Does your family play the garbage game? You know, that game where the trash begins to overflow and you come up with imaginative ways of placing one more piece of trash in such a way that the mass of garbage doesn’t collapse, utilizing every nook and cranny and every physical principle of gravity and balance to your advantage. After all, the one for whom it comes tumbling down is automatically the trash-taker-outer.

That overstuffed trash can resembles our lives sometimes. We fill every moment of every day with something. In the meantime, we stifle our creative juices. There’s no room to be creative because we’re trying to do too many things at once - we’re trying to be all things to all people. Pretty soon, it all comes tumbling down like the end of a Jenga game.

I’ve been challenged lately to make more room for creativity. I’m not talking so much about the work of creating, but the time we need to get alone and relate to our Creator, to dream great things, to plan, to envision, to think creatively. The problem with cramming our lives full of stuff is that we get focused on maintaining the stuff we’ve created and can’t create anything new.

I want to challenge you the way I’ve been challenged. Take a walk, read a book, fill up on something other than the mental junk food of modern media. Take some time to do nothing but read, dream, pray, and envision what God wants to do in, around, and through you. Leave some margin and get creative!

I know this is a sensitive subject, which is exactly why I’m addressing it. It seems there is, in the minds of many Christians, a correlation between “marketing” and compromise. The thought is that if you market the church or its message in any way similar to the secular world, you’ve somehow stripped the gospel of its dignity. I would contend that marketing is what the Great Commission is all about, especially when you include personal, one-to-one (word-of-mouth) marketing as the most important marketing of all.

I would certainly argue that it can be tempting for leaders to water down the message of the gospel to make it more palatable for the public - and this is certainly not an option. But can biblically grounded leaders utilize marketing tools to “get the word out” about their ministry and message? Just read this interesting article by Chris Forbes:

http://ministrymarketingcoach.com/blog/2008/08/02/what-about-the-critics-of-church-marketing/

It’s an interesting point about how great the anti-marketing message gets marketed. It’s something to think about. In my opinion, there’s a great advantage to having a logo, website, advertising, sending postcards, doing direct mail, and even television commercials. It engages people in the context of their current cultural setting. But yes, I’d agree that the greatest marketing of all is still a believer relating to a non-believer compassionately to share the good news of Jesus.

I think creativity is overlooked and underrated among Christian leaders today. Quite frankly, we’re afraid of what changes creativity may bring. We’re paranoid some crazy guy will hijack our conservative churches and turn them upside down. But what about a leader who is focused on the Scriptures and simply wants to glorify the Creator by imagining great things? I’m currently reading The Creative Leader by Ed Young. I wanted to record a major quote here for posterity, and to share it with my readers…

So why should we implement creativity in leadership? God invented it. Jesus modeled it. The Holy Spirit empowers it because people need it. If we church leaders are going to live out the challenging mission that God has laid out for the local church, we must unleash the creative potential available to us, develop it, and use it to communicate the most compelling message ever given to mankind. Creativity is not an option for the church; it is a biblical mandate that flows from the very character of the Creator.

I couldn’t agree more!

Today, I caught this headline online…

A Prestonwood Baptist Church minister arrested for soliciting a minor online has resigned from the church, Pastor Jack Graham told his congregation Saturday evening.

I appreciate Pastor Graham - he’s a hero to me, and my heart aches for him, his church, and the family of this fallen Pastor. I’ve watched Satan wreak havoc on Pastors across America, especially in the area of sexuality. It’s terrible to see the carnage left behind. No doubt, some will question the very credibility of Christianity based on the actions of men like this staff Pastor.

I would ask that you pray for your Pastor, and for church staff everywhere, who are the special targets of Satan, as leaders among God’s flock. We absolutely must wage war on Satan to restore dignity and integrity to the pulpit in the face of a culture that is always sliding into deeper immorality. We need a counter-cultural revolution in this world gone made on the influence of Satan and his minions.

This week is our church’s Vacation Bible School, a week filled with what I call “blessed chaos.” Yesterday, my day started around 8:30 am and ended about 11:00 pm. It was filled with a hospital visit, some technical support, a few phone calls, getting our laptop and projector to run a song DVD, talking to some rather energetic kids about missions, and a counseling chat with a couple of friends. It was fifteen hours of blessed chaos. What does that phrase mean, anyway? Read the rest of this entry »