When we talk about creativity it's not compromise. I think when you talk to someone or when you here an idea you have to put it through your creative filter. Every time I hear someone speak or I'm talking to someone I'm saying, "what can I create or what can I copy from them?" I don't mean plagiarize — I mean copy. How can I put that through my creative filter and how can I use that?
The biggest thing I would tell preachers about creativity and about message preparation is something that I just fell into over the years. We call it now Team Creativity. For years and years I was doing the lion's share of all the creative thought behind the message preparation, and I found myself being kind of the creative bottle neck to it. I love to ask people questions, and early on I asked several people questions about the content of my message and what do you think about it, what other angles do you see? But as our church grew I became like the bottleneck of creativity and it's just due to the stress and the load of preaching.
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I thought: I've got all these creative geniuses around me. Why don't I leverage their innovation and have them help me craft a message? So we developed this thing called Team Creativity and it's changed the course of my communication. I think my communication over the last two or three years is a zillion times better than it was even five years ago. I'm a totally different communicator and it's not because of me at all. Its because of leveraging creativity with others.
Here's how I do it: I have to be the one that knows the direction and content before we have these creative team meetings. They know that the buck stops with me — that I have veto power. So normally we will meet two or three times a week, two or three hours each time, and we'll craft the message. I'll walk in and give them the direction, talk about some research I've been doing, what God's doing in my life and I'll put it on a dry erase board — introduction, different points, thoughts I've had — kind of do a mind dump. You know, here's where I'm going. And then when I meet with them they'll begin to give me ideas, they'll begin to critique what I talked about Monday or Tuesday concerning what I'm thinking about. For example, today right before you walked in we were talking about "The Table" series. I had some ideas I've been writing down in my journal and our creative team is just listening, then they begin: have you thought about this, have you though about that, have you thought about whatever? So I'll begin to write those concepts down, and then usually by Tuesday I'll take a Dictaphone out and I'll just kind of go through it. I'll just talk it through, like kind of an introduction, some major points, application, different scripture verses. Then my assistant puts it in the computer and we all get a hard copy and we come back for another meeting and we go through it and just start changing it around. Then I'll spend some time by myself — I'll just go through and add stuff, take away stuff, then usually on Wednesday we'll go through the whole thing again. People might say, "Well, Ed, you used that illustration, or an illustration like that, a couple weeks ago or the message kind of has the same slant as one you did." So they help me to be consistently inconsistent and they critique the message while I'm preparing it.