How To Kill Dead Time

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Oxforddictionaries.com defines dead time as Time in which someone or something is inactive or unable to act productively.  

How does dead time affect worship services?

Dead time kills the flow of the service. It steals the connections between the service elements. It destroys meaningful moments in worship. It causes individuals to become disengaged from what is happening onstage.

Dead time is the devil.

People are used to seeing excellent presentations with quick, easy to understand transitions. The existence of dead time in services makes people think the worship leader, speaking team, and tech team aren’t prepared. This leads them to wonder if what we’re doing is worth their time.

Is there a way to kill dead time?

The best way to kill dead time is to be prepared and even over prepared for every transition taking place in a worship service. You do this by mentally and verbally practicing each transition yourself and then talking through the order of service with your onstage, tech and production teams. When this happens, the potential for dead time is drastically reduced, participants are better prepared for every element of the service, and people are more likely to stay engaged.

Creativity = Connections

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People think that creativity is about discovery. It’s not. It’s about connection.

Steve Jobs, in a 1996 interview with Wired, was asked to define Creativity. He said the following:

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people.

The best creative ideas rarely come fully formed. Even those who are “divinely inspired” come as the result of interesting connections, conversations, contemplations, and experiences. To increase our creativity, we should foster our curiosity, allowing our ideas and projects time to come together. Rushing creativity can get you by, but rarely is the result amazing.

*Photo courtesy of Me Badr Chemmaoui on Unsplash