At Seeds Conference, Andrew Tremonti of Church on the Move (Tulsa, OK), discussed teaching 4 and 5 year olds.

Sometimes the biggest challenge to teaching is kids’ imaginations.

However, you can use their imaginations to your advantage. Kids are going to use their imaginations. So rather than letting them daydream, ask them to imagine with you. Take them new places.

At Seeds Conference, Whitney George of Church on the Move (Tulsa, OK), Pace Hartfield of Fellowship Church (Grapevine, TX), and Marty Taylor of Northland, A Church Distributed (Orlando, FL) gave a behind the scenes discussion of how they lead their creative arts teams.

WG: It is not so much about what you do as who you are. What are the personalities like that make up your creative team? Those personalities will shape your art.

MT: Each week, we focus on some specific attribute of God and we connect that attribute to some type of call & response for the church to act on that week.

MT: We don’t ever buy anything just because it’s cool. We buy something because it will help the message.

WG: You don’t do all the lights for the sake of lights. You do it to create environments for worship. God did the same for us when He created a beautiful environment for us to worship in.

PH: And sometimes creating the environment means turning the technology off. Sometimes that is most powerful.

WG: It is about using it in the right way. You always want to keep at the heart of what you are doing, “What am I trying to say?”

WG: When we opened our new auditorium, we asked, “What is the appropriate response?” We thought up a lot of crazy ideas but decided that the appropriate response to launching a new auditorium is worship.

MT: We find out 6 weeks out what a weekend will be and start planning.

PH: We plan 10 weeks to a week out, and sometimes start planning 6 months in advance. We start with whomever will be teaching. Ed Young Jr. will do a mind dump and journaling, and the create planning team will read it all. Then we meet as a group to talk it out. We leave more on the cutting room floor then in the final sermon.

PH: To as best you can, match the leadership style of your pastor. When your pastor feels that support, he will trust you more.

WG: I have to remember that God didn’t call me to run Church on the Move. He called me to serve Church on the Move. You have to make sure that mindset is aligned if you want to be creative.

WG: One of the main things about collaboration is that when start going up, you will see the fruits of that, the disjointedness, showing up on stage. The tech guys and the media guys and the worship guys need to be able to speak into the lives and process of everyone around them.

WG: During rehearsals, we have someone always watching it who is not doing it. That kind of feedback in the time you are putting it together is critical to a great worship environment.

PH: We always have to keep one hand free to adjust for what God wants. You have to be careful to never spiritualize your laziness. Don’t do things on the fly. God is in the details.

MT: I think the approach is greatly affected by how you view the video and the lighting and everything. If you look at the lighting as just another tool, as another worship leader, then it helps to evaluate if it is working together.

WG: Stop thinking of worship as one thing and lighting as one thing and production guys as one thing. They are all one thing together. They are all communication.

WG: Honor and serve. Start honoring the sound man. He is as much of the process as the person on stage. Serving them means respecting their process and putting yourself in their shoes. That relationship is essential.

At Seeds Conference, Willie George of Church on the Move (Tulsa, OK) discussed the four absolutes of leadership.

There are certain things that are principled, and this is one of them.

You then, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others.
2 Timothy 2:1-2 (NIV)

This is about building a team. This is about structure. It is only two verses, but they list five layers of leadership.

1. Jesus Christ
2. Apostle Paul (who was taught personally by Christ)
3. Timothy
4. the faithful men who served Timothy
5. the others taught by the faithful men

STEP #1 - Every leader has to be strong in grace.

Now grace means a lot of things The willing presentation of excellent ministry before and sometimes even without a reciprocal response from the people who are ministered to. Children’s ministers and missionaries understand this process very well.

You may not get a thank you from the people you minister to. But God has the most amazing ways of payback. You don’t always get payback the way you think you want it, but God’s payback is always better. You have to learn how to be strong in grace.

Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to curry their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord.
Colossians 3:22 (NIV)

This means you need to be willing to do ministry with low pay if necessary. Ministry costs money. And the numbers only get bigger. The challenges only get greater. You need to get to the point where you do things because you love people and not because of the immediate reward.

STEP #2 - The leader must communicate vision.

Not everyone does this. The difference between success and failure is often subtleties.

The Kingdom of God is not motivated or energized by need. The Kingdom does not come by need but by faith. And faith comes by hearing the Word of God.

Need is not a great motivator, but vision is.  Think of vision as a blueprint. Blueprints don’t slow the work down. They speed it up.

Then the Lord replied: “Write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets so that a herald may run with it.
Habakkuk 2:2

The Bible is a big book of strategies, and those strategies are almost always inadequate. Grab a rock and a sling and face a giant? March around a wall seven times then shout? There is no vision without strategy.

STEP #3 - The leader must delegate to faithful men.

No matter how gifted a leader may be, he will never fulfill God’s will on his life without helpers.

When you release a faithful person to help you, there is always a reciprocating response. That faithful person releases you to do what you need to be doing. Don’t ask God where your helpers are.

Among the twelve apostles, there was not one single volunteer. Every one of the disciples were picked by Jesus while they were doing something else. That is what we have a responsibility of doing. Don’t wait for volunteers, you must draft people. But you must qualify the people you pick.

Test their faithfulness. The more successful your ministry is, the more careful you must be to qualify them. Success brings opportunists who are not faithful to the same thing that drives you. Test faithfulness in three areas.

1. They must be faithful in the little things.
2. They must be faithful with money. Do they tithe? Are they responsible with the church’s money?
3. They must be true to the original. You do not have the license to do your own thing in someone else’s ministry. Your responsibility in to honor the spirit, the ethics, and the habits of the leader.

Model it. Show people how you want it done.

STEP #4 - The leader must remove workers who are not able to continue.

Starting out, you may have to take any help that is willing. But as you grow, you need to raise the ability of your people. Part of having the ability to do something is the ability to recognize whether you can or cannot do it.

A worker who lacks ability to do his job, will hold everyone back. When you fail to release a worker because you are worried about how they will make it, you are robbing them because they have a place somewhere else in the body of Christ.

You have to learn to change some of your people. A good leader has to remove people who are faithful but not sufficiently able.

No matter how bad, how hard, you want to do something… the key to it is the people.

At Seeds Conference, Gabe George of Church on the Move (Tulsa, OK) discussed 7 steps to great volunteers.

If you want to develop great volunteers, follow these steps.

1. What is your mission?
   For us, children’s ministry is about the kids. If any decision conflicts with that statement, the right answer is clear.
2. Get your systems in order.
   If you want people who are sharp and capable, you have to have your systems in order. If people come to serve and see gaping holes in how you do things, they may defect not because they don’t care but because it looks like you don’t. Volunteers like to know their place. Systems provide that. Church needs to be safe. Systems provide that. If you don’t have systems, you are asking for it.

Those are two things that I think must be done before you ever ask for volunteers. Here is what you do after you’ve got the basics covered.

1. Cast the vision.
   People don’t respond to needs. They respond to vision. Vision captures people. When you are dealing with volunteers, you must cast the vision often, often, often. A  lot of our vision is systems.
2. Have a code of ethics.
   A code of ethics is a list that covers anything that is a deal breaker about serving. And we have volunteers sign the code of ethics in front of a pastor. You determine what this is for you. Clear guidelines make it easy to enforce expectations.
3. Deal with problems.
   You can not be afraid to deal with problems. And problems come from people. It is difficult to look at someone and say, “I’m sorry. This isn’t working.” As Joyce Meyer says, “Do it afraid!” if necessary. You need to realize that you are part of something that is bigger than you. You have to be bold.
4. Put them in the right spot.
   Volunteers all have different kinds of gifts. You have the ones who want to stay behind the scenes and the ones who want the microphone. The funny thing is not all of the people who want the microphone should have the microphone. Our kids are not lab rats for you to develop yourself as a speaker.
5. Be followable.
   There is one thing I’ve seen a lot of in children’s ministry, and it is the guy in the room that others can’t relate to and say, “Well, he is the kids guy.” You don’t have to be corny. You can teach with authority. Just because you teach kids, doesn’t mean that you have to act like you are a child. There is a place for that, but more importantly, you need to be followable. Children’s ministry needs leaders. Children’s ministry needs men (and I think the women agree). And if you want men to volunteer, you need to act like a man. I’ve learned that you can reach kids better if you just act like a man. So ask if you are someone who can be followed. You can’t just be a friend.

That is how we do it at Church on the Move.

At Seeds Conference, Whitney George of Church on the Move (Tulsa, OK) discussed building a culture of creativity.

When most people think of creativity, they think of artists. But really that is an incomplete definition because you can be creative at anything - mathematics, engineering, parenting.

Creativity at its core is really nothing than solving a problem of some sort. We all have the capacity to be a creative person.

But creativity for artists comes with unique challenges.

As artists, our challenge, our problem, is one of communication. If you think about it, all art is communication. Often, it communicates feeling.

The power of the arts is it can take you places that you didn’t know you can go. It can communicate things that you otherwise cannot.

When you think about the Great Commission, our responsibility is to communicate the gospel. And as artists, we communicate the gospel through the arts.

So how do you build a culture of creativity? Ask yourself these four questions:

QUESTION #1 - Have you given the right people a voice?

If you want young people to buy into your church, give them a voice.

That doesn’t mean ask anyone. Find a young person who has a relationship with your church and genuinely cares. You don’t have to take every single suggestion. But it matters to listen. When you show that you care about what they think, then they will go to town to work for you.

If you want to build a culture of creativity, you must continually find new people, give them a voice, and give them an opportunity to serve. Like attracts like, so get great people.

QUESTION #2 - Have you got the right people on the team?

The idea of the lone genius is actually a myth (research proven). Creativity always works best in groups. Where people often have pitfalls is not willingness to do something but rather choosing the right people for their team.

Avoid These People

• Avoid people who cause tension.
  Tension is the biggest enemy to the creative process because tension makes our guard go up. Sometimes the senior pastor creates tension because of his position of authority.
• Avoid people who dominate the conversation.
• Avoid people who don’t participate.
  If you aren’t going to engage the conversation, there is no point in you being in the room.
• Avoid people who always agree.
  You need people who will ask the tough questions.

Get These People

• Get people who have a selfless heart for the church.
  They may not have the best ideas at first, but they give themselves. You want people who use their talents and gifts to build the church and not people who use the church to build their talents and gifts.
• Get people who have familiarity with each other.
  Familiarity breeds comfort with each other.
• Get people who move the conversation forward.

QUESTION #3 - Have you put in the time?

There is nothing sexy about creativity and the creative process. There are hundreds of decisions to come up with a result that looks like a genius idea. Creativity works in really small sparks.

Creativity is horribly inefficient. That’s okay. It is like that for everyone. When people do anything very well, they make it look easy.

QUESTION #4 - Are you ready to just do it?

Don’t get hung up wondering “How?” Just do something. Take the first step.

What God has called you to do, He has also given you the grace to do.

At Seeds Conference, Willie George of Church on the Move (Tulsa, OK) discussed turning obstacles into opportunity.

Every generation has to be reached on its own terms. We aren’t talking about compromising the major things. We are talking about small adjustments here and there.

The opportunities that God places before us often do not look like opportunities but rather obstacles.

See, I have set the land before you. Go in and take possession of the land that the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give to them and to their offspring after them.
Deuteronomy 1:8 (ESV)

Anything worth having comes with a struggle. The easy thing to do is to go to the place that no one wants to be - the wilderness. The easy thing is to retreat from the struggle.

When the Israelites were in the wilderness, they did not want the struggle of taking the land that God wanted for them. But in Numbers 13, there is symbolism in what the Israelite spies brought back from the land. They brought back grapes, pomegranates, and figs.

• Grapes symbolizes blood. This means there will be redemption here.
• Pomegranates symbolize worship. You will never have your full worship experience unless you take the land.
• Figs symbolize life. God symbolically showed them that this land is where He would feed them.

In Joshua 14:6-14, Caleb and Joshua were older than everyone else because they were the only ones in their generation willing to go take the land.

One of the greatest lessons you can learn in life is that you are not the first one to do what you are going to do. Do not become isolated and forget that others have gone through what you are going through. Do not forget that others have gone before you, and when you take steps of faith, the God that blessed them will bless you, too.

Every obstacle is an opportunity in disguise. When the Israelite spies came back from the land, they refused to see anything but the giants. When you run up against something that looks like an impossibility, your faith can turn it into something that is bigger than you have ever done.

In Numbers 13:26-31, the Israelites were afraid to attack the many people groups living in the land that God wanted for them, but Caleb knew they could do it. They did not have to attack them all at once. They can possess the land by conquering one group at a time.

You don’t have to do it all at once. God will very often only put one thing in front of you at a time.

Catastrophes are not obstacles but opportunities to reach your community.

We need to see the grapes, pomegranates, and figs in the situation.

At Seeds Conference, Ed Young Jr. of Fellowship Church (Grapevine, TX) discussed 11 statements for creative change.

Anytime there is change, there is creativity. Creativity and change are inseparably linked. When you change, often it is an innovation or something different.

I believe that God is cheering to us, “You’ve got it! Now use it!”

Some of us deny having the ability to be creative, but that is not true. God made us unique. And He wants us to be who He planned for us to be individually and collectively.

Here are some creative statements that God has brought forward in Ed Young Jr’s life and in the leadership culture at Fellowship Church.

#1 - You be you.

In every area, be yourself. Do not try to be like any other minister. Do not try to be like any other church.

#2 - Work for the weekend.

The weekend is the most important thing we do in the church. So goes the week, so goes the weekend. So goes the weekend, so goes the week. If you make the weekend the thing, most people show up on the weekend, and you can connect with them there. Creativity is stopping something and starting something else. Why should the church be boring? It shouldn’t. So the weekend is where you can be creative. So often the small tweaks will take you to the giant peaks.

#3 - Have a seat at the table.

At the head of the table is the pastor with the food. The first chair is for people who do not know Christ. If your church is doing what it is supposed to do, then 1/3 of the church should be lost. Chair 2 is baby Christians (another 1/3). The third chair should be mature followers of Christ who share and serve (the last 1/3).

#4 - Sign up for group therapy.

Creativity is best done in a group. Everyone is a creative genius, so in a group, there is no telling what creative thing will come up. Critique while you are planning. Critique while you create. Play idea ping pong. You will not believe the ideas that go back and forth.

#5 - Get your “ask” in gear.

Always seek knowledge. Some are afraid to ask questions because of insecurity. Don’t be afraid. When you talk, there is a rhythm. You need to talk then ask then listen. We ask two questions in our creative process: (1) What if? and (2) What is? Delegation without investigation is an abomination. What if? plans the thing. But What is? investigates the thing. Also ask, “Who am I reaching?”

#6 - Hire “yes” men and “yes” women.

“Y” stands for yielded to God. “E” stands for encouraging. “S” stands for strong. The with you’s help you. The for you’s cheer for you. And the use you’s make you think they are with you, but they really use you and abuse you. When you let God take care of haters, He will take you to a whole ‘nutha level.

#7 - Get on the stairmaster.

Everytime you ask the right people the right questions to get the right answers, you will ask a lot of the wrong people, too. So you are always climbing. You are always moving.

#8 - Become a creative criminal.

Steal ideas unashamedly. Rip them off. Of course, make them your own. God gave you eyes… plagiarize.

#9 - Surf the wave.

Fade awaves are the waves that hit the coastline of our conscious and then fade away. Try to harness your creative ideas. Build in rest periods during the day.

#10 - Go through labor and delivery.

You’ve got conception (getting the idea). You’ve got pregnancy (incubate the idea). You’ve got to give birth. The reason many churches die and lose their creativity is they forget about the lost person.

#11 - Join the comedy club.

The majority of our creative ideas come out of laughter. You have to build in blocks of time to laugh and create. And if laughter doesn’t work, argue! Debate it out if necessary.

You’ve got creativity. Now use it!

Tonight I am driving to Tulsa, OK to live blog Church on the Move’s Seeds Conference over the next few days.

Church on the Move originally earned a reputation for practical yet creative children’s ministry then did the same in youth ministry and now is turning a lot of heads with their creative arts department.

To get an idea of the type of transformation that Church on the Move has undergone, look at the stark contrast between their worship services in 2002 versus today.

CHURCH ON THE MOVE in 2002

Watch a video of Church on the Move in 2002.

CHURCH ON THE MOVE in 2010/2011

CWF 2010 :: The Story of Christmas + The Father’s Heart + O Holy Night

IWANM - The Wedding

CWF 2010 :: The Grinch + Thriller

KOTM Live!

CWF 2010 :: Drummer Boy + Deck The Halls + The Grinch + Thriller

To learn about the principles and practical how-to’s behind Church on the Move’s approach to ministry, stay tuned for my live blogging notes from the Seeds Conference over the next few days.