Pastors
I've been a proponent for creative team planning meetings since I was first exposed to it in the secular production world. But pastors, it seems, are slow to realize the benefits of this kind of team approach to weekend experiences. I think a pastor's hesitation to embrace creative team planning stems from several things:

• Fear of losing creative control
• Fear of not being able to plan at the last minute
• Fear of staff/volunteers not doing their part on a critical task
• Fear of giving up control of their sermon planning schedule
• Fear of being too structured by over planning
• Fear of letting others see weaknesses as a planner or researcher

I coined this acrostic for F.E.A.R.:
Failure to Equip, Authorize and Release. Pastors need to have the self confidence in themselves to share the responsibility to their team members without hesitation.

Some of those are potentially legitimate fears, but I think all of those reasons can be eliminated if pastors are truly open to considering the possibility for a team approach.

For the techies and worship arts folks, planning makes our jobs a whole lot easier when we're trying to make a seamless weekend experience come together. Quality media generally takes time, so the more time we have, the better we can create media content that fits the exact context of the message and helps to reinforce the metaphor. And music can fit the context of the metaphor when time is given to prepare, produce and practice well before the weekend.

In order to allay some of the fears about creative team planning, I believe it's important to show pastors that creative planning doesn't have to be about a chaotic environment of random ideas and little productive effort. Here's the basic structure I teach on how to have productive creative meetings:

• Consistent meeting times each week
• Inconsistent meeting locations
• Mix up the team at least every sermon series
• Expand your go-to resources
• Out of chaos comes order: controlling the meeting

I employ a variation on Edward De Bono's "Six thinking hats" and work from the premise that everyone in the meeting will be a contributor to the weekend experience. De Bono's method works well in a corporate environment, but I've tweaked it to help work in the unique context of a church. Furthermore, I involve additional personnel (staff and/or volunteers) to be assigned tasks that come from the meeting's creative input.

Over the next few days, I'll expand on my practical implementation of creative team planning. I hope that in the process pastors, worship leaders and techies will all benefit from the small fraction of the processes that I'll have room to share here on my Blog.

Stay tuned!