Creators

I’ve got a new saying as of late…

It is that “there are three kinds of people in this world. Those who create… those who copy… and those who criticize.

It is becoming pretty clear to me after a decade in ministry that some people are passionate and always seeking to improve, innovate, collaborate and create. I’d take one of these people on my team over a hundred others.

The second category is copiers. Either for lack of passion, lack of faith or simply lack of gifting they look at what the creators are doing and copy. Often times this isn’t a bad thing.

Lastly are those who criticize. The irony here is that these people often have the potential to be creators, but they are either too self centered to engage or find too much enjoyment in criticism to ever fully get involved. I have no patience with these types of people. They will often have an argument as to why they are not involved… and no matter how poorly their argument holds up, they will always hide behind it.

Here is the beauty. I’m learning that the creators and the copiers can function in a team (or church) and collectively be a creative body. In other words, a church can be a creative and innovative church if the creators and copiers work together with a common vision.

The application to me is that church leaders and elders need to set a vision for being creative and innovative as a church body. This allows for all but the critics to be involved in birthing something unique and meaningful.

If a church’s vision is simply to maintain, however, and do what others are doing and be really good copiers, then they will lose the creators and the eyes of the visionaries and be idle prey for the critics who will find ample material in a routine and unoriginal church.

Maybe the creative movement that can come from a church that sets innovation as a goal will be enough speed whereby many critics will fall off the train. For one thing is always true of the critic, he won’t work hard enough to keep up.

Maybe I’m just making all this crap up, but the three categories and the necessity for teamwork between the first two sure does make a lot of sense in my mind.