As a leader in your church, you know full-well how important it is to have a strong church communications team. Every single person can make important contributions to the overall vision and mission for your church. It’s important to instill that mentality right from the get-go.
For many of us, however, there is often one person on the team who has a lot of brainstorming and decision-making experience. They offer a ton of great ideas and are strong leaders, but the other team members also have a lot to contribute, too!
So how can you come up with new ideas to grow your mission and strengthen your church, while getting the whole team involved? What do you need to do to help everyone fire up their brain juices––and feel comfortable sharing their creativity?
You need to develop a safe, effective brainstorming environment that is not only empowering, but ultimately still organized and effective for your church logistics.
Here are our top 4 creativity boosters to make your next brainstorming session a success:
1. Determine the Parameters for Brainstorming.
Setting “boundaries” is necessary for consistency and productivity––you want to be creative, you don’t want to veer off too often, too far, or you’ll bounce off the walls! Set some processes in place for settling conflicting ideas and opinions while maintaining a sense of openness.
Lay the groundwork for an open, honest environment that focuses on your church’s goals.
Rather than focus your attention on just the people “in conflict,” focus on the details of the conversation. Ask:
- Is this conversation a high priority right now––or best saved for later?
- How do these two ideas or opinions conflict? Can they both be right?
- How does our mission play a role here?
- How can we use this point of ‘conflict’ to make a better experience for our church members?
Sometimes it’s even possible to merge these two awesome-albeit-conflicting ideas to make a third even more awesome idea. This can happen if everyone keeps an open mind and respects each other’s input.
Being respectful of each other during brainstorming doesn’t stifle creativity. It sets your team up for the best possible creative moments!
2. No idea is a bad idea.
Now that you’re ready to begin your brainstorming session, you’ll want to emphasize how valuable everyone’s input is. It can be easy to forget this and get overly excited about one specific person’s ideas too often.
Over time, these habits can really discourage certain people from speaking up. It will also leave the “loud” people holding the bag -- they can’t have all the pressure to always come up with all the ideas.
To combat this, I always like to keep a backlog of any and all ideas that are shared during the meetings, and acknowledge how an idea or input is still of value––even if it’s not at the most value at that specific meeting. At another time, you can pull up that backlog and bring up someone’s previous idea to discuss then.
You never know when an idea that seems not so great right now will seem perfect in a week or two.
3. Focus on answering questions or solving problems.
I’ve always found that it’s much easier to come up with ideas when the focus is to solve specific problems or answer certain questions for your visitors or audience. Try to reshape the meeting/project/campaign and focus in on something you want to add to your church vision and mission. It’s even better if you can narrow the idea even more to something focused and practical like, “What are church visitors looking for during the holidays?”
For example, maybe you recently heard about an experience one of your members had with trying to give online. They couldn’t figure out the system, and they got frustrated. They just went back to the old method of an envelope in the collection basket.
In your brainstorming session, ask your team members to make an “idea map” of possible solutions to this problem. It might include updating your online giving system, creating an FAQ page, or assigning a church staff member to conduct a survey. You could even get a little crazy and do a series of skits at the next few services to address the question in front of as many people as possible!
Bonus: Drag our idea map template onto your desktop, and reference it in your next brainstorming meeting. Draw your own on a whiteboard to get those creative juices flowing.
This kind of mindset will encourage your team members to address a problem or question with an idea, rather than just throwing out ideas for the sake of giving ideas. In the end, you’ll be happy to find a focused and productive meeting.
4. Don’t discuss your ideas in-depth (at least not right away).
I know it can be hard to resist giving input right away, but the “rapid ideation” method is something I always like to do when talking with my team.
Rather than discuss fun events or projects at-length, just write it down. And keep going.
Write everybody’s ideas down on a board right away to give everyone an opportunity to speak up and offer their ideas without the fear of it being “rejected” or “criticized” right away (which we all know isn’t the goal!).
Take the focus away from debating or overthinking any ideas or comparing them.
The purpose is to make the atmosphere comfortable for everyone to share in, and hopefully alleviate some stress involved with brainstorming. Plus, the rapid fire idea production can be really fun!
“Easter egg painting!”
“Cooking class fundraiser!”
“New kids’ service projects!”
“Movie and popcorn night!”
Your idea goes here: _________________
Bottom Line: You’re the Brainstorming Captain
What’s equally important to keep the whole team inspired and involved, is that you can maintain your leadership and model these ideas to your team. Everything we’ve talked about in this blog post is only possible when you lead by setting the tone, keeping things on track, and making sure these ultimate goals of the brainstorming meetings are met.
You might feel a bit uncomfortable at first in this authoritative-but-supportive role. It’s a fine-line, but it is a path well worth learning to walk. Hopefully these ideas help you focus on growing your mission creatively.
