I’ve previously written about my college art professor who wouldn’t accept any work for a grade if we couldn’t show we had also generated a hundred other ideas we decided not to use. It drove me nuts. But it’s true that the best idea isn’t usually the first idea.This week at the FourFiveSix Conference for preteen ministry leaders, I learned another truth about ideas: no matter how good they are, ideas just aren’t enough. Sean Sweet, the director of the conference, told me about how he had realized this at last year’s conference.
A woman attending the conference approached him with a distressed look on her face. She was overwhelmed by the barrage of new and good ideas. But how was she to apply them? Should she try and implement them all? Did all of them apply to her ministry? She just didn’t know where to start.
I’ve felt that way too at conferences. I feverishly take notes, trying to jot down everything that might be useful in the future, only to file them away upon my return home. Great ideas just aren’t enough.
So this year, the conference is following a different format. Instead of just ideas, we started by identifying our driving purpose and our unique culture. These two foundations will serve as a filter for today’s ideas rounds. They will be the lens through which we evaluate which ideas to keep, and which ideas to just like.
I peeked ahead in our conference manual, and I’m excited for today. There’s a simple diagram which describes how ideas impact organizations. Most of us think of the power and potential for ideas to move us forward, but the truth is, they also have the potential to take us nowhere, to take us backwards, or to simply move us sideways.
A hundred ideas at a conference, no matter how exciting they seem or how impactful they were for someone else, are not going to move a hundred ministries forward a hundred steps each. Some of them will be exactly what one ministry needs to move forward, but not helpful at all to another.
And, I’m sure, today I’ll hear a hundred great ideas. But really, all I’m looking for a few that will help me move our ministry forward—in line with our specific, driving purpose for ministering to preteens, and consistent with who we are. All the rest, well… someone else can have them.