Church Marketing Solutions

Article by John Wasem

      Brainstorming is a semi-structured creative team activity that is a powerful leadership lever when seeking to generate new ideas for innovation or improvement in the new church context. Team members are encouraged to suggest ideas about a problem as well as possible solutions to the challenge. A ministry staff or leadership team can together achieve a higher level of creativity than the sum of the participant actions separately (i.e. synergistic effect). To optimize the brainstorming (or as some prefer to term the process - starbursting), consider the following 10 suggestions:

1. When possible, consider using an experienced external facilitator such as a church planting coach.
2. Appoint a scribe to record all ideas regardless of potential or reasonableness.
3. Identify the precise topic for the activity so focus is not diffused.
4. Clearly describe the problem to be solved and all relevant criteria to be met.
5. Keep the number of participants in a single brainstorming group to less than 10.
6. Evaluate all ideas based on two steps: (a) define the criteria; (b) score the results based on that criteria.
7. Ensure that no one criticizes or evaluates ideas during the session as such behavior stifles creative generation and cripples the free flow of ideas.
8. Encourage a positive, uncritical attitude among team members.
9. Work to solicit ideas from all people in the group including the quiet or reserved members who tend to be internal processors.
10. Encourage people to develop the ideas of other team member ideas as the springboard effect can lead to exciting breakthroughs.