CreativePastors Blog & Podcast

Lovably Last Minute

There's nothing like a deadline to get us motivated, is there? I think church leaders have a special respect for deadlines since they face a big one week after week after week! Over the last few days, the entries for our Show Us What You're Made Of! Contest have been pouring in. Thank you all so much for sharing your creative ideas - we've been amazed at the cool things you are doing! We're giving each entry due consideration and assembling a team of judges to help determine the big winner. We'll keep you posted here with our progress and the final results!

Sharing What You're Made Of! - Part 5

Time is running out! We'll be announcing the winner of the Show Us What Your Made Of! contest very soon, but you can still get your entry in. Meanwhile, check out this effective idea for an outreach event.

The First Assembly of God in Rockwall, Texas was on the verge of closure in 2001. Though they are located in a thriving area with an average age of 37, their congregation consisted of about 40 people. Since their town is on the shores of Lake Ray Hubbard, they decided to use the 4th of July weekend to take their evangelistic efforts to the water's edge. 

They enlisted church attenders, neighbors and even some people from other churches to load their boats with bottled water, sodas and bags of chips with the church's information attached. With many donations, the total cost for the outreach was about $75. They proceeded to hang out in the "no wake zones" to talk with people, stock them with drinks and snacks, and invite them to a God and Country Day Celebration at the church property.

That first year, they served over 700 people at their celebration event. Today, their now growing congregation has more than doubled! Way to go!

Team Creativity: How it Works

In a bonus edition of our Leadership Uncensored newsletter this month, Ed gives a behind-the-scenes tour of FC's message preparation process.

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Winning sports franchises and successful organizations have one key ingredient in common: a commitment to the team concept. If the church is going to succeed in the difficult task of turning drive-thru seekers into full-court followers of Jesus Christ, it will need this same tenacious commitment to the team concept. With that in mind, the following is the process that Fellowship Church has used for several years as we have realized the benefits of the team concept for communicating God's Word with creativity and power.

There are four main stages of our message preparation process. These stages are not necessarily descriptive of hard and fast steps that we go through every time. As with everything else in the creative church, any of these elements can change without notice; but they do represent the basic journey we go through each week as we craft the weekend message.

Stage One   
The first stage is called the "pre-meeting process." During this stage, my staff and I will individually collect preliminary research to augment the current message or series. For this research we will consult the Bible and biblical commentaries, magazines, newspapers, the Internet, relevant books and sermons by other speakers. After we have researched our topic, I will accumulate our findings and begin to assemble this material and take notes. Typically I will dictate my research and notes onto an audio tape so that my assistant can transcribe it into a research document for our creative meeting (stage 2). After the document has been created, it is moved into "mind map" form so that this document is on one legal-sized piece of paper, front and back.

Stage Two
The second stage of our team process is our creative team meeting. Before the meeting, my assistant passes out the initial research document to each member so they can be prepared for this Tuesday afternoon meeting. The contributors for this stage include three to four regulars coupled with one or two people who provide a strategic viewpoint. For example, when I am preparing for a message for singles, I'll invite a single staff member and possibly a divorcee. When we are preparing to speak on a doctrinal issue, I might invite a new Christian along. We've found that a diverse group brings vitality and a more balanced viewpoint as we shape the talk.

The goal is to establish a creative and powerful introduction, the first transitional statement, and generate different ideas to communicate the content of the message. Once these are in place, we work on the body of the message. We try to develop main points with creative and memorable verbiage, and points that relate back to a consistent theme. Once we have our main points in place, we work on our transitional statements. These transitional statements are, in my opinion, the most important portion of any message. We will also work on developing illustrations that help support these points. We don't force illustrations, but search for personal illustrations that reinforce and remind our listeners of the main points and theme of the message. Finally, we construct concluding remarks that help pull the parts together into a cohesive application or "take away" for each listener. At the end of this third stage we have the rough draft of the message completed.

Stage Three
The third stage is our follow-up creative team meeting, which takes place on Wednesday morning or afternoon (sometimes lasting all day). By now, I usually am working with only two to three members of our creative team. The goal of this stage is simple: to make our rough draft less rough. We work on the introduction, transitions, main points, illustrations and concluding remarks. At the end, we have formulated the final draft of the sermon, though in a sense, it will be reworked until the minute when I stand up to deliver the message.

Stage Four
Fourth and finally, are the weekend study, preparation and critiquing sessions. Weekend study for me usually begins Saturday after lunch since I speak twice at 5:00 and 6:30pm. I will read through the sermon several times while fine tuning the verbiage, illustrations, transitions, conclusion and overall flow. I will meet with our media director to view our PowerPoint slides of my main points and Bible verses. After the first Saturday evening service, I'll meet with several of the management pastors. We will quickly watch the service and critique the music, message, drama, video and make appropriate changes. What we are looking for is unity. When an element doesn't fit or takes too long to develop, we discard it in time for the next service. Throughout the weekend I continue to tweak the content of my sermon. I will pick the best message from our four services (two on Saturday and two on Sunday) to be transcribed and mastered for our audio/video series packages.

As you can see, I rely heavily on a diverse set of teammates for the various stages of our message preparation process. This has lifted an enormous burden from me as the principal speaker, and I know that our congregation benefits from the synergy and creativity that comes from our commitment to the team process. I'm confident that this process can work for you too. Isn't it about time you connected with the creative geniuses all around you?

Show Us What Your Made Of - Part 4

We're still having a blast sorting through your entries for the Show Us What You're Made Of! Contest. Check out this idea that caught our attention.

Celebration Church  was meeting at two campuses in two cities—Round Rock and Georgetown, Texas. As they opened their brand new building and consolidated the two campuses, they wanted to make sure that everyone found their way to the first service at the new location. So what did they do? They took us on a drive with them!They developed fun and creative videos for each campus that showed each turn in the road and landmarks along the way to steer people to their new site.

Watch the video!

On their first week, they had more than 1,200 first-time visitors and 3,100 in the building with dozens of salvations and rededications. Sounds like pretty great results!

Podcast > Creative Conflict > 4 Keeps

Welcome to this week's CreativePastors Podcast with Ed Young.

To listen now, click on the podcast icon below.

While Ed took a break from speaking this weekend, we thought it would be a great time to revisit one of our favorite messages, Creative Conflict from the series 4 Keeps. As we learned in the Love Affair series, unresolved conflict can have disastrous results in a marriage. This message offers healthy ways to tackle conflict in our relationships. For more practical advice on cultivating a strong marriage, check out Ed and Lisa Young's new book, The Creative Marriage.

Length 30:06

Is it possible to deepen your relationship through conflict? Not only is it possible, but both research and experience indicate that conflict handled in the right way can bring greater intimacy to a marriage. In this message Ed Young takes a look at the ground rules for the kind of creative conflict that fosters honesty and growth. These ground rules include, “Assess the Damage Prior to Launch,” “Wave the Banner of Good Manners,” “Avoid the Subterranean Level,” among others.

CreativePastors

4 Keeps Series

If you have iTunes 5.0, click the link below to subscribe to our podcast. Twenty-four hours after Ed delivers his weekend message at Fellowship Church, it will be downloaded to your computer automatically. You can listen at your computer or take the MP3 with you on your iPod or other MP3 player.

If you don't have iTunes, you can get it here free for Mac or Windows. You can also subscribe to the podcast using other podcasting tools and RSS newsreaders. The feed address is: http://feeds.feedburner.com/cpblog

Build a Better Message...and Have More Fun While You're At It!

Sermon development...is it a solo sport or a group effort at your church? Team creativity has revolutionized the message preparation at Fellowship Church. We've heard from many of you who've experienced the same transformation after implementing a team approach. This week and next, we're going to look at creative team planning in depth so you can get a better idea of what your church can gain by giving it a try. Here's the latest issue of the Leadership Uncensored newsletter, which focuses on the whys and hows of team creativity.

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During the first several years of Fellowship Church, I spent 30-35 hours a week planning and preparing the weekend message by myself. At that time I experienced considerable anxiety because as soon as I delivered one sermon, another would be waiting for me, like giant waves that kept crashing over my head week after week after week. Finally, stress, anxiety and writer's block forced me to remove myself as a creative bottleneck and adopt a different method—creative team planning.

After all the teachings I'd done on creativity, I asked myself, "Why not tap in to the creative geniuses you have around you?" So, we began bringing in 4-6 staff members each week to add their insights, their passion, and the stories from their lives to help craft the weekend message. The messages are much better now that we use team creativity…why wait until after you speak to get a critique?

Creative team planning will transform your church. By incorporating different perspectives in the room, it will help you avoid the rut of recurring themes and repetitive phrases. It will bring depth, balance and richness to your messages. And a great side benefit of creative team planning is that it serves as a training ground for other speakers—God uses that time to build confidence and familiarity with the process. Here are a few key points to remember about team creativity:

• Plan ahead. Creative team planning goes beyond simple brainstorming. These meetings work best when we have a general idea of what we'll be talking about so we can all bring ideas to the table supporting and examining that idea. I set the direction for the message and determine where we want to go. It's the team's job to help us get there.
• It's not a free-for-all. The weekend speaker has to lead the meeting and call the shots. Frequently I'll guide our discussion by asking questions and we use the answers to craft the message.
• Check your ego at the door. To get effective input, you have to be transparent and allow your team to be honest in critiquing and shaping your ideas. Don't let your ego get in the way of doing this. The spoken word is the most important part of the weekend service and this process will only improve your message.
• Bring the right people to the table. The foundation of our creative team stays the same from week to week, but then we add a few different people to get diverse perspectives. We make sure to include women, singles, and a variety of age ranges in the mix. But whoever participates must be someone we connect with and someone we can trust.
• Choose the right location. Think about how people write for sitcoms—they do it in a relaxed setting. If you want to spur creative interaction, design an inviting environment. Part of my office at the church includes a sort of family room with comfortable chairs, writing tools, food, coffee and bottled water.
• Staff your church accordingly. Don't overburden your foundational team with too many other job duties. They can definitely carry some additional responsibilities, but they have to be freed up to participate in the creative meetings each week.

We're passionate about team creativity because of what it's done for our church and what we've seen it do in other churches. Next week we're going to give you some more in-depth information about creative team planning and how it is used in crafting our weekend messages. To see this process in action, check out our team-driven creative planning video.

You want fries with that?

The Church Report released an article by Ed Young entitled, "The McChurch Challenge." It's a great read that explores how creativity must be leveraged to reach a drive-through culture.

Careful readers will notice the mention of a new book by Ed Young due out in January 2006 - The Creative Leader. This is going to be a phenomenal book! We'll keep you posted with more details in the next few months.

Sharing What You're Made Of - Part 3

Love Shack Ba-by! Can't get the song outta my head now! Troy Gardner of Valley Fellowship Christian Church in Goodyear, AZ sent us this creative entry. This 19-month-old church plant decided to catch the attention of their community (consisting of an average age of 36) by using the jams they would all recognize. Their goal was to squash the prevalent opinion that church is "boring and the music sucks!" They flooded the area with 20,000 of these psychedelic flyers to draw in the crowds. Then they completed it by decorating with "hippy" flowers and an inflatable tiki hut "Love Shack" right on stage. Their band learned the music to the song, re-wrote the words...and it was on!

Tell me this song isn't just playing over and over in your head...

Keep 'em coming!! Show Us What You're Made Of - we're still taking submissions! You have until the end of October so get your entry in! Keep an eye on the CP blog for more great stuff!

And the winners are...

During the Catalyst Conference, visitors to the CreativePastors booth had the opportunity to enter a drawing to win $200. A few persistent entrants used extensive persuasion tactics to improve their chances, but we stuck to protocol and held an honest-to-goodness drawing. Here's who won:

• Michele Carlson, who attended with her husband, the senior pastor of a United Methodist Church in Webster, NY. She enjoys seeing what churches are doing to keep in step with current technology, because, "If we want to reach people where they are at, then we need to stay involved..."
• Alan Klasi, Senior Pastor of Bethel Assembly of God in Elmhurst, IL. Alan has been in full time ministry for over 12 years but this year marks his first time in the role of senior pastor. He said that getting away allows him to, "take a breath, step back and look at the big picture of what I’m wanting to accomplish for my church and community."

We couldn't agree more! Don't miss your chance to refocus and re-energize at our Creative Church Conference this January. You can look forward to an amazing speaker lineup, behind-the-scenes insights, and lots of fresh ideas for your church. Learn more here.

Podcast > Forever Faithful > Love Affair

Welcome to this week's CreativePastors Podcast with Ed Young.

To listen now, click on the podcast icon below.

Forever Faithful from the series Love Affair

Length 35:26

In this concluding message, Ed Young highlights the powerful Love Affair series. These highlights are the keys to living a life of faithfulness and experiencing a forever love affair.

CreativePastors

Love Affair Series

If you have iTunes 5.0, click the link below to subscribe to our podcast. Twenty-four hours after Ed delivers his weekend message at Fellowship Church, it will be downloaded to your computer automatically. You can listen at your computer or take the MP3 with you on your iPod or other MP3 player.

If you don't have iTunes, you can get it here free for Mac or Windows. You can also subscribe to the podcast using other podcasting tools and RSS newsreaders. The feed address is: http://feeds.feedburner.com/cpblog