Nancy Beach gave a message at a Willow Creek conference back in 2004 and was lamenting that the adjective used to describe most church services that those surveyed attented was “boring.” Boring. This would be true for 2 reasons. We’re not even remotely as creative in our expression and worship of God as we could and should be, and Westerners suffer from severe Attention Deficit Disorder. I was thinking over the weekend how much harder we have to try in Western churches to first grab the attention of our congregants, and then to inspire them enough to walk out the door with a desire to be more like the Jesus they profess as Lord than they did when they walked in.

Erwin McManus gave a GREAT message at this year’s Global Leadership Summit on the desperate need to reclaim creativity for the church, as an expression of the ultimate creative being – God!

The irony is that for a culture numb to stimulation on every front, that are constantly in need of the new and the different and the exciting to arrest their attention – the same culture is reluctant to embrace the creative for fear of change. So we settle for the well worn path of a 4 song sandwich as entree – 1 Praise, 1 Hymn, 2 Worship ( as we define them ) with a side of announcements, some multimedia dip and a message for mains.

It’s not a sin to strive to grab people’s imagination through creative expression – to hold their attention long enough to inject truth into their veins, stimulate their hearts and inspire them to be more like Jesus. It just requires so much more effort to do it these days amidst all the other blinding lights.

So if you care to comment below – rather than lamenting on what we’re not doing – how about you jot some inspiration down. What can we do in our services to unleash the creativity in our church?