I like this post from Phil Cooke who suggests the secret to having great ideas is to have so many that sooner or later one has got to be good!

It might sound obvious, but I think we often give up on thinking creatively because we have never had a genuine whizzbang winner pop out.

As we consider how we can connect with our communities and how we can think innovatively about our church communities, we probably need to allow many ideas to come to the surface realising that most of them will never go beyond the whiteboard.

Phil suggests that of 100 ideas, we can expect

– 10 are totally stupid (you have to have those)

– 50 sounded good, but won’t really work

– 30 will maybe work in some other way

– 5 were ideas I REALLY liked for awhile, but then got old

– 3 are quite good, but not ready for prime time

– 2 I’d actually be proud to pitch

It makes you realise that unless you are uniquely gifted, creative thinking will be infinitely more productive in a larger group. We can sit around, brainstorm and then write every idea up for consideration before even passing judgement on their worthiness. Often these are laughter filled times as we allow ourselves to imagine the impossible and to verbalise the bizzarre.

We have often found that the wackiest and wildest ideas while laughable at first, do prompt us to ask ‘what if?…’ And from there a stupid idea gets re-shaped to be a something still unique and captivating, but now within the realms of being doable.

Anyway, may you have many many many wonderful ideas….