Kinda like the one staring at me right now…
Any time we need an idea, there exists a blank page. That moment before there are any ideas. It is nothingness. Empty.
Whatever creative endeavor you’re attempting to undertake, you have to confront this void.
At the beginning of any creative process, the creative person has the heavy end to carry here, and those of us in the production area have almost nothing to do. This isn’t a problem to solve, it is simply the way it is.
At this early stage, the idea is primary. The ironic part of the blank page is that both sides, the creative and the technical, can feel powerless. If you’re on the creative side, the blank page is staring back at you. If you are on the technical side, you want to jump in and get going, but there isn’t anything to get going with.
Regardless of the creative endeavor, you are pursuing, this first step cannot be avoided or passed over. Your church needs new ideas on ways to engage your congregation. And for people to stay engaged, we need new perspectives. If we aren’t willing to confront the blank page, we end up copying from someone else without thinking. “It worked for someone else, so let’s do it for us too.”
As a group of people attempting to make something together, this is a temptation we need to avoid. Our congregations need us to be wrestling with what God would have for our church, not someone else’s church. And that wrestling requires facing the blank page, not just borrowing someone else’s blank page that has been filled up already.
God is always showing up in new ways. In unique ways. In unexpected ways. In each of our lives. In each of our teams. In each of our churches. So in order to determine how He is showing up in your situation, you need to sit with a blank page to pray and dream about what the next thing is for your situation. Where is God moving and how can you get on board with it?
There is no short way around this.
Whatever side you sit on, The Creative or The Technical, the question of “What should we do?” needs to be wrestled to the ground. Whether it is an idea for a Christmas service or a question of what matters to you as a team, if you aren’t making the time to fill up the blank page with content unique to your situation at a given moment, you will be doomed to live in someone else’s ideas, which is not what the world needs. We need you to show up in the unique ways you were gifted. Showing up can only happen when you confront the blank page.
How are you supporting the people on your team facing the blank page?
What unique way do you and your team need to fill your specific blank page?
