When you simply take the "ordinary" and just do it just a little "different" - you get the WOW effect. All of a sudden, the ordinary suddenly get noticed.
For instance, take a bus stop. Ordinary. Usually a pole with a sign and maybe a bench, but do it a little different and it gets noticed. Functionally, it's still a bus stop, but after looking at these pictures - any bus stop you may now see that is less than these examples would be a tremendous disappointment.Often, that is all it takes in your ministry. Take something ordinary or normal in your church or ministry. Maybe it's a speech, a meeting, a brochure, an email, or a service project in your community and simply "do it" just a little different. Creativity can be just that simple.(ht: wacky archives)
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Do you ever have trouble finding that right sermon illustration? Perhaps you need a Mother's Day video to honor the mother's in your congregation on Sunday. Or maybe you want to find a slick and fun countdown video leading up to the beginning of worship.
You may want to consider SermonSpice.com. When I began working at Big Creek, I discovered a new opportunity (an opportunity that I didn't have at my previous church) - to use video during the worship service. But I wasn't sure where to find good quality and relevant videos. I stumbled upon SermonSpice during that time and have been using it ever since.
SermonSpice is a clearinghouse of video illustrations, backgrounds and countdowns. Certainly you can purchase video and backgrounds directly from the producers, such as BlueFish TV, Baked Pickles, or Vertical Hold. But with SermonSpice is mashes them all together in one convenient location.
SermonSpice not only offers a wide and varied selection of videos, backgrounds and countdowns to choose from, but they have a great search capability to find a video based on a genre (comic/dramic etc..) and topically/biblically.
SermonSpice is the first place I go looking for creative media. It has been a very helpful ministry tool, which I have recommended for several years. It saves me time and energy and the congregation always appreciates the creative and thoughtful videos.
Disclaimer: The above is a compensated, yet completely truthful, endorsement of a valuable ministry resource.
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Great custom graphic design is ideal. But sometimes time, money, or skill limitations make it necessary to use premade graphics. And even when you have the time, money, and skills, there are still occasions when it is more efficient to not reinvent the wheel and to instead use and build upon a premade resource.
In either case, here are 15 of the best sites offering free church graphics and resources. And if you want to spend some cash, I have also included 6 sites that cost money but are worth considering for premade resources.
Free Church Graphics and Resources
CreativeMYK.com Offers free church graphics including logos, photos, vector art, projector slides, bulletins, sermon graphics, projector slides, templates, and more. The site also includes a social network for Christian artists.
LifeChurch.tv Open Offers free sermon series resources that include message outlines, sermon graphics, videos, and more creative materials created by LifeChurch.tv (Edmond, OK).
Muddy River Media Offers free illustrative videos, motion backgrounds, countdown timers, stock photographs, illustrations, small group resources, and more.
NewSpring Ministries Offers free sermon series resources (e.g., sermon graphics, audio, message outline, & service outline) as well as administrative forms and manuals created by NewSpring Church (Anderson, SC).
Nside Admin Offers free administrative documents from North Point Community Church (Alpharetta, GA) on church government, human resources, accounting, facilities, IT, and Web.
Seacoast All Access Offers free sermon series resources that include sermon graphics, motion graphics, audio, video, message notes, and small group questions created by Seacoast Church (Mt. Pleasant, SC).
Vine Resources Offers free sermon series graphics, postcards, countdown videos, and message bumpers created by the college ministry of Southeast Christian Church (Louisville, KY).
Free General Graphics and Resources
Adobe Exchange Offers free downloads to use with Adobe software including brushes, styles, gradients, custom shapes, and patterns for Photoshop.
BittBox A blog that regularly highlights free Photoshop brushes, Flash components, vector graphics, and more.
Creative Pastors Sells sermon series resources that include sermon graphics, video, mind maps, outlines, audio, and more created by Fellowship Church (Grapevine, TX).
North Point Resources Sells logos, DVDs, sermon messages, conference messages, and more created by North Point Community Church (Alpharetta, GA).
Outreach Sells church graphics that include postcards, banners, bulletins, door hangers, invitations, brochures, logos, signage, and more.
The Church Box Sells sermon series resources that include sermon graphics, PowerPoint slides, and audio created by Four Corners Community Church (West Chester, OH).
WiredChurches.com Sells sermon series resources (e.g., outlines, graphics, videos, audio, & scripts) and administrative resources (e.g., forms, documents, & manuals) created by Granger Community Church (Granger, IN).
WorshipHouse Media Sells mini-movies, motions, stills, software, and editables for churches.
Free Graphic Design Ideas
Check out the Flickr Church Marketing Lab. Designers post different types of postcards, posters, slides, etc. for peer review. There’s some pretty good designers and some pretty good ideas in there.
Also check out Colour Lovers to get ideas of color schemes and pallets.
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Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining (and profoundly moving) case for creating an education system that nurtures creativity, rather than undermining it. He says that, "We are educating people out of their creativity,"
If you have not yet seen Sir Ken Robinson's TED talk, please stop whatever you're doing and watch it now.
Not only should you watch this TED talk, but browse the selection of other talks. TED talks expand your thinking and are one of the best resources on the net in encouraging your creativity and innovation.
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I have been reading some discussions recently about originality in the church. The question has been raised, is it cool to take ideas from other churches? I think that people who say NO, they perhaps don't understand what creativity and innovation is all about and where ideas come from.
How does a pastor or ministry leader cultivate creativity?
1. Understand that creativity doesn't come from creating something out of nothing. Only God creates "ex-nihilo" something from nothing! :-) Often creativity comes from making NEW ASSOCIATIONS. It is about connecting two independent things in a new and fresh way. Creativity comes from applying ideas from other contexts and finding new ways to associate them into your context. Creativity comes from borrowing. For example, I am always borrowing ideas from culture, and making new associations within our context here at Big Creek. That's what my sermon series MythBusters was all about, you realize of course I stole the idea from a T.V. show? :-)
2. Fill the well. You got to be pouring fresh stuff in your life. I am a gatherer type person. I am always reading and talking to others. We should be willing to borrow from others. Reading blogs through RSS feeds, exposes me to ideas from people around the world. For instance, we are trying to decode how to be missional in our suburban context, and there are men and women who are thinking through the same stuff, and I am learning from their learnings, and being provoked by the questions that they are asking.
3. Cross-training. Learn and read and study other disciplines. Often the best ideas come from adapting ideas from other places and professions. You got to get out of the church ghetto! You need to find ways that ideas in the marketplace translate into the church context. That is why books like Good to Great by Jim Collins have been so highly thought of within the church. I often expand my reading to history, business, biography and current affair books. I also try to tap into the wealth of expertise that our professionals have here at Big Creek. Their professional experience makes them one of the best resources to help us innovate.
4. Don't ask limiting questions. Too often we are asking questions that by the very nature of the question puts parameters around the kind of answer we are going to get. For instance, the question might be, "How can we help students grow deeper in their walk with God at our mid-week Wednesday high school large group"? Within that question is the assumption that we should have a large group of students meeting weekly. And within the question we are assuming that only within the large group can effective growth and life change happen. Are large youth groups the right avenue to help teenagers to grow in their faith? Should we even have them at all? Listen, I am not here to draw any conclusions. But if you are going to be creative, you have go to be WILLING to ask those questions. Don't let the kind of question you ask, box in your answer!
5. Be willing to risk. You gotta to be willing to risk and risk failing. If your church isn't a risk culture, you are going to be conservative and cautious in what you are willing to create and try. Failures are some of the greatest tutors and learning opportunities. Be willing to risk and risk Big!
When someone asked Spurgeon why within his sermons he preached other's ideas, he quickly retorted. "I am like farmer Smith's cow. I graze in others people's pastures, but just like farmer Smith's cow, you can count on the milk that you get being mine."(1) We need to be willing to graze in all the pastures out there - other churches, the culture, other professions. But at the end of the day, our creative ideas will reflect who we are, who our church is and our unique culture and ministry context.
(1) I remember hearing this quote attributed to Spurgeon and it has always stuck with me, but for this post - I tried to find it's reference, but I had NO success. Do I have it correct? Did Spurgeon say this? (originally published at Provocative Church)
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How do you capture ideas when you get them? What are the buckets that you are using?
If you are anything like me, you have a mind like a steel sieve and therefore I need quick and easy ways to capture a to-do, an appointment, file an important resource or make a reminder.
I am not asserting that these tools are the "best", but I have tried and used many tools over the years, and I have settled on these few that are working for me.
At its most basic level, Jott is a voice to text transcription service. All you need to do is call Jott, leave a message, and Jott transcribes it and emails you or your contacts the text.
I Jott myself notes or reminders right over the phone. This is great because if I have an idea or remember to needing to do something while in the car, I can capture it instantly in Jott and not worry about trying to remember it until I get home or to the office. Also I can Jott an email to anyone in my contact list or group of contacts that I have set up before hand.
If you have Google Calendar hooked up as your own preferred calendar application you can just add Google Calendar to your choice of Jott Links and simply by calling Jott you can add an appointment. There are times in the car after a phone call my next action is that I need to put in my schedule an appointment. With Jott links, I now just call in my appointment and it shows up in my Google Calendar. It couldn't be more simple.
This is one of the least known of the Google apps, and not until recently has Google been adding some very nice features. I use Google Notebook to capture information on the internet. Although I use it some for note taking (I use Google Docs more for that purpose), the main feature is the ability to clip information. The beauty of this application is the Browser extension that allows you to take any highlighted piece of information and "Note this" sending it right into the Notebook. I am always collecting interesting articles, quotes and resources that I know will come in handy during my sermon preparation or have some use in my ministry. Google Notebook is my online file cabinet for all my sermon illustrations, ministry articles, and the like. Because of the great ability to search the notebook or even tag items, information never gets lost or misplaced, it is always at my fingertips.
I haven't been using Backpack as much as I used to, but I love the Backpack Firefox extension which allows me to instantly add reminders that will go directly to my email. I use this app a lot while I am in meetings. A deadline comes up, a new event is going into the church schedule, I need to send an important email out to my volunteers or I need to add something to my to-do list and I don't have the time to stop my work flow to add it fully to my calendar, write the email or add it to my to-do list. This is why I like this little extension within Firefox, because within seconds I can capture that important piece of information knowing that I will get an email sent to me reminding me to take some action. Then later, after the meeting, I can spend the time populating my calendar, writing the email, adding it to my to-do list or doing whatever action is required.
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There is an interesting article in the Portland Press Herald about the power of buzz marketing especially as it applied to the movie Cloverfield.
"So how does this explain the story of the unseen monster in the near-nameless movie with unheard of actors that grossed $40 million in its opening weekend?"
There is power in a mystery. A mystery provokes curiosity and intrigue. Too often when we communicate we back up the information dump truck and give people every nitty gritty detail.
When people get too much information they tune it out. They stop listening. If you want to communicate effectively, you got tease people. Your communication has got to be salty, it has to make them thirsty.
Many people around the church have asked about these signs around the church. These signs are doing exactly what they were meant to do, encourage people to ask questions and "want" more information. There has been buzz around the church because of these signs.
Buzz creates want. It creates a want to know more. And if people want more information they are more likely to remember it.
If you want to cut through all the communication noise in our culture, you got to willing to create a little buzz.
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LifeHack published an article that discusses ways to polish and extend those innovative and creative powers of ours.
I have posted on this topic as well, my contributions are here and here.
Listed below are some of LifeHacks' suggestions:
Keep Topping my Tank. "Creativity needs raw material: it needs continual exposure to more knowledge and other peoples’ thinking to allow it to appear."
Seek Out As Many New Experiences As I Can. "The more you cling to your comfort-zones, the less likely you are to be able to see beyond them, let alone stimulate your mind to produce new ideas."
Keep Challenging Myself. "Creative people are constantly putting themselves into situations that challenge them in some significant way: intellectually, practically, or in terms of understanding. They take risks that less creative people shy away from."
Ignore Automatic Criticism-especially My Own. "Many peoples’ creativity is stifled at birth by self-judgmental impulses. Indeed, that’s likely the greatest reason why the majority of people fail to use the creativity they have: any new idea is squashed instantly by negative thoughts in their own minds. They never risk being rated a fool by others because they dismiss themselves as foolish first."
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My friend Jason down in TX has a good post about free content from churches via the internet. Many churches are making their creative messages, videos and graphics available for free. There is a real kingdom mentality starting to stir up among the larger churches that says, "If our material can help other churches and be used for His glory...then make it freely available". I know a lot of other church leaders who don't have the kind of resources and staff, as larger churches may have, and they appreciate that these resources are being made available.
Most of the time other church's creative endeavors can provoke and prime the pump for your own creativity. Ultimately, you should adapt materials to your own context and situation. But as a starting place, these resources are a great place to stoke the creative fires.
Here is a list of five churches that are offering free online resources:
CrazyChurch.com -- Crossroads Community Church (Cincinnati, OH); Kensington Community Church (Detroit, MI); Crossroads Community Church (Atlanta, GA); Gateway Community Church (Austin, TX)
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Here is a great post from Todd Henry. We can't assume that others have the privilege of knowing what we know (see previous post on the Curse of Knowledge). Therefore even though it may seem repetitive or even patronizing to repeat the story and narrative, helping people understand the facts, allows people to engage with laughter.
"SherwoodSherwood Schwartz , creator of such nostalgic TV shows as "Gilligan's Island " and "The Brady Bunch " was once asked why his shows began with theme songs that set up the premise of the show. ("Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale..." or "Here's the story of a man named Brady...")
His response was, "Confused people don't laugh."
I think there's much we can learn from uncle Sherwood about context and creativity. When we're creating, our goal is communicate something - even if that something is ineffable. Without context, we're relying on the individual to fill in the vacuum. (Vacuum's always get filled, no?) This complexity can lead to confusion and misinterpretation of our intent. In the world of high art, this isn't necessarily as much of an issue because the goal is to evoke and fade into the cultural fabric, but when we're creating for a client, this can be the key determining factor of success or failure.
Do your "punchlines" have context? Are people wasting their neurons trying to understand why a millionnaire, a scientist, a farm girl, a movie star and "the rest" are frolicking around on your island?"
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The thesis of the article is we actually become more creative when we create constraints in which to be creative. So, an example would be trying to create a bank's lobby that is "hipper and more inviting to young professional customers" as a goal is far less effective than starting with some constraints such as "We want the space to be more lie a Starbucks and less like a post office."
The point of the article is that creativity is not sparked in a vacuum. Parameters and guidelines prompt creativity and brainstorming. As the authors suggest, that yes, "--it constrains freedom,....but it also dramatically improves the chances that your team will hit the target."
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Ministry can be hard work. But the best teams are those that can laugh with one another. We just finished our staff meeting this morning and we never laughed so hard during our time together. Did we get stuff done? Of course. But I think John's opinions are right on the money. Humor increases productivity as well as enjoyment within the task.
You say that humor increases productivity, reduces conflict, and fosters change. Is this a joke?
Humor is healthy, especially the way it reduces stress. Humor is the opposite of fight-or-flight emotions -- especially fear and anger. I can't be laughing with you and angry or afraid of you at the same time.
How does it encourage creativity?
Humor makes us think more flexibly. People who think funny do better on creativity studies. To put it really simply, humor loosens up your brain to think of more possibilities and be more open to the wild and wacky ones. There is a guy at the State University of New York at Buffalo named Roger Firestien who has a center for the study of creativity. When he teaches brainstorming, he says you should put a joker in the group -- somebody who will come up with preposterous ideas. Very often that will stimulate people to come up with ideas that will work. Let me give you an example. A bunch of paint engineers were moaning and bitching about how hard it is to get paint off a house. One guy says, "Why don't we just put gunpowder in the paint and blow it off the house?" That led people to think, "What could we do that would be the equivalent of gunpowder?" They came up with a chemical they added to the paint and when you wanted to remove the paint you did a light wash with a second chemical over the first one. That didn't blow it off the house, but it allowed it to drop off.
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Whenever it rains, Granger Community Church and Element Church both use greeters with umbrellas to escort people from their cars to the church. It’s a great idea - one that every church should use. I wish we, in North Georgia, could implement this ministry more - we really need the rain here. Something that may interest those churches creating great first impressions with umbrella greeters is Quincy Store’s new double umbrella. What better way to accomodate visitors to your church than with a double umbrella.
Little, special touches like an umbrella greeter can go a long way in making a first impression.
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(ht: wacky archives)
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Something that may interest those churches creating great first impressions with umbrella greeters is 
