Chapter 20: Are You Series?
Brainstorming & Making Services Memorable
How do you compete with Hollywood? Sure the church has the most important message
in the world, but how does a non-profit organization with limited resources out-deliver
the obscene media giants with billions of dollars?
In Chapter 11, I mentioned Seth Godin’s quote, “If your target audience isn’t listening,
it’s not their fault, it’s yours.” So how do we keep the most important message in the
world from falling on deaf ears? With a little creativity.
Thinking Outside the Box
Some folks just live outside the box. Others must be invited out from time to time. Our
ability to think outside the box is merely our ability to re-purpose and re-contextualize
that which already exists. Creativity is key to making your church services memorable.
In his book, “The Contrarian’s Guide to Leadership”, Steven Samples coins the term,
‘thinking grey’. Instead of seeing everything in black & white, we create room for grey by
temporarily removing convention. In a ‘grey’ brainstorm - anything is possible. Several
years ago, Samples invented a new control for dishwashers. In his brainstorming
process, he laid on his back on the living room floor, stared at the ceiling, and began to
imagine the absurd: how could a newspaper control a dishwasher, or an elephant or the
moon? Ultimately, the solution had nothing to do with elephants - but the process
brought new perspective.
A few years ago I was hosting a workshop with about a dozen ministry-minded high-
schoolers on this topic and presented them with the challenge of creating an
unconventional worship service. It was an experiment in thinking outside the box. First,
I went around the circle and asked for hobbies and personal interests. I chose hockey as
the theme around which we would build our service. We then went back around the
circle to gather ideas with the following rules: 1. Only solutions may be presented (no
one is allowed to say why something wouldn’t work), 2. Abandon convention. Someone
would then suggest an idea and no matter how absurd it sounded, everyone else in the
circle had to offer possible solutions for how it could work. We wound up with a huge
list of ideas and solutions to choose from - some completely ridiculous, some mediocre,
but some were revolutionary! In a matter of minutes, the proposition of a hockey
worship service went from “you’re kidding, right?” to “we can do this. we should do this!
when can we do this?”
The best solutions are not the result of conventional thinking - they are the product of
unbridled imagination. The process breeds new perspective.
Prematurely contextualizing solutions is a sure way to guarantee mediocre results. If you
allow yourself to dream the impossible, the best possible solutions will present
themselves.
By the way, I later attempted a similar experiment with a room of 40 students and
adults and it was a complete disaster. Limit the size of your input group. Assemble a
group large enough to have varying perspective, but small enough that every voice can
be properly expressed.
Putting it on Paper
The challenge with great ideas is that they often come in pieces. Brainstorming is a non-
linear, creative process which is best facilitated by non-linear tools. Documents are great
for outlines - but they make for poor working visual representations. Here are two
methods to assist you in your brainstorming process:
The Creative Board (thecreativeboard.com)
A creative board is a visual and interactive way to brainstorm and categorize ideas, and
eventually edit and organize them into usable lists, such as series service orders. Many
churches, make regular use of this method in series and event planning. As an
affordable alternative to ‘official’ products, you can also use jumbo Post-it notes and
Sharpies - available at your local office supply store.
Mind Mapping (mindmapping.com)
A mind map is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to
and arranged around a central key word or idea. Mind maps are used to generate,
visualize, structure, and classify ideas. It argues that 'traditional' outlines require that
the reader scans the information from left to right and top to bottom, whilst the brain's
natural preference is to scan the entire page in a non-linear fashion.
Mind mapping is a method - which can be applied to paper/chalkboard/whiteboard/etc
- but there are also tons of mind mapping software applications available - paid/free,
online/native. There is a list of some of the more popular ones here: http://bit.ly/
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