ideas

The Art of the Idea

April 12, 2010

The Art of the Idea is the best creative book I have read in the last couple years. At velocityculture we try and broker resources when we come across really good ones. Well this is one…Tom Peters meets Seth Godin and voila you have John Hunt’s new piece. I picked this up in Cape Town South Africa and am really glad I did because what I didn’t know was Hunt is from South Africa. Apart from the sentimental value the purchase holds, I am taken by his freshness about how fresh ideas are critical to our in-flux world.

I am incredibly concerned about the dearth of good, fresh and original ideas when it comes to church ministry, church 2.0, and our ministry intersection with culture. Until we are able to generate enough curiosity to think in original and contextual ways I am afraid “church” in the West will continue to be marginalized with an impotent voice at best. Sometimes we just need others’ genius to jump start our ideation process. Sometimes we need to enter a more quiet state to free up some creative brain space. And sometimes just reading a piece like Hunt’s is enough to ignite some new flames.

One of the things I am doing with a number of church both here in the States and abroad is helping churches begin to thing through their creative process. How do you generate ideas? How do ideas then get moved through a process that navigates sorting, discerning, enfleshing, and executing them? We need lots of work in this area as well. Whatever we decide to do we need to stop laying conventional tired ideas on yet older worn out ideas that have outlasted their welcome and shelf life. I think Hunt’s book may be a huge help to all of us.

And he has about the coolest book website I have ever ever seen. Make sure you hit all the tabs at the bottom to allow the site full lateral scrolling.

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Our Idea and Creativity Crisis Kills Innovation

March 15, 2010

This continues the March 8th post on 3 things I remain convinced of…

1. here

2. The best ways of doing ministry have yet to be found and we are in an “idea” crisis

Idea crisis, creativity dearth, innovation desert. We have to own that part of what we are called to do is design, create and come up with better ways of doing it.

We have to own this one deeply, passionately and relentlessly. This is not because we have to be innovative or don’t like the way we have always done it. We have to own this because God is always doing a new thing and inviting us into new territory and terrain.

I am convinced the best ways are yet to be found and furthermore am totally convinced by my experience that some of those “best ways” are actually in the ideas that will come from people who we don’t know yet and who don’t follow Jesus yet.
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