Ep. 031 | Ben Stapley: Cultivating Creativity in Your Church

With all church leaders' responsibilities, keeping church services creative and fresh can be challenging. Here are five things to keep in mind:

1. Don’t try to one-up yourself after every win. Coming out of Christmas or Easter can feel like a creative high, but don’t feel the pressure to continue to have to build off your successes. Give yourself grace, use your successes as inspiration, and keep going.
2. There is beauty and profoundness in relying on the Holy Spirit. Do the best you can do and watch God show up.
3. Review your wins. Ask questions like:
   1. What worked and what didn’t work?
   2. What needs to be added, and what needs to be subtracted?
4. Remember to take a sabbath every 4-6 weeks to give people a break to find rest.
5. Conduct research and development. Give your staff time to experiment, play, and have the margin to try new things.

How to Inject Creativity into The Mundane

There are numerous opportunities to inject creativity into the normalcy of your workload. The key is having a safe space to test and try new, fresh ideas. This allows for a learning experience for everyone involved. Sometimes the best ideas come from the most terrible ones, so don’t be afraid to test out and try something new. A few avenues to inject creativity could be:

• Bring up new ideas in a staff meeting.
• Taking risks and trying new things is more manageable with a younger audience, such as youth retreats.
• Test out ways during worship to make things more interactive. Experiment and try untraditional things.

Unlocking The Full Potential of Team Brainstorming

When working alongside a team, it can be challenging to stir creativity and create an engaging environment to cultivate new ideas. Brainstorming is a great way to huddle up your team and ideate together. But how do you get started? Here are a few steps to take:

1. Remember that even brainstorming is sacred and holy ground - invite the Holy Spirit to be a part of your preparation and planning.
2. Throw out bad ideas first. This defuses the tension in the room to create and foster an attitude to invite everyone to be involved. Every idea is worth discussing.
3. Try an exercise when you collaborate by saying “yes and...”. When someone brings up an idea, honor the idea and ask others how we can build upon it.

When brainstorming, maximize the energy and creativity in the room by encouraging everyone to be involved and collaborate. Build off ideas from one another, give your team space and time to respond, and push through to elevate every idea to bring out the best in your team.

Tips for Maintaining Innovation and Creativity as a Leader

When leading the charge of creativity within your church, staying innovative and creative is crucial. Often it’s easy to feel stuck in the mundane routine of weekly services. Sunday is always coming, so doing your best to stay innovative and creative will help spark ideas and bring new things to the table. 

One way to stay innovative is to go outside of your environment. Take a trip to a new city, go outside and enjoy nature, or take advantage of creative avenues nearby. Another way is by reviewing content from others. Curate a playlist on Vimeo, explore websites like Pinterest, and see what others may be doing that can inspire your work. Lastly, don’t be afraid to turn off the noise and be silent with your thoughts. Having time to ponder on passive input will allow you to think through problems and solutions and ideate on fresh ideas. Remember to lead yourself well when making space to invest your creativity.