Peter Bregman, iPad and addiction

I've quoted Peter Bregman's articles before. I like his self-deprecating humour, and his good sense. I'm not going to quote him this time, just tell you that you need to read the article entitled, 'Why I returned my iPad'.

Why do I think you need to read it? Because in it he tells us what the value of returning the iPad was as opposed to keeping it. He doesn't say there's anything wrong with the iPad itself, but there was something wrong with him.

Substitute 'iPad' for any one of a hundred other addictive things, and you get the idea.

By the way, his use of 'boredom' might be questioned, and is questioned by some of those who comment. A better word might be found....

Making Ideas Happen

Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality, by Scott Belsky.

This book first came to my notice on the Out of Ur blog, where it’s highly recommended by reviewer, Scott Wenig.

He writes:

Belsky’s passion is to help people put their best ideas into action. As the founder and CEO of Behance, a company devoted to empowering and organizing the creative world, he and his team interviewed hundreds of productive people and teams over a six year period to discover the principles behind their success. The result of their empirical research is this book, a systematic presentation of the necessary steps needed to bring ideas to fruition.

In my opinion, a great number of pastors and Christian leaders could readily benefit from Making Ideas Happen. We’re often creative, idea-oriented types who love to cast the vision or promote the mission of our church or organization. But, as one noted Christian leader has said about vision sermons and mission statements, “If it’s hanging on the wall but it ain’t happening down the hall, it ain’t happening.” Belsky has given us an accessible guide to creating church and ministry systems that will produce what we’ve preached and promised.

It’s helpful, of course, to read the whole review, and there are a number of other positive ones on Amazon. And if you’ve got ten minutes of down time, check out the Behance site (I assume it’s related to ‘enhance’) – there are some wonderfully creative and inspiring people networked there.

Belsky notes: “very seldom is anything accomplished alone” and there is “tremendous power waiting to be unleashed in the network” of most groups.

Stifling innovation

Youngme Moon writes: Here's a question for you: If you had to come up with a checklist for your organization that was guaranteed to stifle imagination, innovation, and out-of-box thinking...a checklist designed specifically for people who want nothing to do with disruptive change...what would it look like?

You can find his slightly irreverent (only in the business sense) response on the Conversation, one of the Harvard Business blogs. I can't link directly to it, as it's a Vimeo video.

Why should anyone who reads this blog watch it? Because the same kind of thinking often (more than often) goes on in the church....

Making It New

In his review of Andy Crouch's new book, Culture Making: recovering our creative calling, Gideon Strauss writes:

[Andy] Crouch argues that American Christians adopted broadly four stances in relation to culture during the course of the 20th century, in each case taking an appropriate gesture toward certain elements of culture and inappropriately expanding it into a comprehensive posture toward the common culture in general. While some cultural products (like sex trafficking) demand outright condemnation from Christians, a posture of condemnation fails to account for the goodness of culture, warps Christian testimony to hope and mercy, facilitates hypocrisy, and—particularly in response to artistic works—comes across as "shrill and silly." Critique, by contrast, is an entirely appropriate response to works of art, the more so the better the art. But a posture of critique diminishes the delight to be taken in many good products of culture, and encourages a certain kind of cultural passivity that overemphasizes analysis and underappreciates participation and production. A pot of tea, a loaf of bread—the best first response to these is savoring consumption. But a posture of consumption limits us to living "unthinkingly within a culture's preexisting horizons of possibility and impossibility." Consumerism is capitulation to the existing culture at a deep level, allowing our very identity to be defined by what we can purchase. Copying from a culture is, at best, a recognition of "the lesson of Pentecost that every human language, every human cultural form, is capable of bearing the good news." But copying as a posture produces inauthentic, dated, and tame results.

Instead, Crouch says, the cultural postures Christians should adopt are those of cultivation and creation. Cultivators are "people who tend and nourish what is best in human culture, who do the hard and painstaking work to preserve the best of what people before us have done." And creators are "people who dare to think and do something that has never been thought or done before, something that makes the world more welcoming and thrilling and beautiful."

Andy Crouch has a blog site, also called Culture Making

One Voice - Malcolm Gordon

When my son was about eleven, he performed in several television skits for a national children's program, Spot On. One of the other young cast members was Malcolm Gordon, who has currently an ordinand at the Knox Centre of Ministry and Leadership.

Malcolm's creative talents are still well to the fore: he's recently brought out an album of songs called: One Voice. I've heard this album, and there are some great songs on it.

One Voice is a lot of things. It’s not only the name of Malcolm Gordon’s new album. It’s the name of an organization set up to help creativity thrive within Christianity. (If you’re wondering about where you can get a copy of the album, head to Manna Christian Stores or email orders@onevoice.org.nz.)

One Voice is a project exploring contemporary expressions of Christian worship.

I quote from the One Voice website: Christianity has had an interesting journey with ‘the arts’, being on the one hand the single avenue of artistic expression for large chunks of our Western history, and at other times, staunchly opposing what it deemed to be idolatrous.

Our spirituality is not easily definable, but it would be safe to say that it can’t be articulated without artistic creativity. Photography, design, poetry, music and dance all have something unique to offer. However we can’t presume that if we let our creativity loose, without parameters or guiding lights, that we’ll end up with something spiritually authentic.

That’s what One Voice is about; encouraging creative expression that is deeply embedded in the Christian story, and guided by the light of Jesus. Art should never be considered an end in itself, it is a mode of communication. It is, however, a mode of communication capable of an even richer palate of expression than language itself, which is precisely why it must be used in the service of the most wondrous story ever told.

Tinkering

Jonny Baker, (who has moments of writing entirely in lower case) noted:

one of the points that i found interesting in robert wuthnow's book after the baby boomers: how twenty and thirty-somethings are shaping the future of american religion was that young adults have an extended period before getting married and having children (if they do). this means that there can often be a 10 year period of extended young adulthood. church attendance in this age group has been in decline, but the most interesting part about that is that the young adults who are attending church tend to be married with kids - church somehow is appealing to and catering for families better than single people. so this extension of young adulthood compounds the decline.

The single word that best describes young adults approach to religion and spirituality - indeed life - is tinkering. A tinkerer puts together a life from whatever skills, ideas and resources that are readily at hand... Tinkerers are the most resourceful people in any era. If specialized skills are required they have them. When they need help from experts they seek it. But they do not rely on one way of doing things. Their approach to life is practical. They get things done and usually this happens by improvising by piecing together an idea from here, a skill from there and a contact from somewhere else.

Like the farmer rummaging through the junk pile for makeshift parts the spiritual tinkerer is able to sift through a veritable scrap heap of ideas and practices from childhood, from religious organisations, classes, conversations with friends, books, magazines, television programmes and web sites. The tinkerer is free to engage in this kind of rummaging...

David Droga on creativity

This struck me as being of interest. Although it's talking about working with a group of creative individuals in an advertising agency, it's very possibly applicable to working with a group of creative individuals in a church setting:

Top adman David Droga, head of his innovative agency, Droga5 revealed the creative process his company uses:
1. Decide what emotions they want to evoke;
2. Get together a wide range of people to work together right from the start--creatives, tech people, etc.;
3. Manage the massive insecurities and egos of the people working on the challenge so everybody feels they are being heard and will keep contributing;
4. Refine the goal - a totally open brief can be too intimidating;
5. Don't fall in love with the first idea, even if it seems like a great solution. Force yourself to keep going and writing;
6. Skepticism can be healthy, it prevents blind optimism and exposes flaws or weaknesses that can be addressed;
7. When it's time to sell the client, you can't sell on creativity, but you can sell on WHY you got to the solution you're proposing.

Point 3 is possibly the most relevant of all!