You rarely hit creativity by aiming at it directly. You have to point at a larger, more substantial target.
Creativity is dangerous. When you ask for creative ideas, you never know what you’ll get. We asked some of our regular contributors to help us plan this issue, and one of them, John Ortberg, sent us his suggestions under the heading: ARTICLES YOU AREN’T LIKELY TO READ IN LEADERSHIP.
Here’s his lineup:
“Our New Format: If Fanny Crosby Didn’t Write It or Bing Crosby Didn’t Sing It, We Don’t Play It”
– Bill Hybels
“I’m Sick and Tired of Ministry, and I’m Not Too Crazy about People Either”
– Robert Schuller
“Lighten Up: A Case for More Good Jokes in Our Preaching”
– John MacArthur, Jr.
“Can’t We All Just Get Along?”
– Dave Hunt
“Too Much Reading: Why I Started Watching ‘Nick at Night’
– Eugene Peterson
“I Have No Idea What the Future Holds”
– George Barna
“Oops! Dr. Spock Was Right”
– James Dobson
“Predestination: People God Loves, People God Leaves”
– R.C. Sproul
“When Your Voice Is Deeper than Your Faith”
– Lloyd John Ogilvie
“Power and Healing-What’s the Big Deal?”
– John Wimber
“How I Got into Amway-and You Can, Too”
– Ron Sider
“Fasting, Schmasting, Let’s Have a Cheeseburger”
– Richard Foster
Ortberg is right. LEADERSHIP isn’t likely to publish such material. Ever. We wouldn’t even think of those things. We’re not that, uh, creative.
* * *
Not long ago, I was with a minister who had recently assumed a new pastorate, following a man who had been there several decades.
“My predecessor was a living legend,” he said. “Every sermon of his was profound. For the first eighteen months I was here, I tried to imitate him.
“Every week I sat in my study trying to come up with something profound. But 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 innovative methods 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.
The best preaching emerges not from those trying to be different, but from those trying to be heard and understood-week after week.
The most creative 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 win-win situation.
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.”
This issue of LEADERSHIP offers ingredients to feed your own creative applications-in preaching, programming, problem-solving, and the uttermost parts of pastoral ministry.
Even if we couldn’t recruit Richard Foster to reflect on fast food as a spiritual discipline.
Marshall Shelley is editor of LEADERSHIP.
Copyright © 1993 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
