Create. Motivate. Communicate.

Albert Einstien once quoted… ‘Out of Complexity, find simplicty’.

One thing I have observed and personally experienced is that by default one can become complex. It truly is a discipline to remain simple. I like the way Jesus said it…

Matthew 18:2 (The Message)

^2-5For an answer Jesus called over a child, whom he stood in the middle of the room, and said, “I’m telling you, once and for all, that unless you return to square one and start over like children, you’re not even going to get a look at the kingdom, let alone get in. Whoever becomes simple and elemental again, like this child, will rank high in God’s kingdom. What’s more, when you receive the childlike on my account, it’s the same as receiving me.

How easy it is to get burden with the daily affairs and the running of ministry. Yes ministry can be very demanding and can be somewaht challenging. But I encourage you to not take on more that what you believe your vision for your ministry is. It can be very difficult to say no, but unless you do from time to time, before you know it you will find your life extremely complicated.

The corporate world knows this… take a look at perhaps the discipline of Steve Jobs and the Apple Corporation. Look at their products and you will see how they choose to keep things simple. Yet in the discipline, one has to agree that many of the items have better appeal than perhaps some of thier counterparts from other companies.  Successful companies know the art of disciplining themselves in keeping their vision simple and even the ethos of these corporations ethos is simple.

Take a look at perhaps one of the more well known products and how in the wrong hands can really lose your orignal purpose. It’s an oldie, but you get the point.

So as you think about your lifestyle or ministry, think about what you can do to simplify it and give it more meaning and purpose.

Until next time, think simple!

Kenneth W. Hagin once said that ministry is spelt W-O-R-K. Another minister also said that he prepares and practices every sermon before delivering it on a Sunday Morning. He believes in bringing his ‘A’ game as he may only have one opportunity to reach a guest who does not know Jesus. So with these two combined thoughts. Preparation is Work. So how much fun could delivering a creative message be if we spent some time in preparation. Dont misunderstand me, I am fully aware of the preparation that many preachers, pastors put into their sermon preparation. But I firmly believe that we perhaps also need to focus on how the message will be heard, not just what we have to say.

Let me repeat that… We need to spend an equal amount of time on preparing how our message will be heard, and not just what we have to say…

So what are some of the things that a Pastor could access to help develop a creative team….

• Teenagers – many are tech savvy and they know how to use powerpoint style programs.

• Websites that help with video media for sermon illustration.

Blue Fish Tv.com – this site offers a variety of short media to really bring  your point home

sermonvideos.com – this site offers more worship style media, but still has some good stuff.

SermonIllustrations.com -this site offers an enormous array of topics and each has a variety of ideas.

• News events – What is making the news eg. Recession, major sporting events etc. These are all good sources to minister to people with. Making your message relatable.

These are just a couple of sites, but there are many out there (if you know others, be sure to let us all know), these sort of sites work by means of either small fee per video or by a monthly subscription so what ever works best for you.

When getting creative, some people may use also current TV episodes, or current hit songs that the unchurched can related with. What ever you feel comfortable and at the end of the day, you need to be led by the Holy Spirit on many occasions and He will guide you and help you along the way.

One pastor I heard recently did a real out of the box idea, he had collected a whole of sanitised garbage and scattered it all of the church sanctuary, I mean everywhere. Literally people had to move the trash to sit on a seat. (there was a disclaimer on the main screen that said that the Pastor is know for doing random and extreme sermon illustrations). So as the message began, there was a Janitor that began to sweep up all the rubbish and put it all in bags, it happened to be the pastor, and the Series Title was called, Battlefields of the Mind, getting the rubbish out of our thinking. I mean it really brought the point home, that our idenitity was not in our environment, but in Christ.

So begin getting a creative team together, ministry is work, but it is also meant to be fun. Lets reach the lost and have fun along the way. I would love to hear some of the thoughts some of you have for sermons creativity.

This phrase is often seen in the church circle as an evil one. The reality is that everything we do, is a result of marketing of some sort. The car we drive, the computer we use to read this blog, the phone we use etc. Whether that was marketing in the newspaper, television, letterbox, on a website or even through a friend, we are influenced by marketing. So why should we refrain from using the word ‘marketing’ when it comes to the church? In my opinion, whether we use the word marketing or not, we still need to be able to deliver the message of Jesus in a way that is palatable for people to understand.

It is common knowledge that, the best form of marketing is ‘word of mouth’. So Jesus instructed us in the book of Mark, chapter 15, go into all the world and preach the gospel. So no matter what your world may be, you are in essence marketing the message of Jesus. So in summary, the church should be using word marketing. This leads me to the next post, what methods should the church be using as marketing.

Recently I attended a conference and I got to talking to one of the delegates about the presentation of some of the materials. We both looked around and noticed many materials that appeared… well unprofessional, and really not a good representation of Jesus. Now before you blow your trumpet, about the whole thing of ‘its all about the content not the packaging, that’s important’, lets consider some things.

Let me ask this, what attracted you to the last thing you purchased? Now there will always be the percentage of people that will say, “The functionality, the practicality, etc”, but there is always the percentage of people that say, the colour, the picture, the slogan, the advert etc. Notice the key word here, percentage. If we are only concerned about the content, and not the wrapping, I believe we are really limiting our potential audience.

So with that said, some of the things, in my opinion that limit our potential audience are things like:

• Poor design
• Over use of fonts, colors and font sizes
• Poor quality pictures – quite often just copied from google images and then printed where the image is then pixelated and makes your brochure look tacky. More on this later.
• Too many colours – often colours that are not complimentary
• Poor use of clipart

Now before I go into each of these areas, let me put forward my disclaimer. I am not a professional graphic designer. I have however been blessed to work with some award winning designers and have an eager interest in this field. The International School of Google has been kind to me with my research and I will put some of my research below with links that have been a real blessing to me, in discovering modern graphic design and contemporary design.

With the access of the internet, easier than ever before, I strongly encourage people to find something they like. If they are looking to make a new website. I say to people to create a favourite folder in your internet browser bookmarks/favourites.

Some Design Resources:

Why is it in the Christian circle, we see such ‘religious’ images all the time. Many are limited to the standard crosses, sunsets, sun rays through clouds etc. etc. I am not saying there is not a place for these types of images, but spend time really thinking about your theme when designing your brochure. We have heard it said… A picture says a thousand words. Always let a great picture speak. There are many websites that offer low cost pictures starting from a couple of dollars. There are some free stock photography websites, but my preferences are:

• iStockphoto.com
• Dreamstime.com
• Bigstockphoto.com

Now if you are choosing pictures to print, the resolution of the picture is different to that of a picture used for the website. A picture that is used for printing purposes, should be changed to a higher resolution. All this means is that the dot per inch are higher. For paper the resolution should be a minimum of 300 dpi and for the computer screen, 72dpi is acceptable. Now for those people that are asking, ‘How can I tell if my picture is 300 dpi or 72 dpi?”. When you look at a photo/image does it print out really fuzzy or looks like the image is made up of a whole lot of little boxes, chances are that the image has the wrong resolution. A simple edit in Adobe Photoshop or an open source Photo editor like GIMP can help fix this. Perhaps in another post, I will give some tutorials for this.

In my quest for design tips, I have also found the following links extremely helpful. It is my anticipation that they will be helpful to you also. These are just some of the websites that I have in my favourites folders.

• www.instantshift.com
• www.deviantart.com
• www.dafont.com
• www.logosauce.com
• www.churchrelevance.com

Hello and welcome to our first official post of boytonSTUFF.com.au. We hope that you will enjoy some of our content. The best is yet to come. This check out the links, take your time. If you are a budding designer, or even a professional designer, sign up to the feed. If you are in the area of ministry of helps in your local church, sign up to the feed. We hope that some of the content will help you in your quest for more STUFF!