MinistryCom - Creative Synergy in Worship Planning

Greg Atkison of Multisensory Worship, along with Anthony Coppege and Shawn Wood taught a breakout, outlining a process for using a team to come up with creative treatment and metaphor for worship services.

Anthony did must of the nuts and bolts of the presentation. Note to Anthony… however much coffee you had Thursday morning, cut it in half!

The objective of media, metaphor and communications is really pretty straightforwared. Our objective is to make the Senior Pastor more effect. He puts 20 or 30 hours into the preparation of each message. Still, retention is a problem. With metaphor, and image, we have the ability to put hooks onto that message, to make it stick.

Working with a creative team should not threaten or diminish the authority of the SP, or of the preaching office. It does require that the SP has trust in his team. Most of the session involved outlining a process that Anthony has blogged about pretty extensively at his site. The process requires vision and a safe environment. He also encouraged the rotation of people in and out of the team. I get this, and having a fresh person in the mix occasionally would be helpful, but I’m not sure this would work in our setting.

• Other suggestions to keep things fresh.
• Change your meeting place. Environment will stimulate you.
• Listen to sound effects CD’s to encourage creativity.
• Mix up the core team every quarter.
• Solicit feedback from experiments. Everything should be an experiment.
• Expand your “go to” resource base. It’s not how much you know. It is WHO you know.

It is not how much you can do, it is how much you can get done. If I’m the only one that can do it, I do it. If ANYONE else can do it, I’m NOT doing it. Contrast between what you are CAPABLE of, and what you are CALLED to do.

Anthony uses the DeBono Six Thinking Hats model for creative team work.

Greg pulled out the easy/hard, big payoff/small payoff grid. Do things that are easy and have a big payoff. Use the grid to make decisions about the priority of tasks, and to evaluate ideas that come up in planning.

Probably the biggest takeaway for me was a suggestion that you never say no to a request for communications assistance, regardless of deadlines. See my earlier post for more on that!

Update: Greg is also on my blog roll at Church Video Ideas. It's worth adding to yours as well.