I spend most of my day chatting with churches. Either I’m posting up a stage design, worship set, or graphic design they’ve worked on, or I’m chatting with them about their creative process.
One of the big things I’ve noticed from so many churches, is that they assume they’re being creative if they have a stage design. They’ll show me something they copied directly from the site and say, “Look, we were creative!”
I don’t have the heart to tell them, but that’s not creativity. I imagine that would be incredibly discouraging to hear. Fortunately, their misunderstanding of creativity doesn’t mean they aren’t creative. It just means they’re chasing the wrong things.
You see, creativity is not art. It’s not making something pretty. Painting in itself isn’t a creative art form. Photoshop in itself isn’t a creative application.
Real creativity is solving a problem. It’s not art. It’s not beauty. Creativity is identifying a problem and coming up with a unique solution for it.
The beauty of creativity is that every single individual on earth has it. They have the ability to look at a problem in a unique way and come up with a creative solution.
Sure, not everyone can paint a masterpiece. Not everyone can sing or write a beautiful song. But everyone can look at something in a unique way. You just have to be willing to look at things differently. That means not copying everything you see.
So when I say someone who copies a stage design off the website isn’t being creative, it’s because they’re just mimicking what’s done before. It’s almost autopilot. Sure, you have to work hard. You put sweat into the project. But there was no creativity unless you had to solve a problem.
Change the way you see creativity. It’s actually not as hard as we make it out to be.
“Real creativity is solving a problem.” Exactly.
Even if a church copies a stage design from your site, don’t they still have to adapt it to their specific space?
So my question is… At what point does adaptation cease to be “auto-pilot” and become creativity?
Exactly! So as soon as they solve the problem for themselves, they’re being creative. It doesn’t take creativity to put a pallet on your stage. But to make it look good in your space, it takes a lot of creativity.