Cool Isn't Cute, It's Stupid

Hey all. I posted a new thing on my new site.

Justinknowles.tv

Make sure to check out the new site.

Thanks!

New blog look/domain/place...please read

Hello everyone!

So if you know anything about me, I am always trying to improve and learn new things. In fact, learning is one of my gifts. One of the biggest things i am trying to learn and get better at is my writing and the content in which I put out. I'm not saying whatever i put out is worth reading, but it is just me trying to better myself as a writer and trying to better myself on getting the thoughts that are circulating in my head down onto paper in a way that makes sense.

Going oblong with this trying new ideas and trying to better my blog, I have been working with my brother on switching over my blog to another site. This site is a bit easier to use and with my brother's help, it looks freaking legit.

My blog will from now continue onto this site with the domain name justinknowles.tv (i just switched it over so if it does not work try http://justinknowles.tumblr.com first.) and you can click on it to check it out.

Thank you all for reading these and at least for a little bit all be announcing on this that i posted on the new site just so you can get used to it too. It is really easy to follow me on this site as well, so I hop you do so.

Thanks so much for continuing to read my blogs, you have no idea how much it means to me.

God bless.

Justin

Can't Force Greatness

James 1:12

Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.

Sometimes the ideas just don't come like they usually do. Sometimes, you are going to come to a point where you are not going to be able to think of a single idea and it will be extremely frustrating thing.

I felt like that this morning when the Shift Students staff was trying to think of some event ideas for our “I <3 Night” (our invite night here at CCV). Usually ideas come to me naturally. It's what I do. It's part of my job description. We cant be creative all of the time on our own, we need to brainstorm with others.

The tendency will be just to go with the first idea you come up with and go off of that. It might be an idea that you are not too fond of in the first place but since it’s the only idea at the time, you can just force it into a great thing.

Good ideas will come if you force them. Great ideas will come when you develop them.

One of the great privileges I have here is that there is an incredible planning team. This team meets to plan out every service that we have. This group is amazing and talented. One thing we do is bounce ideas off of each other. This is a great way for ideas to formulate, you are able to talk through ideas, accept the constructive criticism, and actually start to develop a good idea into a great idea.

This is something the team here is great at. One person will have a few great ideas, but they will run out. A team of people can have endless great ideas, but you need to get over your own pride and be willing to go to your team and ask to bounce ideas off of them.

We just need to persevere through the dry spells. We can’t force great ideas but we can push through the dry spells with a team to develop the good ideas into great ones.

Proverbs 15:22

Plans fail for lack of counsel,
but with many advisers they succeed.

God Vs. Creativity

Romans 1:22-25

Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves: Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.

In my last post I had mentioned that if you were creative you would have a bigger bull’s-eye on your back because the enemy knows the influence you have on many people with your creation. I believe this with everything inside me. I also mentioned that nothing is more exciting for me than to see an idea of mine come to life.

There is something we need to watch out for. As exciting as it is to see something you made, that you put together, to see your “baby” grow up and become a man, there is always the tendency to worship the creation over the Creator. This is a way in which Satan can detour our vision for worshipping God.

Now this goes two ways: 1) We can go ahead and take all of the glory for ourselves and think that WE created the creation ourselves. 2) We can worship the actual creation, the object, because we ourselves created it. It’s as if we were the parent and that thing would be our child and we love it and we become obsessed with it.

In Genesis 1 God created everything. It was good. God created man and it was very good. God created our creativity and us. If we are creative it is because God made us that way.

We are creative because God is the ultimate Creator.

If God was not creative then we would not be creative. If you don’t think God is creative, look at people, their personalities, look at the animals, look at nature. It’s amazing.

So when we create something, does all the glory really go to us? Yes, we physically came up with the idea and made it but we are creative because God is the ultimate Creator.

In Exodus, when Moses was up on the mountain talking to God, the people built a Golden Calf to worship. They worshiped the creation and took their eyes off of God. When we create something, are we so focused on what we created that we lose focus on the one who gave us ability to create?

Worship the Creator and not the creation. We don’t deserve the glory, God does. This is just one way for Satan to make us lose focus on what we are doing and whom we are doing it for.

God is the true Creator.

Creative Crosshairs

A few weeks ago I was able to go to the Catalyst West Coast Leadership Conference. This is a conference in which church leaders from all over the nation come and hear messages about leadership from some of the best speakers in the nation. It's such a great thing to be a part of and it feels like your are drinking from a firehose of information because all of these men and women are way smarter than you and they blast you with a lot of things. Its great but I am always mentally exhausted afterward.

What does this have to do with being creative? Well, one of the speakers, Matt Chandler, said something that truly stood out to me.

“Satan targets the creative people because he knows the influence they have on others.”

The crosshairs are aimed directly at us.

How true this is. Being creative means you have the power to influence people with your creations. Whether it be a video, a painting, a set piece, a poem, a song, a story or anything else you can create. Your words or image can touch many people at one time all in different ways.

I think of the popular Christian worship band Hillsong United. They are undoubtedly talented songwriters and musicians who play all around the world and lead people into worship. They played here in LA a few weeks ago and sold out the Staples Center…over 45,000 people worshipping God through their creative music and lyrics.

I truly believe Satan sees that and cringes. 1 Peter 5:8 says, “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.”

I believe that it is the creative people that Satan will target more because he knows the influence they have on others around them. He will try to attack by causing writers block, creative dry spells, technical problems for bands and videos and much more: anything to have the focus not on God.

Satan is sly and sneaky and will help you be creative but in ways that can detour ones vision away from who God is, and he loves nothing more than that. He wont have you paint a picture of himself, but without taking caution his goal would be to have something you do or say or write be just theologically off base enough in order to cause others to stumble. He can have you worship the creation rather than the Creator. He can have you take the glory to glorify yourself and not God. That's his goal.

God gave creative people the ability to be creative because he knows that they can use that ability to reach many others in a way that glorifies Him, but Satan is there looking to skew that, even a little bit. So we need to be aware.

Let us pray that we keep our integrity, His wisdom, His Word in our mind as we create and effectively communicate to people through our creations because we know we have a bigger target on out back because the creativeness God has given us.

Let us not take this responsibility lightly. Let us glorify God because He is the Creator or creators.

Creative People Are Creative

It’s that simple. Creative people are creative. Someone who is always having great ideas, someone who is coming up with new ideas or someone who sees things in ways that others do not, is a creative person. Now I want to make clear I am talking about creative in the sense that our culture deems people creative. In that we can have ideas that are visually or audibly entertaining to the eye or ear. Here is the thing with that. Not everyone is creative.

Last night during our Sunday night service here at CCV, someone said something that was funny but true. He said, “God made some of us creative and some of us not at all. Thank God for that.” I laughed but it has somewhat of truth in it.

Some people are naturally creative, some people are not. Know which one you are. Know your limits. If being creative is your thing, take reigns on that, own it, develop that. If you are not, then you cant force it.

The most important thing is to know who you are. In the offices here, Jeff, JP, and I have been talking about how people fall into 3 categories (Jeff will be blogging about this idea in more detail on his blog. Click HERE to check his out)People usually fall into 3 different categories: Designer, Developer and Sustainer. Designers are the creative principles. They have all of the new ideas, they know what will draw people, and what needs to come together to make things look pleasing to the eye, they think creatively. Developers are the ones who plan out and get the idea into works. They are the ones who take the ideas and make them come to life. Sustainers are the ones who when the idea is thought of and the idea is carried out, they are able to keep that idea and plan of operation running. They keep it going. All of these are extremely important to have to run a successful organization. You just need to know which one you are.

With that said, you might not be creative in the way that society deems people creative. Creative is our society means that you can paint, play a guitar and write a song, or make videos etc. I think there is some sort of creative ability in those who are more of a Developer or a Sustainer. You can come up with creative ways in order to develop a plan to execute the creative idea or you can creatively think of a way to sustain an idea. That just takes another way to be creative. God is the creator of all creations. He has many different ways in which He is creative and I believe He passes that to us in our abilities.

A lot of creative people (culture’s idea of creative) just have the designer quality. They do not always know the best ways to carry out their ideas because how they are thinking about it in their own head is not physically possible to execute in real life.

You can’t force being creative. Creative people are creative. The important thing is to figure out which one you are and then develop that.

If you happen to be that creative person, please realize that you cannot be successful in carrying out your visions if you don’t have a Developer and a Sustainer because chances are you are not good in all of those areas. If you want to be a great creator you need to surround yourself with a great team with all of the different types of people.

The team here at Shift Students is unbelievable. When I come up with things, we are able to come together and come up with who, what, how and when we need things to make the idea come to life. I am blessed to be working with very differently talented people than myself.

In closing, only creative people are creative. You can’t force it. Know your talent.

Thinking About Being Creative? (How To's)

Something that I have been wrestling with and thinking a lot about lately is being creative. I see other people who are writing about how to be a “Good Leader” or “Steps to Successful Ministry” or something like that. To be honest, I can do those things, I know how to lead (somewhat) and I know how to run a successful ministry (somewhat) but never enough to write something that is helpful. It’s just something I do, something that I partake in.

What I know I have a talent in is being creative. I don’t know why but it comes natural for me. It’s a gift that God has graciously blessed me with. I feel like I can come up with creative ideas, videos, and concepts relatively easily. For Shift Students here at CCV that’s one of the main things that I do. So why not write and help others unleash their creative monster that could be living inside them?! Too much? Sorry.

So what I will be doing for a while is go through my thought process on how I think and how I come up with some of the Creative aspects of our Wednesday night services. I just started to think about how I think and how I process things and wrote down a few notes. It might help or it might not, who knows. I just hope by writing it will be able to help others think creatively or maybe open up some thoughts about how or why something will work or will not work.

You don’t have to take all of my thoughts to heart, I am just sharing mine because its something that I am passionate about and I love to see something that first started in my head and then see it come to life through application and then being able to see it on a Wednesday night or a camp or event I plan.

There is no better reward for me to use my God given ability to effect, alter, entertain, etc. a person for the benefit of God’s kingdom. Nothing is greater than that.

I would love to hear your feedback and thoughts when I post something. I really do appreciate it. I would love to start some dialogue if you have any questions.