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Creative Team Meetings
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Our church is ready to revamp the process it uses for planning upcoming sermon series and individual sermons. We're basically starting from scratch as the old process involved little to no creativity.
So here's what I'm looking for:
- Who drives/leads your worship planning meetings?
- Who is involved in the meetings?
- What do you try to accomplish in a meeting?
- Do you use any kind of creative brainstorming process?
- How many days/weeks in advance do you start to plan for an upcoming series/message?
- Any other advice/lessons learned can you give me?
If it helps, our only paid staff are a Pastor and a Youth Pastor. We have around 300 in Sunday attendance. I handle almost all aspects of print/visual communication on a volunteer basis.
Posted at 12:29PM, 19 March 2007 PDT
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Rob,
I attended a worship about this subject given by Anthony Coppedge. He is a career media guy who is a consultant. Check out his blog (link blelow) on this subject.
www.anthonycoppedge.com/blogs/index.php?blog=1&cat=16...
Originally posted 63 months ago.
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AnthonyFox edited this topic 63 months ago.
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Since we work with different churches each with a different setup creative meetings can run the gamut but there are some basics we try to follow.
- A communicator leads the meeting, this persons viewpoint is how to communicate with the audience with the best impact. This should be someone removed from the content, so for example I don't recommend the lead pastor leading as he can have a difficult time seeing past the delivered content.
- That said, the lead pastor certainly must be involved and have a voice in the creative meeting. Others to include are the worship leader, technical lead and I like to have people from the church rotate into the meeting as well as someone outside of the church. Don't assemble too many people, keep it small and balanced.
- As the creative lead, determine what it is you want to accomplish. It may be you want to talk through the year in overview, or maybe it's a particular series...but have a plan and be specific and targeted, don't try to juggle too many things or the creative will get watered down.
- The best advice I can give: Make it fun. Creativity shouldn't be a chore, have some fun with it. Change the pace, try different locations...the more fun you have, I truly believe, the greatest result you will see.
Posted 63 months ago.
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We began to have these kind of meetings about 3 months ago. Our team consists of 4 people from our communications dept. and 3 from our production / programming dept. We implemented a creativity time line for sermon series (idea from Grainger) and it's been a FANTASTIC process. Our meetings are fun, we laugh.. a lot... but that has definitely helped to foster a comfortable environment amongst the 2 teams. We have gotten to a place where no idea is a bad idea and everyone feels comfortable throwing ideas out there without fear of being shot down or feeling stupid.
There's not really one single person who drives / leads our meetings, which is probably something we could adjust to keep the time more focused and better spent - but at this point, I like the flexibility and freedom that comes with not having it be so formal.
We are trying to plan 4-6months ahead of time -- so this week's meeting was talking about a series that will be taking place in October. As a designer, working this far ahead of time has been great -- I'm able to have a lot more creative freedom to bounce ideas around without the pressure of having it done.. yesterday!
Our meetings are scheduled to happen once a week, for about an hour and a half, but typically they tend to run 2 hours (we're working on cutting that time frame down).
I think we have a great balance of creative people and organized / technical people. I'm quite sure that having this balance has really helped our meeting process to be very successful to this point. There have been some GREAT ideas that have come out of these meetings, and I would recommend all churches work towards having some kind of regular creative meetings. It has been great to get everyone "on the same page" -- our graphics packages have become more consistent across the board, from the bulletin to the stage - and our series ideas have improved greatly in this process.
Like holycow said... the best thing you can do in one of these meetings is have fun, keep it light - but make sure you stay on track. Laughter is some of the best creative medicine you can have!
Posted 63 months ago.
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What if instead of having the same people in the same meeting every time, we invited new people w/ fresh ideas? What if those people varied in age, ethnicity, culture, or background? It might even be a neat thing to invite a good friend who is unchurched...
could be interesting.
one rule for creative meetings...no blocking.
Posted 63 months ago.
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Great thread. In our creative team we meet on a weekly basis, Wednesdays, and following (or try to follow) a strict production line. We divide our series into primary support and secondary support. Primary support means the creative team provides all the content from topic to video to music to points and takeaways. Secondary support our Pastor gives us topic, text(s), and points and we build our theme(s) around that. It is a great process and we are learning a lot.
Specifically for your questions:
- Who drives/leads your worship planning meetings?
Our minister of worship
- Who is involved in the meetings?
Some of our production team (audio, video, graphics), several programming staff for varying theological and homiletical support, several staff members who address look and have support creative minds, and (at times) a member of the executive team.
- What do you try to accomplish in a meeting?
Getting the nuts and bolts worked out and beginning the process. We talk over major themes, music choice, videos, other options to enhance the Sunday experience.
- Do you use any kind of creative brainstorming process?
Some times, particularly when we hit a wall.
- How many days/weeks in advance do you start to plan for an upcoming series/message?
We try to get about two months ahead to get major thoughts and logitistics in place.
- Any other advice/lessons learned can you give me?
Make sure your Pastor is involved and have a creative place to meet. Boring, taupe rooms don't seem to breed innovation. Honestly, be very careful in choosing appropriate people to be involved not all opinions are equal in this room. Have FUN in your meetings. Don't plan being creative, allow adequate time to be spontaneously creative. Try to plan your messages inductively to allow people to walk with you in the process. Remember, the Sunday experience is everything...plan for it. Finally, make sure you have an adequate review process in place and get outsider info (outside your staff) on what happened. Sometimes what we get nobody else does.
Often we start with one idea and by the end of a meeting we've got something completely different in place and are working through it.
I think you're in the right place. Blessings.
Posted 63 months ago.
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We are just beginning in a process of doing this kind of thing...Basically, our full time salaried staff is included (only 4 of us-including the lead pastor). Our conversations usually start with finding out what is on the pastors heart to preach, then deciding how we can creatively market it. We just came off of using Granger's Pure Sex series and that got a lot of attention, so now we're looking at what to do from here, because we have to do something just as catchy. In answer to your question, our lead pastor is leading the conversation because ultimately it's his call. We have established a great environment to throw out new ideas or "shoot down" a bad idea without anyone being upset.
We know our pastor wants to speak on God's will concerning healing (we believe healing is always God's will :) ). So, we decided to call our series "Did God kill Aunt Bertha?" and put a website up called auntbertha.com (not up yet, but we've bought the domain). The title is catchy, we know that it resonates with a need in the hearts of not only our people but our city, and it is a cool way to market a healing series. We didn't want to advertise "Faith and Healing Month."
Once we have the concept, we can work with the logistics (what images will look like, how are we advertising, what issues within our church will we have to deal with when we get more people from this series).
We also discuss the issues of branding some...because of the feet image we used from Granger, we are going to have a pair of feet and a toe tag (like a morgue) in our advertising for the new series, the thought being that people will make the link and realize it's the same church.
Even with this series, we still had about five other series concepts we discussed using, talked pros and cons before deciding on this. Right now we simply plan about a month out for advertising sake and we don't want to plan to far in advance because we learn new things with each series we do on how to improve and we want to include what we learn in our next effort.
One last thing is that we always try to think from the perspective of the lost people in our city. We are going for the "unchurched" and so the message can't come off as being religious when you're going after unsaved people.
Hope that helps. Like I said, we're kinda new at this so we're working out the kinks...so far so good though!
Posted 63 months ago.
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As a seminary student I have many many questions for you all but I'll try to keep it simple today.
When you begin planning sermons/series do any of you/your churches use the revised common lectionary or are the choices of scripture/themes left up to the pastor/worship leader or other. When you plan your marketing/art/images has the pastor/preacher/worship leader already begun his sermon prep or is this an entirely organic system that evolves together.
Again, I'm a seminary student and could bore you with questions today, but I won't. I'll leave it at that and commend you all on some great works of art and encourage you in service to our Lord.
Posted 63 months ago.
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At Resurrection, Worship / Sermon series are planned out for a year, and general themes for the year are planned further than that.
Worship planning happens on Wednesdays and here is the general schedule
10:30 to 11:30 AM: 4 weeks out - this is where the service order is most fluid and flexible. Ideas are thrown out and a general order is decided.
11:30 AM to Noon: Evaluation of the previous week
12:10 PM to 12:45: Current week
12:45 PM to 1:15 PM: 2 weeks out
1:15 PM to 1:45 PM: 3 weeks out
2:15 PM: Special Planning - overall planning for new series'; confirmation; Christmas Eve; Easter, etc.
From the first brainstorming meeting, each of the weeks gets generally more and more completed. Usually by two weeks and definitely by current week there are hardly any changes to the service order that are made. This makes it easier for musicians, media, etc. to be prepared for the service.
The process currently lead by a staff person - Creative Director of Worship. Pastors, music head staff, and media personnel are all a part of the meeting.
Posted 63 months ago.
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To matthew: I don't think I'm familiar with some of the terms you just used... but what I can tell you is that in our church, effective coordination is the key. If the pastor/preacher already prepared a series or sermon, it's up to the rest to give him full support by providing the necessary back-up to supplement the message. Otherwise, a good brainstorm washes away miscommunication and discoordination. The point: act like a body. Be open to ideas and criticisms, but take good heed to those on which the topic's authority lies (i.e., songs - worship team, art & design - graphic artists, marketing strategies - advertising/marketing personnel or similar experience/knowledge, media - communication personnel & related).
Most of all, forget the technical/religious/academic lingo - it's the church, not the seminary! Christ didn't come here to introduce systems, processes, techniques or methods - but to bring us together back to God! So more important than the red tape, focus more on building relationships (upward & sideways) - and you'll be amazed how effective working relations can naturally follow.
Posted 62 months ago.
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Creativeity is the key to presenting the gospel in compelling and relevent ways. There are several pastors who are on the cutting edge of using teams to create a series of talks. Ed Young is one of them. He has information available to demonstrate the creative process his teams employess to put a series together. The info is worth the minminal cost involved.
Posted 62 months ago.
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I recommend reading the book, "The Big Idea". This is a main topic in the book.
Posted 62 months ago.
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Look up some material written by earl Creps - if you contact him he is really good at getting back with ya!
Posted 62 months ago.
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