A few years ago I led our creative and worship teams at our church. We had just planted our church and were trying to build each departments values. I remember being asked to share at one of our first creative meetings and being equally terrified of be speaking in front of people and leading people that were much more talented than I was.
I kept envisioning this elaborate message that I was going to preach, this incredibly deep, moving, inspirational message I was going to share.
But every time I went to prepare, nothing felt right and ended up scrapping Every. Single. Thing. I. Wrote.
As the day grew close I started panicking. I was hoping my gift of procrastination was going to kick in and tried to piece something together from all of my thoughts.
Nothing.
Probably a few hours before our meeting, I felt a gentle nudge from the Holy Spirit and heard these 3 Commitments for our team in my heart and jotted them down.
I’ve added a few things in over the years but however silly this sounds, it was one of those little God moments that changed a lot.
I truly believe that these 3 Commitments poured a foundation for our teams so they would be able to stand today.
So whether you’re a church, church planters, lead a creative team or are a freelancer, feel free to use these commitments in your values, or to preach to your team and hope this helps you.
Committed to God’s Dream
We’re not here to serve our interests, but we’re here to serve His. Wherever we serve, our purpose and goal is to lift up the name of Jesus. We have this incredible gift as creatives to be able to tell stories. To be able to connect with people. There’s something about music, art, photography, video that draws people to something.
In our case, that’s Jesus.
I don’t think we often think of what we do as a ministry, but it’s often the first encounter that people have with our church, or with Jesus.
We have this gigantic opportunity to speak into the lives of so many people.
“Our creativity is our expression of worship to God. It is the result of a story that God is telling through my life and that He is using to change the narrative of many other stories.”
Being committed to God’s dream sometimes means it’s not about being known, but about making Him known.
When we’re committed to God’s dream we are released to be the best version of us that we can be.
Committed to Excellence
Excellence doesn’t mean perfection, it means giving our best. We’re going to be committed to giving God our best and let him do the rest.
We do everything with excellence so that people can focus on Him, we eliminate distractions, we bring out the best in people and in our skills.
What we do is a reflection of how we value God and the gifts he’s given us.
“The perfect church service would be one we were almost unaware of. Our attention would have been on God.” – C.S. Lewis
10 For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago. -Ephesians 2:10
Committed to Each Other
Be committed to building a healthy team together. Not one where ego and photo cred thrives, but one where celebration and honor thrives.
Understand that it’s not just one person that is responsible for the success of the team, it’s everyone. We all bring different strengths, perspectives, skills and ideas.
“The way God designed our bodies is a model for understanding our lives together as a church: every part dependent on the other part, the parts we mention and the parts we don’t, the parts we see and the parts we don’t. If one part hurts, every other part is involved in the hurt, and in healing. If one part flourishes, every other part enters into the exuberance. You are Christ’s body – that’s who you are! You must never forget this. Only as you accept your part of the body does your “part” mean anything.” -1 Corinthians 12:25-26, 27-31