Not too long ago, I was driving and saw a bumper sticker that was “borrowing” from the very popular “Got Milk” ad campaign. It said “Got Hope.” It was a political bumper sticker, and it drove me nuts.

Not because of the political agenda, but for two other reasons. The first being it was an idea that got burned into the ground a few years ago. The times are different, the message should be too. But the bigger reason it drove me nuts was that they were stealing the advertising campaign of a very notable company.

It got me thinking, why is it that when someone comes up with a good, creative idea – it must then be copied thousands of times over until it has lost all meaning? Inevitably, that once creative idea becomes…cliche. Click to read the definition of cliche.

So someone had a really creative idea, and it became popular because it was a really creative idea. Then the rest of us lazy folk, just rip off their idea and apply it to our use however we can. Sometimes for good, often times for marginally related events or content.

What I’m saying isn’t new. It’s been said a hundred times before. But it’s fresh on my mind. I’ve been reading “Culture Shift” by Robert Lewis & Wayne Cordiero, as well as “Addicted to Mediocrity” by Franky Schaeffer which both speak to this issue. Culture shift deals specifically with church programming and not taking a program from another church and cookie cutting at your church. Franky speaks more specifically about art, and not being afraid of it.

I’ll be the first to admit, if I see a good idea from another church, I want to use it right away. If I see a cool commercial or a good movie, I want to use the ideas in whatever way I can. Often times we do use it. Mostly out of necessity. When you have to have good creative ideas every week, it’s much easier if you can use others’ ideas and just implement them.

Here’s the whole point. Borrowing ideas from other churches is good, and I would often recommend it. However, if you want to be really great, then use the creativity that God has given you, and create something specific for your community. Sure, it may not be at the same level as what others are doing, but it will be relevant. And, in my experience, Relevance Trumps Quality. Quality is very important, but if the message connects with people, they can overlook quality. But, if the message doesn’t connect, or is too abstract, no amount of quality can speak the content that is missing.

God has planted each of us where we are because he wants to use us there. Let’s spend more time on the hard work of creating and less time copying.

If we’re the first ones to use and idea, we will never be cliche.

I just finished up another book from Dr. John Maxwell. If you’ve followed me for long, you know I’m a fan of his, and have read and recommended many of his books to you. This book was great on a few different levels so I wanted to take just a minute to share my thoughts with you in case you hadn’t heard about it. (Or in case you had heard about it, but weren’t sure it was for you.)

First, it’s not just a how-to book on achieving your dreams, it is so much more. He doesn’t say this in the book, but it’s really a book about how to lead yourself and the people around you to your dreams.

Second, it does give you some very useful ideas to help you zero in on your dream, figure out if you really believe in it, and to get you on the journey.

Third, he doesn’t tell you to blindly pursue your dream. A lot of times, it seems, people will just tell you to go after your dreams, regardless. Even if the dream isn’t good for you, or the people around you, or if you don’t have the resources of anything else required, they tell you to go for it. He doesn’t do that with this book.

But the real reason I wanted to write this post wasn’t to talk about the book, I wanted to remind us all that we are the “dreamers of dreams”. When it comes to the worship life of the body of Christ we are a part of, we are the ones that have to dream. God has put us in a leadership role for a reason, because He has a dream for the body you are a part of, and He wants to use you to accomplish that dream.

So often, it’s so easy to get into a rut. To just go with what works, and never try new things. To do what we know instead of dreaming up a new way to do what’s always been done. My charge to us is to get out of that rut. Let’s stop spinning plates and start dreaming dreams. Let’s stop this nonsense of keeping things going, and get things moving forward. Let’s stop doing the things that worked a few years ago and find the things that will work a few years from now.

The church has at it’s disposal the greatest source of creativity known to Man – the inspiration of a creator. Let’s allow Him to speak to us and give us the inspiration for what’s coming next.

A while ago, I wrote a post about how I have done photographic teams at churches. I put a lot of practical advice in there for running the team. Today, I wanted to focus in on one aspect of the Photographic team, and that is the Sermon Photography/Stock Photography aspect.

We live in a Graphic Design World. And one thing that many graphic designers need/use regularly are images that are isolated. Let’s say for instance your Senior Pastor is doing a series on the Woman at the Well. And since you wear more than a Worship Pastor Hat, you also wear a Graphic Designer hat – You are asked to come up with the design for the series. So, you go to www.istockphoto.com and start looking for images, and find one you like: http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-5768326-well-bucket-and-pulley.php?st=5861313

You decide you’re going to need the image for many different forms of media, the bulletin, the website, sermon slides, banners, urinal decals, etc., so you’re going to need to have the best resolution you can afford. And that will cost you 15 credits. Well, exactly how much is that? That’s $23.10 for one picture. Now, let’s say you need a cool, urban desert image for the background, so you do some looking and the only one you can find is the vetta image, and that’s going to run you some more, 70 credits. http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-11005445-autumn-night.php?st=f9cf393, but let’s just say it’s going to run you roughly the same amount, $25.00. So, you’re at $50, plus any other little things you need.

Here’s a break down right from iStockPhoto.com of their pricing. (http://www.istockphoto.com/buy-stock-credits-pay-as-you-go.php) Don’t get me wrong.  I don’t have a problem with iStockPhoto. I think it’s a great service, and for the caliber of image you get, it’s not a bad deal. But look at our image.

You can see, it’s not going to take long for things to get expensive. Of course, if you’re a larger church, you might have the budget for that. But, if you’re smaller, you might not. Do you have $100 to spend on each series throughout the course of the year? 8 – 12 series = $800 – $1200.

What if….

…you had the concept figured out ahead of time. Instead of using istock to come up with the inspriation for the image, why not figure out the concept ahead of time, a least a few weeks, and send some photographers in the church out to find the pictures you are looking for. If they can’t find them, I bet there’s someone in the church that has what you’re looking for, or someone who knows how to find such things.

One thing that might help, would be to purchase a little equipment for the photographers to use, that will help you in the long run as well, that would be a tabletop shooting background. You can pick one of these up for around $35. (http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/347667-REG/Cloud_Dome_CDIB18W_Infinity_Board_Matte_White.html) Then, all your photographers have to do is find the item they will be photographing and use this to take the pictures you need. It might take a few tries to get really good images, but it won’t take long, and the money you save will be worth it.

Plus, you are developing someone in your church. You are using the gifts of someone God has put in your body. That’s good stewardship all around. And it’s worship for the photographer.

There’s not a whole lot to this. The biggest piece is the tabletop studio and some lighting, but, as you figure that out, you’ll be on your way.

One last tip: Check out http://www.creationswap.com/. It’s a place where Graphic Designers and Photographers put stuff for churches. I’ve even got a few of my own images up there for you to use. There is some really great stuff being done there, and it’s worth your time to see what’s there. You might even find something that’s perfect for the series you are doing.

Also, if you are an artist, graphic designer or photographer, I would encourage you to take part in adding to the community as well. The more who are putting stuff in there, the better the chances we will all have of finding what we are looking for. So, if your photographic team starts taking isolated images, put them up there. If you come up with a cool sermon graphic, put it up there. We’ll all thank you for it!

In case you missed them (because it’s been a really long time since I wrote them) here are the first two articles in the series: Part 1, Part 2.

In this article, I wanted to address the topic of choosing the team. There are a couple of issues to think about before you pick your team.

It’s hard to lead creative people. If you’ve never spent a lot of time with creative type, you may not know, but doing so can be an extremely difficult task. Sometimes, creative people wear their emotions a lot closer to the surface. Sometimes, they bury their ideas deep inside and you have to prod and pry to get anything out of them. Sometimes, they are offended easily if you don’t like their ideas. Sometimes, they are so personally tied to their idea, it doesn’t matter what anyone else puts on the table, it will not compare.

If this sounds daunting, perhaps you are not the right person to lead the team. But if the idea of the team is so powerful to you that you are willing to go through any of this to get the chance to do this, read on.

The team has to have a leader (if there is no leader, all sorts of problems can arise – decisions never get made, impossible ideas are the ones that get the most time, dominant personalities drive the discussion even if they don’t have the best ideas. There has to be a leader willing to lead. The leader has to get the most out of everyone one the team, not just the vocal people. The leader has to be able to ask the really vocal members to back off and ask probing questions of the quiet members to get their ideas on the table.)

How many to put on the team? Depends on the leader. If the leader can effectively lead a group of people, then maybe 8 – 10. However, it can be really hard to keep that many people focused. So, if you’re not a great leader, you might want to keep the number down between 4-7. Honestly much more than 6 and it becomes hard to get your ideas heard.

Now to the real question, Who do you put on the team?

Let me first say this, we are all creative. I really believe that. I believe that since we have been made in the image of our creator, we were created to create. It’s one thing that truly does separate us from all other creation. Sure some parts of creation “create” things, but not really. There aren’t many creatures who create outside of their instinct. We do. And in doing so, in using this creativity, we worship our creator.

A Leader: The leader has to be someone who is connected to the senior pastor or leadership team. They have to know what the heart of the sermon/sermon series is and be able to make sure the team has a clear understanding of that and can help lead the team in coming up with ideas that work with that message.

The leader should be both creative and detail oriented. If no one is coming up with any ideas, someone has to create a spark – probably the leader. Along the same lines, if there are a lot of creative ideas, but the detail oriented person(s) are having a hard time figuring out how to get going, the leader will have to step in and help out.

Creative people: they might not ever get anything accomplished, but they think outside the box.

This one seems obvious, but you might hesitate because you don’t want to deal with the people who don’t do anything.Don’t do that. You will get frustrated with them. But don’t write them off. Sure, it seems like they don’t do any work, but are you sure about that? You might not be able to quantify the work they do, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t doing work. You might not be able to count the number of nails they’ve hammered, but can you count the time they’ve spent dreaming (daydreaming) about these ideas?

Detail oriented people: they might have some creative ideas, but their strength is in their ability to see an idea and come up with the steps needed to accomplish the idea.

This group of people might frustrate you during the brainstorming process because they don’t seem to bring much to the table, but later in that same meeting you will be praising God for them. And as each project comes to a close you will see just how much they bring to the table. These are the people that keep you on time, on target and on budget.

One last question you are probably wondering about: Should the pastor be on the team? Maybe. But, probably not. If your pastor is an extremely creative person, it might be a good thing, but if that’s the case why have the team? Chances are that most people won’t tell the pastor when his idea is a bad idea, even if they really don’t like it. So, having the pastor on the team can actually hamstring the team. But, I wouldn’t say this is the case for every team. Some churches might have a senior pastor who would be great for a team like this, and would help lead or even be the leader for the team. In fact, that would be about the best scenario for having the pastor on the team. If the pastor is leading the team and is the one who is digging ideas out of people, it could be great. If the pastor is merely getting a group of people excited about his/her ideas, again, why have a team?

There is a lot to running one of these teams, it’s not something any of us should just jump in to. But, when they work, it’s worth the effort.

There’s still more to it, more to come…………….eventually…………….

I know that I’m walking a tight-rope with this post, but it’s something I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about (as with worship services in general). (This post is only meant to invoke thought, not bash sermons.)

I know the history.

I know that Jesus taught.

I know that Peter and Paul and others preached.

But why sermons? Why the passive listening? Do we actually learn from sermons anymore? Are that many people’s lives being changed through the power of sermons?

Or could it be, that they were powerful for a time and that time is coming to an end? Could it be that sermons were powerful through the reformation and with revivalists, but that now they’re just what you do at church and no one is willing to bring up the topic of change?

We’ve seen change in other part of the worship service. Music has changed with the times. Some churches have changed the way we take offering, others the way we take communion. Some churches have changed the venue in which we meet and others the venue through which we see the sermon, but how many have changed the sermon?

Sure some have made some changes. A video here. A drama there. A costume here. A song there. But, for the most part and for the majority of the weeks out of the year, the format stays the same.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t necessarily have some other idea for teaching/preaching/sermons (by the way, what’s the point of sermons – to teach?). And I’m not just trying to get more time for the worship guys (though I most certainly wouldn’t be opposed to that). It just seems that, for the most part, with all the change the church has been through the biggest piece of the puzzle remains unchanged. And as culture changes faster than I can type the word change, shouldn’t the biggest portion of our services also be thought through just as carefully as every other slice of the pie?

(Now, I just want to go eat my last piece of birthday apple pie. Maybe pie is the answer….)

If Jesus were to have chosen now to come and show us the way the truth and the life, do you think he’ be preaching sermons? As for me, I don’t know. Jesus’ messages are timeless, transcend all human teaching ability and will never be replaced other than by Jesus himself. But in the time in which Jesus came, that’s what people did. Rabbi’s of the day didn’t have to fight for people’s attention because what else was there? Hanging out with tax collectors?

I just wonder what means of communication Jesus would choose to use in this day and age. Sure it’s kind of a hypothetical question, but from where I sit, it’s a question we need to ask. We may never agree on an answer. We may fail in our attempts to communicate more effectively. But then again, we may become more effective at reaching people for Christ. People who have already heard sermons and found no reason to continue listening.

Let me ask you this, how many people’s lives are being changed (I’m talking real change, not Sunday change) as a result of the sermons that are being preached at your church? If the answer to that question is many, then maybe you don’t need to change anything. Maybe you do. If the answer to that question is few, then maybe you need to change something. Then again, maybe it’s the worship guy’s spiky hair that needs to be changed.

Regardless, in our quest to reach a many people for Christ, let us not leave any stone unturned. The stones you turn may bare the most fertile ground.

And all it needs is a seed.

Just one.

(Chime in! If you have input on this topic, leave your comment below. If you think I’m totally off base, feel free to let me know that you think so! If you have an idea of what sermons should look like today, or what Jesus would do, let us all know!!!)

Do you know what I’m talking about? You know….(long awkward pause)…. quiet song …… (long awkward pause with weird, random instrument noises) …. Loud song (scared to death from the shock of the loud sound, heart rate jumps through the roof). ….. beuler….beuler…. Etc.

Picking up from last week’s episode we’re talking once again about creativity, and specifically about how to create good flow when we’re incorporating some of these creative elements. We don’t want the people whom we are trying to lead in worship to be victims of a worship tsunami, we want them to enjoy worship flow.

If you have some insight to offer on this topic, we’d love to hear from you. One of the ways you can do that is to join our growing network of Worship Leaders at http://worshipministrycatalyst.ning.com.

You can join in the conversation by joining our network, filling out the contact form, or sending an email to david@worshipministrycatalyst.com or kevin@worshipministrycatalyst.com

Don’t forget you can subscribe to our podcast through iTunes as well.

34:48

For about the last 6 – 8 months we’ve been starting to build a Photography team at our church. So far, we haven’t done all that much with it, but the possibilities of it are huge. I thought I’d share with you what we have already done, and what we’re planning on doing.

When we first started, I simply publicized the possibility to our congregation and we had three or four photographers express interest.

That’s one of the big benefits of this team, there are already people in all of our churches that have an interest in photography. Of course there will be varying skill levels, but there are photographers in all of our churches. Parents who love taking good pictures of their kids, teens who are taking photography classes in high school, art majors in college even professionals who have a lot to offer.

So, why a photography team? Don’t we have enough to manage in other areas of the Worship Ministry?

• Event Photography. One of the easiest and most obvious ways to put a photography team to use is to offer their skills to yours an other ministries in the church to photograph events around the church. It gets your ministry great exposure and it documents the event for the other ministry. We have a form that people can fill out on our website, asking for a photographer for the event and then we schedule the photographer.
• Photograph worship backgrounds. This is one of the great aspects of this team, creative and specialized backgrounds for worship songs. Of course a lot of churches are using video backgrounds, but with most presentation software, we are now able to use different backgrounds for different parts of the songs that keep the background from feeling static. One of the things I have done is assign a worship song to a photographer and ask them to take pictures for different key words of phrases throughout the song. When people see images on the screen that they might recognize as local, it gives a certain sense of ownership to the worship song and worship service. Suddenly people go from looking at a generic, stock image or photograph to looking at something they recognize and their mind connects the thing they know in the image with the words or song that they’re singing. Then when they see that image, either in a photograph or in real life they have a chance of remembering that connection which helps take worship out of our weekend service and into the week.
• Photograph pictures for sermon series
• Build a community of artists. Give people a place to connect with people who think similar to them.
• Seasonal and thematic photographic artwork for decorations around the church
• Increase the skill levels of the photographers and get a win – win. They win because they increase their skill level, you win because you get better pictures. (Set up a flickr group, this will give you one place with which you can collect all the pictures – instead of getting a bunch of different discs – and you can give constructive criticism and encouragement.

At my last church we had started to build a photography team, it was headed up by a professional photographer. He was always taking pictures around the church of various events. However, there were many events that he couldn’t attend because of his schedule, so we started talking about building a team of photographers who would be availble to take pictures of events around the church.

So, here are some things that you’ll want to do.

1. Find your subject. Start with the people you know who take pictures. You’ve seen them around with their cameras, taking pictures every chance they can get. They always have new pictures to show you. They have new profile pictures on their facebook accounts. Compile a list and contact information. Start to Eavesdrop on conversations in the foyer of your church. Listen for people talking about pictures, about getting pictures taken and any other photographic oriented discussion going on.
2. Compose the image. Once you do that, you’ll want to make an email list (if you use Planning Center online, then you should use that) and start to contact people, get some buzz going about your group. Let the buzz grow for a while before you schedule your first meeting.
3. Build the frame. You’ll want to have the framework of the team set up before you have your first meeting. What do you want the group to accomplish? Do you want to simply have photographers who can take pictures of events, or do you want to build artistic community among the group? How will you accept request for photographers from other ministries in the church? How are you going to build community? For our events, we have a form on our web site that ministry leaders can go and fill out, which sends me and email, then I use Planning Center to schedule a photographer.
4. Crop the image. Now that you’ve the basic framework in place, you’re ready to get the group together. There will be a natural cropping (thinning) process that will happen as people figure out that they aren’t as serious as they thought they were, so you can expect your group to shrink a little bit. However, you’ll be left with the best and most committed photographers which will be a good thing.
5. Send the pictures for processing. We use a flickr group as the hub for photographers to use to upload pictures to and to give feedback to other photographers and support one another. This is also a good way to build community & it’s free. It’s also cool to be able to use this for assignments. You’ll want to email the assignment out so everyone gets it right away, but then you can create a thread in your flickr group for people to use to upload their pictures to and keep them organized. You could also set up a blog, and give log in information to the members of the group so they could log in and upload their images.
6. Display the image. Now that you’ve gotten the group together, and it’s functioning, you’ll want to make sure to display the images in some form or fashion. This of course will be determined by what the purpose of your particular group is, but here are some examples: Hang large prints in your foyer and throughout the building as decor, use the images as background images for a song, (more than just one please) create a photo directory for your church or for a specific ministry, etc.

That’s what I know, but these few things will help you get on your way to starting a fairly well functioning photography team. For the rest of the stuff that’s not in here, be creative!

Routine, Rut, habit, pattern, whatever you like to call it, we all get into them. Well, this week, we’re trying to Bust Out. Not necessarily on the podcast, but in our Worship Services. Have you found yourself there? You want to be creative, you want to do things that people aren’t expecting, and you want to do things that will inspire people to keep coming back. And yet, for some reason, we keep doing the same old thing.

In this edition of the Worship Ministry Catalyst Podcast, David & Kevin talk about breaking out of that box and trying to do something different. I don’t want to spill the beans, so you should just listen to it!

If you have some insight to offer on this topic, we’d love to hear from you. One of the ways you can do that is to join our growing network of Worship Leaders at http://worshipministrycatalyst.ning.com.

You can join in the conversation by joining our network, filling out the contact form, or sending an email to david@worshipministrycatalyst.com or kevin@worshipministrycatalyst.com

Don’t forget you can subscribe to our podcast through iTunes as well.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about Creativity lately. I know that many of you are a part of creative teams at your churches and you all have your own process for how come to your end result. I’ve been wanting to write what I know about how to utilize creativity in the local church, and have had trouble narrowing down the ideas, so I just decided to start writing and work it out along the way.

First, let’s start by defining what a Creative Team is (and isn’t). I’ve been doing a lot of research on other creative teams out there, and what I’ve found is that there are two types of creative teams – at least the term gets used in these two ways quite regularly. In the first it is used to describe a team of people who do the creative stuff. They’re the dancers, singers, actors, etc. This is NOT the type of creative team I will be discussing. The type of creative team I will be talking about is the group of people who meet to brainstorm creative ideas about a sermon or sermon series and creative worship elements that will enhance the point of the sermon or sermon series.

With that out of the way, I want to talk about one of the biggest hindrances to the success of a creative team – Patience. I haven’t talked with a ton of people who have been doing this, but one of the common threads in these discussions seems to be that the ideas just don’t seem to come. It seems, in our culture, we can’t be satisified unless we get the resolution we’re looking for immediately. It’s this desire that forces us to settle for the lesser creative ideas and not plow through to find the absolute best ones.

It’s like that at times – plowing. The old school kind, you know using horses or mules, etc. Coming to the best idea can be a lot of hard work and take a lot of time.

So, in your meetings, do everything you can to excercise patience. Wait. Don’t get in a hurry (if you can help it).

Also, don’t be afraid of the silence. People need time to think. You need time to think. Most people (men and women) can’t think their best if someone is always talking. Stop talking. Encourage the silence. This is the hard part, ask others to be silent. If you have someone on your team who jeopardizes the conversation, talk the him/her in private and ask them to try to allow more time for others to talk.

Along with patience and silence you need time. It’s different than patience. You need to have enough notice on what the sermon or sermon series is going to be that you don’t have to be rushed to come up with something. You’ll never get the good stuff that way. This will be something that you’ll have to work with your Senior Pastor on. It might be a hard conversation, but it’s absolutely necessary. If you’re not far enough out in advance, you’ll always be behind the eight ball, only able to do what you can accomplish at the last minute. You’ll also be frustrated. You’ll come up with really good ideas, where if you had just a couple more weeks you could pull off the really good idea, but because the weekend is only days away you’re forced to do what you can not what you could.

One last though is that your patience and time may need to span multiple meetings. (If you’re planning far enough out) you don’t need to feel like you have to come up with the final idea at this week’s meeting. One of the best creative ideas a team I was working with came as the result of four weeks worth of meetings. It won’t always take a long time, but it might. You need to give yourself the time for it to take time. You need to give yourself permission to not make a decision right away. Let it simmer in your brains for a week or two. Then after the whole team has had time to process the idea, make a decision as a team on what the best idea is.

That’s it for the first round. There’s plenty more to come, stay tuned!

I just found a great article over on Chris’s page.

Here’s the link: http://www.chrisfromcanada.com/?p=1033

Here are some of the highlights from the article:

• 12:37 Chris - 5 Elements of a Great Song – #1 Define Your Purpose
• 12:38 Chris - ‘Songs that have universal appeal fall in to that trap. They have no specific purpose and no specific meaning.’
• 12:40 Chris - Lots of worship songs are filled with phrases that have worked really well in other worship songs.
• 12:40 Chris - ‘What is my purpose here? Is this how I would talk with someone I love? It this really how I talk or am I treating people like cattle?’
• 12:43 Chris - Example of specific songs with specific purpose – Heart of Worship by Matt Redman, God of Justice by Tim Hughes.
• 12:44 Chris - 5 Elements of a Great Song – #2 Eight Seconds
• 12:44 Chris - ‘Whether it’s A&R or a congregation, you don’t have more than about eight seconds to get them engaged.’
• 12:47 Chris - ‘Don’t bore us, get to the chorus.’
• 12:49 Chris - 5 Elements of a Great Song – #3 Show and Tell
• 12:49 Chris - ‘Communicate the image by telling them what it is.. but you also have to provide them with a picture, something they can see, something that they can put in context.’
• 12:50 Chris - Don’t go overboard on the pictures – make sure part of the song also TELLS the meaning of the song.
• 12:51 Chris - Examples of songs that show and tell – East to West by Casting Crowns, One by U2.
• 12:53 Chris - 5 Elements of a Great Song – #4 Strong Lyric and Melodic Hook
• 12:53 Chris - ‘If it’s not entertaining or captivating or interesting you’ve missed your point.’
• 12:54 Chris - ‘We’re all free – create whatever you have to create. But if we want to be better communicators with our music we have to do things that are captivating and interesting.’
• 12:55 Chris - ‘Lyrically, people just get lazy. Melodically, you’re just not daring enough.’
• 12:58 Chris - Sound of Your Name by Above the Golden State, Crazy Beautiful by Chasen.
• 13:00 Chris - Weave hooks through different sections of the songs.
• 13:01 Chris - 5 Elements of a Great Song – #5 Critique and Re-Write
• 13:01 Chris - ‘When you co-write, critiquing happens in real-time.’
• 13:02 Chris - ‘I think it’s important that you let the song happen. Give the song an opportunity to be birthed.’
• 13:04 Chris - ‘Don’t do critique and re-writing right away. It’s a creative thing and you need to give it time before you can come back to it with a little more objectivity.’
• 13:04 Chris - Listening to the first two versions and then the final take of Great Things by Matt Maher.
• 13:07 Chris - ‘A melody is good if you can remember it after going for a drive and spending the day at work.’