Friday, April 2, 2010

Fear of Losing Your Creativity?



Ideas...we love ideas aren’t we? How about creativity? We love creativity so much that we afraid if we lose it. All kind of profession or jobs in this world needs creativity, even in church ministry. I’ve been involved in music & media ministry for many years and I thank God that the ideas still flowing and even grow until this day.

Have you ever encounter a situation where you can’t think of any ideas? Or maybe you didn’t realise that all this while you have been a selfish artist. Yeah, you afraid of people copying you or stealing your ideas and that make you reluctant to share with others. I’ve experienced it before until recently. God open my eyes and my understanding.

It all began in Genesis. God is The Creator. That’s what He does until He rest on the 7th day (Genesis 2:1-3). Every single thing in this world is created by God. Our God is creative, He make the impossible become possible, the “nothing” become “something”. Just read the story when Jesus do His miracles, He turn plain water into wine, feed 5000 men with 5 loaves and 2 fish and the list goes on. John 1:3 says “through Him, all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made” . This is clear enough that everything...I mean EVERYTHING. Does EVERYTHING include music? Creative ideas and resources? I hope you will understand how creative our God is. He is limitless, there’s no end to His creativeness and ideas. I urge you not to underestimate God, please don’t think God is an old-fashion God. He’s way up-to-date than us. He knows what kind of trend will happen in the future..long we before we predict it.

When you have creative ideas or when you have talents, just use them, give them to others, don’t keep them but develop and let them grow. As you give, He will fill you up (Luke 6:38). New things will be added to you. If you afraid of losing your ideas or creativity, that shows you either have lack of faith or have no idea how creative our God is...or you simply being satisfied with the ideas/creativity you get last year or few years ago.

Same goes with youth ministry or any ministry in church. Keep on raising the standards of creativity in your church, don’t worry, as you faithfully use your talents and deliver your God-given ideas, I believe more ideas will come. If you think otherwise, you’re basically depending on your own experience and your own head.

Here’s some tips I want to share on how to stay creative:
1) Practice your imagination
-practice to imagine things in your head before doing it. Visualize how you want your event to be like, visualize how you want your design to look like or music to sound like. I use the word ‘practice’ because that’s how you develop your imagination.

2) Open your eyes
-Walk around shopping malls to see what are the trend and how people display their products. Look for billboard and advertisement as you walk around. Even it is just a piece of flyers. Write notes whenever you got an idea. I used to write my ideas at the back of my shopping receipt.

3) Get inputs from the mass media
-Watch the right TV channel (apart from astro, 8tv is my favourite!)
-go to bookstore and browse through some magazines (they have lots of good magazines with good graphics and content out there).
-Search for blogs and website, there’s thousands and millions of samples out there.

4) Mix with creative atmosphere
-Well, I know it’s a bit difficult if you’re the only people who understand and can see all those crazy ideas...well, what I usually do is, mix with different kind of creative people. I have friends who’re actors and dancers; they’re creative in their own way. Mixing with them does help me see from different perspective.

5) Clicked to GOD
-This is the most important thing of all. We can have all resources in this world but without God, our ideas are no different from the world.
-As we get connected with Him, He’ll reveal His heart and His creativity. When God pour His ideas into you, it is something beyond comprehension!

So friends, continue to invest your ideas, continue to give your ideas, continue to execute your ideas because God will add more to you and you will get more fresh ideas. May God be glorified by His creativity that overflow in us.

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