One Creative Process 11, Brainstorming

Our typical rhythm of planning a worship/sermon series involved four meetings.
   Brainstorming
   Deciding
   Designing
   Refining

Today I'd like to provide a peek into the beginning of the process.

These were the most fun meetings I've ever experienced in church-world! Ever. There were many times we laughed until we cried.

And that's reason enough to work for creativity in the church.

There is Godly joy in reflecting the image of God.

I was not brought up in a church that valued creativity, especially in worship. I wasn't taught how to tap creativity in my days at Georgetown College or at Southern Seminary, at least not in this sense. Musical creativity, perhaps. And some of my seminary profs would certainly encourage thinking creatively about music and worship. But not on the scale I've been describing.

The reason I bring this up to you is that I had to change, to grow, to learn. So I read a good deal about leadership and creativity. One really great book, and one I'd commend to any leader striving for creativity is Orbiting the Giant Hairball. Great stuff!

But now, back to our process.

This is essential: We started with the scripture passage being preached/taught. Most of the time we'd know that passage before we met and I'd send it with the agenda ahead of time. I would often include it in a less familiar translation (The Message or NLT or Amplified). We would talk about the passage and our pastor would share key thoughts from his sermon.

If any of the creativity pointed to itself instead of to Jesus, we wanted to scrap it.

So we started with scripture, then sermon, and then the only rule was that we couldn't evaluate ideas, only generate them.

And generate them we did!

Sometimes I'd have to start--prime the pump, so to speak--but not often. I would be at the whiteboard, marker in hand. And they'd talk, laugh, suggest, laugh, forget about the evaluating rule, be reminded, laugh, suggest, develop an idea a little too much, be reminded, laugh, and suggest.

Another key for this process was that we not try to figure out IF we could do something before we decided that it was a viable option. There were lots and lots of things that when we first imagined them, we didn't know if we could pull it off or not. But we couldn't get stuck there. We had to keep generating ideas. That's why it is a brainSTORM. It's messy. It's a flurry of mental activity.

And then we'd stop. Sounds odd, does it? Well, we needed to let those ideas rest. I sometimes refer to it as being on the back burner on simmer. Just let all of them simmer for a few days, then come back. We usually had really helpful clarity after doing this. Sometimes we'd just start over, but probably only a couple of times a year. Sometimes we'd run right to THE idea, probably three times a year. Usually we narrowed it to 3-4 ideas and then talk them out a bit. But I'm getting into the next step with is actually the next post.

I'm curious, what have you found to be most helpful when brainstorming?