The Process of Creativity

 by Dr David Goetsch

[abridged; used with permission]

CREATIVITY

People debate endlessly about whether creativity is the result of nature versus nurture. Imagination, originality, and innovation can be applied in any field. Architects are creative in their designs of buildings. Engineers are creative in their solutions to human problems. Business people are creative in how they structure deals. Coaches are creative in developing their game plans. I can say with certainty that the kind of creativity needed in problem solving and decision making in organizations can be learned. Creativity is a process that can be approached systematically and in the 6 phases below.

1. PREPARATION

 Many people think that creativity reveals itself in a momentary flash of insight that simply arises out of the blue. But when it comes to problem solving and decision making in organizations creativity begins with preparation. Preparation in this context means learning, gaining, experience, and collecting information in the field or discipline associated with the problem. Creativity requires preparation. It involves gaining education, training, and experience in that field. It also involves staying up to date and familiarizing oneself with all of the pertinent information about the problem in question. The key is learning to use the intuition that can come from blending knowledge and experience rather than letting knowledge and experience limit the imagination.

Pentecost Sunday Prayer

We praise You, Lord, because You have heard our prayer.  Once again, You breathed out Your Spirit upon Your disciples and restored to us times of refreshing so that men might walk with You in the cool of the Day.  We thank You, Christ, that You did not leave us to forsake us, but ascended so that in the fullness of time, You could send us a Helper - another Comforter, reversing Babel with tongues of fire and sending forth Your Word into every nation.  So bless us with Your presence this morning and send Your Wind into the four corners of the earth for the good of Your Kingdom and glory.  Amen.

Ascension Blessings!

“After all of the final details, something happened.  A cloud of glory appeared and I suspect it was the same cloud that used to reside in the Holy of Holies.  This is God’s cloud.  This cloud came down from Heaven and it lifted our Lord Jesus Christ off the ground.  And it carried Him into the sky out of their sight and into Heaven where he took his throne.  This is the ascension.   And our Lord Jesus Christ is still there in Heaven.  Theologians call this time His present session.  That is, He sat down at God’s right hand where He must reign and rule until He comes again.   This is what we see in the book of the Revelation.  We have magnificent creatures, seraphim and cherubim,  angels, glorified men.  These people and angels are numbering in the millions and millions surrounding the throne and paying tribute to the One Who sits on it.  He is at the same time the Lamb Who was slain and the Lion of the tribe of Judah. 

So what is the ascension?  It is the Lord’s rise to glory at His Father’s right hand.  We urge one another to exalt the Lord.  And we ought to exalt the Lord, because God has first exalted Him.  You can praise me more than I deserve.  I can lift you up higher than you belong.  But  it’s impossible to lift the Lord Jesus Christ up higher than He belongs because there is no higher place than Heaven and right there at the apex of all things sits the King, our Lord Jesus Christ.  Jesus Christ, 40 days after His resurrection and 10 days before Pentecost, ascended to God’s right hand.  That’s the doctrine; that’s the fact of the ascension.

The ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ is essential to theology and the believer’s life.  Thus we need to understand not only what happens but what it means…  well, according to Peter’s sermon on the day of Pentecost this chiefly means: Jesus is the King.  Not that He will be the king someday or at the second coming or if you want him to be king or if you accept him as your personal Savoir.  But what Peter is saying is that in ascending to God’s right hand and sitting on the throne that Jesus is the King.”

-          - Michael Phillips, 

in his ascension sermon, which I STRONGLY recommend to you

Circumcised Ears [and earbuds]

God tells us [through the inspired endorsement of the synecdochal LXX quote in Heb 10.5-7] that if we want to think about our bodies being prepared for service to God, the one part of our body God uses to describe that willing servant-like body  to be used for the purposes of King Jesus, - the one thing is hearing ears, ears that have been circumcised ears, ears that have been 'dug open' [Ps 40.6] and hear the will of the Father...
God says that to do the will of the Father, it requires your body.  And particularly, it requires your ears: the ability to listen... because hearing is a way of submitting to things.  We've got a whole new world now where sounds are no longer a reminder of our need to submit to the created order in a way that our sight is.  Now through earbuds, we can control the world of our hearing.  That is momentous in the history of the world.  It can be a powerful device for good, but it can be a horrific, powerful device for evil as well, because hearing reminds us of our submission to what is around us.  Seeing is not that way - we gaze, we apprehend, we rule.  So ... be careful with your ipod!  That's what I'm saying!

- Dennis Tuuri, Sermon 'Listen' on Psalm 40

Apologetics in Light of the Resurrection

"[Like Thomas], those who live in the world of the enlightenment will naturally ask, ‘but did it happen … and how do you know?’ And they must be encouraged to come with their questions.  The prim and proper Bartian would no doubt prefer it if Jesus had said to Thomas, ‘Go away and come back when you’ve got a better epistemology!’  But interestingly the story works the other way round.  Good historical answers are available just as Jesus could in fact be touched…

This is because the resurrection, if it means what the NT says it means, is not a creatio ex nihilo but a creatio ex vetere.  As in Romans 8 – just as the old ontology is swallowed up in the new: what is mortal being swallowed up,  not replaced with life but swallowed up in it -  so the old epistemology, quite properly, is transcended and therefore included in the new.  There is no complete disjunction.

The resurrection itself is not the abandoning of the old body and the emergence of a new one, but the raising to new life of the old one itself.

Think about this: the mark of the nails on the body of the risen Jesus are thus the sign that validates historical inquiry into the resurrection. The nail thrusts themselves, like the skepticism of the enlightenment, were meant to wound but now remain as evidence.  Go figure…

-Tom Wright

Managing Oneself

Managing Oneself

by Peter R Drucker ,  HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW, JAN 2005 [abridged]

Most of us will have to learn to manage ourselves and develop ourselves. We will have to place ourselves where we can make the greatest contribution staying mentally alert and engaged during a 50-year working life, which means knowing how and when to change the work we do.

What Are My Strengths?

Most people think they know what they are good at. They are usually wrong. More often, people know what they are not good at – though more are wrong than right. Yet, a person can perform only from strength. One cannot build performance on weaknesses, let alone on something one cannot do at all.

Whenever you make a key decision or take a key action, write down what you expect will happen. 9 or 12 months later, compare the actual results with your expectations. I have been practicing this method for 15 - 20 years now, and every time I’m surprised.

Practiced consistently, this will show you within 2 - 3 years, where your strengths lie - and this is the most important thing to know. It will show you what you are doing or failing to do that deprives you of the full benefits of your strengths, where you are not particularly competent, and where you have no strengths or ability to perform.

#1:  Most importantly, concentrate on your strengths. Put yourself where your strengths can produce results.

#2: Improve your strengths. Analysis will rapidly show where you need to improve skills or acquire new ones. It will also show gaps in your knowledge.

#3: Discover where your intellectual arrogance is causing disabling ignorance and overcome it. Far too many people - especially people with great expertise in one area - are contemptuous of knowledge in other areas or believe that being bright is a substitute for knowledge.  Go to work on acquiring the skills and knowledge you need to fully realize your strengths.

Your bad habits - what you do or fail to do that inhibits your effectiveness and performance - will quickly show up in the feedback - problems like a lack of manners. Manners are the lubricating oil of an organization – simply saying "please" and "thank you", knowing people’s names, or keeping up with family news - enables two people to work together whether they like each other or not. Bright people, especially bright young people, often do not understand this.

Comparing your expectations with your results also indicates what not to do. We all have a vast number of areas in which we have no talent or skill and little chance of becoming even mediocre.

One should waste as little effort as possible on improving areas of low competence.

It takes far more energy and work to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than it takes to improve from 1st-rate performance to excellence.

Yet most people, teachers, and organizations concentrate on making incompetent performers into mediocre ones. Energy, resources, and time should go instead to making a competent person into a star performer.

How to Become the Local Pastor [when you're not]

1.  Root for the local teams.  Rooting for the Steelers is borderline immoral wherever you live, but especially if you have accepted a call to move from Pennsylvania to some other area of the country.  You have a new hometown now.  With Ruth, you must be willing to say "your people will be my people; your team, my team."  Interestingly here in my [new] home, professional sports are secondary to college and even high school.  Be sensitive to pick up on things like that and adapt.

2.  Get a local phone number.  Nothing reinforces the impression of your being an outsider like an out-of-state area code preceding every call you make in an attempt to overcome your outsider status and build local relationships.  Besides, it's an excuse to upgrade to a smarter phone [more on that in a future post] and switch networks if necessary to get optimal coverage in your new territory [I got no reception in several spots of our church property with my original carrier - BIG PROBLEM!].

3.  Never refer to your old location as home.  It is not.  You are home where you are now.  So stop calling the old place home - especially publicly and especially from the pulpit!  My former location was "my old house"; the "place where I used to live"; the "town where my parents live" or "raised me"; "where we came from"; anything but home.  When you return there for family visits and vacations, you are going on a trip to see family.  You are not going home.  You are home now.  Adjust your heart and adjust your vocabulary accordingly.