One of the things no leader can delegate is the task of staying fresh. It's easy for leaders to get stale, to do the routine, to follow a pattern of what's been done before.
Staying fresh means learning something new. Seeing what you've not seen before. Finding the unexpected. That's the key to ever-growing, ever-developing leadership. But this doesn't happen easily or automatically.
Ironically, trying too hard to be innovative and creative usually backfires. Seeking to be creative is like trying to be profound. The pursuit fails because the wrong goal is in view.
Years ago, I was with a minister who had recently assumed a new pastorate, following a man who had been there decades.
True creativity comes not from trying to be creative but by focusing on a worthy goal and how better to accomplish it.
"My predecessor was a living legend," he said. "Every sermon of his was profound. For the first 18 months I was here, I tried to imitate him. Every week I sat in my study trying to come up with something profound. But during my sermons all I got from the people were a lot of blank stares. Finally, I stopped trying to be profound.
"Now I'm just trying to communicate God's Word clearly and passionately. And people are telling me my sermons are really making them think!"
He had stumbled onto a great truth: If you try to be profound, people will think you're unclear; if you simply say something significant and say it clearly, they'll think you're profound.
Creativity, like profundity, is rarely reached by aiming at it directly. You usually hit creativity by pointing at a larger, more substantial target.
Those who want only to be creative often come across not as creative but as ridiculous.
For the first four years of my journalism career, I wrote Sunday school curriculum and small group discussion materials. I felt continual pressure to be creative. But among my coworkers, we had standing jokes about the strained attempts to inject novelty into Christian education materials. ("Now take this paper cup and tear it into a shape that for you represents the concept of the substitutionary atonement. Explain your work to the group.")
True creativity is more likely to be found not by focusing on being creative, but by focusing on your goal and how you can best accomplish it despite obstacles and limitations. That will keep you fresh.
The best preaching emerges not from those trying to be novel, but from those trying to be heard and understood—week after week.
Fresh and effective programming comes not from those trying to be avant garde, but from those trying to impact individuals they know with the gospel, and finding ways to connect.
The "eureka" moments in administration usually don't come from overseers seeking a cutting-edge reputation, but from individuals facing a dilemma and not giving up until they find a good solution. While necessity is the mother of invention, it's engagement with ministry that births fresh thinking.
And what feeds this kind of constructive creativity? The examples of others who are applying their inventive minds to the tasks of ministry.
As eighteenth-century portrait painter Joshua Reynolds said, "Invention, strictly speaking, is little more than a new combination of those images which have been previously gathered and deposited in the memory. Nothing can be made of nothing; he who has laid up no materials can produce no combinations."
At Leadership Journal, we're telling stories that will make sure you have the materials for fresh and innovative thinking, to faithfully proclaim and effectively live the gospel.
Marshall Shelley Editor
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