StartMaking.com collects bits of advice and insight from “makers” about how to stop talking and start making. We like the one from David Kelley, founder/chairman of IDEO. We like it because we’ve started trying to do exactly this in pitch meetings in the office. Telling an idea is never as powerful as showing it, even if you’re just presenting it to your co-workers before you make it “for real.”

How can you show your next idea instead of just describing it to the decision-makers?

“If God had intended for you to work endlessly, never taking days off, having a sense of pride in how long it’s been since you’ve taken vacation time, he would have created you as some kind of robot. But He was very intentional and purposeful in creating you as a person who needs sleep, food, rest and enjoyment.”

Chris from Canada in a post called 3 Reasons to Pursue Life-Giving Rest

Rest is humility. Rest is trusting God to handle while you don’t. Rest is worship.

“The people designing and running the projection are no longer simple “button-pushers,” and the congregation is not simply “observing.” Environmental projection engages people. It allows designers and artists to use their gifts to glorify God through photography, graphic design, and art just like the stained glass maker did in those old cathedrals. The people designing the projection are to be thought of as “visual worship leaders.”

Camron Ware of VisualWorshiper.com in an article called “The Big Picture” in the May 2012 issue of Worship Leader Magazine

Are You Humbitious?

Matt Perman at What’s Best Next quotes points to a story about an IBM study of what makes a truly high-impact employee. Their answer? Humbitiousness.

Humbition is made up partly of ambition: being really fired up, energized, and evaluating yourself highly in terms of the impact you might be able to have on your team, in your organization, on the world around you. And then, humbition is also having a genuine sense of intellectual humility.

I think we could use a lot more of this in the church AND in the creative community right now - and maybe especially in the creative corners of the church community.

Two great books to get you started: Rescuing Ambition by Dave Harvey and Humility: True Greatness by C. J. Mahaney. Both excellent and both saying, in part, that great things can happen when humble people are relying on God’s power to do something extraordinary.

Get Creative: Wish I woulda known then …

Nice list from Los over on Ragamuffin Soul: 11 Things I Wish a Wise Creative Would Have Told This Foolish Creative. It’s pretty much exactly for all of us who make and use media for the church.

Three of my favorites:

1.  The less money you have, the more creative you can be.

6.  The people who come to your church, they want to hear about Jesus more than see your lights and music show.

8.  You need to train the next generation not only to do your job, but to teach someone to do your job.