never want me on a creativity team discussing sports.  I know about sports – I do watch them every once in a while, but I would have a very limited view on the different components of sporting events.  Defining your creativity teams purpose will help everyone understand what the team is trying to achieve together. 

In some creativity teams you might want to define the roles of those who are part of the team.  You definently want to make sure everyone knows who is leading the group and who makes the final desicions.  If you add any specialty team members to your group, it would be a good idea to let everyone know the role of that team member so they could have a better understanding of the functions of the team as a whole.

Last, we need to see who is available?  Some teams members we assemble are from within our church, but sometimes we can pull people from outside our church fellowship to help further our team’s creativity.  Maybe they would add a lot of value if they were brought in as part of the creativity team.  Some individuals due to past experience help bring insight to the area that we are trying to be more creative. Some leaders may choose individuals from outside of our church fellowship for a short term commitment, other leaders may see the value to have the individuals part of the team for a long term.   The purpose of the team determines who you choose and the time frame they are to be part of the team.   

Those are some of my thoughts.  If you have any thoughts that you would like to add.  Leave me some comments! 

How to Develop Creativity??

My mind is always thinking through things and one of the things that I was thinking through is this whole idea of developing a creativity team within our ministries.  What are some main components needed to find the right team, create a creative atmosphere, and how to stimulate creativity as a team without rehashing old ideas – or maybe we should say developing new creative ideas.  

I have noticed that ministries who do not have a creative team in place and work alone limit their ministry potential.  I am in the process of setting up my office as a brainstorming meeting room and I have also turned my walls into story boards to help our ministry team see the larger picture of where we are as a ministry and where we are going.  It really helps us as we write down our ideas and make them visible to the whole team.  Once I get my room all the way up I will post some pictures. 

I would love to hear some of your ideas.

Top 10 Billboard Signs

I was checking my blog statistics and someone was looking for the top ten billboard signs.  I did a little searching and I found the top ten billboards .  This is one of my favorites….

Here are some other billboards that I thought were also great!  Check them out! 

This one is for Formula tooth care.  The copy says, “builds strong teeth.” 

That is some deep cleaning!  lol! 

This one I give for the best creativity!  Jeep did a great job! 

Granger Community Church had one of the best billboard ads of 2006.  Has anyone else found any other great christian billboards?