finding good ideas
I have been to several lengthy committee or brainstorming meetings in the last few weeks. The longest one was led by energetic people dressed in interesting, stylish clothes who led the meeting in a highly focussed way. The meeting flew by in no time with good results, new ideas and a plan of action. The second was in a boring looking room and led by a rather lacklustre person, but the material was interesting and well-prepared. That meeting dragged in places, but ended with good, clear decisions. The three other meetings were realtively short, but were led in a flat, semi-structured way by people who seemed bored with the content of the meeting, and there were no decisions of any consequence to be made in any case – it was just time for the scheduled meeting. Never have thirty minutes ticked by so slowly.
I was interested to read this by Seth Godin, who asks where good ideas are found. Meeting in dull rooms with lacklustre or bored people, with poor focus and no material for sparking ideas is not a good recipe for new life. If a meeting is to have good results, identify what sort of outcomes you are looking for, and bring enough idea-producing stuff to the meeting to enable people to think in new ways. Or hold the meeting in a new venue. And leave your grey suit at home.
How might the same principles be adapted to divine service? Is the fabric of our chapels and churches dull and uninspiring? Or the clothes we wear, the words we say, the shape of the service or the direction of the liturgy? Do we know what the liturgy is for, and how to deliver it? Or how to shape a service so that it draws people along rather than boring them?
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Maggi has kept a blog since September 2003, writing about theology and faith, the arts and literature, and a little about life and random nonsense...
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Seth Godin’s excellent on these kinds of things. In the more ‘liberal’ wing of the church in particular, we often have a tendency of making things a bit colourless. There are so many ways to do colour, variety and diversity, as reflections of the glory of God, and it’s great when we manage it.