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Creativity Myths: What Your Experience Has To Do With Your Creativity

Orginally published on Tuesday, April 17, 2007 at 7:13 AM
by Todd Rhoades

“The Myth About Creation Myths” is the title of a recent Fast Company article by brothers Dan Heath and Chip Heath and co-authors of Made to Stick (Random House, 2007). Their insights have something for us in ministry to learn about why some ministry ideas succeed or fail.

If you’ve read any business books or news articles about young upstarts such as the inventors of YouTube, Apple, or Hewlett-Packard, you know how entrepreneurs are sometimes given a lot of credit for out-of-the-box creativity as well as the rugged individualism these pioneers seem to evoke. But this Fast Company article refers to research performed by Pino Audia and Chris Rider, which debunks the “garage” theory of lone inventors thinking up world-changing ideas while tinkering away on their tool benches.

“The reality is that successful founders are usually ‘organizational products.’ A separate study of (venture capital)-backed companies found that 91% were related to the founders’ prior job experience. Audia and Rider say entrepreneurial triumphs aren’t due to lonely, iconoclastic work—they’re ‘eminently social.’”

A few years ago, when my church office was a block from Rick Warren’s, while I was trying to plant a church in the exhaust pipes of Saddleback, Rick invited me over to his office. He showed me framed Bibles from his three preceding generations of relatives who were preachers. Ed Young was raised by the prominent pastor of Houston’s Second Baptist. Andy Stanley’s dad is the renowned Charles Stanley. John Maxwell’s father was a leading pastor. We’ve all heard the stories of Bill Hybels’ successful business dad and Willow Creek’s current lead pastor, Gene Appel, had a father who served as a pastor of a large church in his day.

A lot of the cutting edge thinkers and pastors have had quite a heritage. They often do things intuitively that others of us can’t seem to. The lessons for us are threefold:

1. Don’t beat yourself up if you don’t have a strong heritage of ministry immersion, because it can make a big difference as to who we are and what we’re able to produce.

2. Consider how you can invest in others, such as your kids and young people, so that they have a better chance at succeeding in whatever it is that God’s calls them to do.

3. Do whatever you can to engage with others for the purpose of brainstorming new ideas, coming up with creative processes, and not trying to solve ministry problems locked up alone in your study. There’s strength in collaboration. Especially if you lack the heritage that might benefit coming up with viable ministry ideas and solutions, you may want to connect with those who do or at least bring in those who’ve been effective in other settings.

Great ministry ideas rarely come out of the blue to young, inexperienced individuals whom God primes. They are often social emanations, catalyzed by people who’ve immersed themselves into the process and learned from predecessors.