Len Wilson's Blog, page 14

My Word For the Year Is a Plea To Recognize My Most Precious Commodity

Presence is a plea to recognize the fleeting nature of this life and to fully appreciate the scarce and valuable commodity of time, and to be able to purposefully waste time on activities whose value isn’t easily quantifiable, which don’t serve immediate needs and which don’t add to the bottom line. Creativity depends on it.

If The Goals You Set for the New Year Fail, This Could Be Why

As I dream about the new year, I have realized there’s one mistake I need to avoid making: the reason most goals don’t work is not that they’re too big. It’s that they’re too vague.

The 10 Most Helpful Creativity and Creative Arts Posts of 2015

These are ten posts from 2015 that have been the most helpful to this blog's readers - the ones that have gotten the most shares, likes, comments and so on.

On Deciding If You’re On The Right Creative Path

Why I decided to abandon the creative path I'd pursued for 10 years, and two rules to help you figure out your creative future.

Why Sermon Images Fail and 5 Steps to Make Them Better

Preaching is changing, and more and more preachers are learning to communicate with images. But just because many congregations can now project an image in a worship service doesn't mean we're using them in ways that improve our ability to communicate. How can we do it better?

What Johnny Cash Knew About The Creative Process That Inspired Him For a Lifetime

Johnny Cash was clearly creative - one of the most creative artists of his era. What kept him motivated, and what did he understand about the creative process that everyone could benefit from?

How To Call People to Action with Stories in Worship

As Creative Director at a large church, I like to tell stories in worship to invite people from a corporate gathering to a next step on the journey of faith. What if each week, worship had a desired outcome? I like to tell stories of such action, and how to apply faith, through a Featured Story of the Week.

A Note About this Blog

As my thoughts have evolved, I have realized that it is helpful to split my posts up into two basic categories: the creative process, and creative arts in ministry. Here is my plan for address these two specific audiences.

Get Your Creative Idea Off the Ground in 5 Steps (Courtesy of Google)

To improve your ability to create something real and functional out of a mere thought, here is the story of Google Docs, which was originally a terrible app called Writely. The crazy thing about this little story is that they didn't realize what made Google Docs great until after the fact.

Pixar’s 5 Tips for Growing an Awesome Workplace Environment for Creativity

Dysfunction in the creative process is the number one complaint I hear from leaders and artists in churches and other organizations. The solution starts with establishing a healthy creative culture. Here are 6 signs of dysfunctions and 5 things to do to encourage creativity and allow artistry to thrive.