Leadership Archives - Rich Kirkpatrick

Creativity’s Invisible Variables: Preparation and Incubation

Rich KirkpatrickOctober 18, 20220133 views

Subscribe to the audio blog on your favorite podcast app: Subscribe We celebrate the moment an idea is born. When a colleague or friend mentions their new idea, we find them in a state of euphoria and energy. New insights seem to arrive in a flash. Like Archimedes experienced, they might hit us in the bathtub. Observers treat us like the crazy mathematician running from his bath while he cried, “Eureka, Eureka!” We all know this part of creativity. A vision, a solution, or a new angle overtakes us. Everyone seems to think our best ideas come to us on their own, but the truth is this. It takes a lot of unseen effort and patience to bring them. Cut-and-Paste Mimicry or Originality What if we are cheating ourselves from our best ideas by simply hoping they either arrive on their own or are from our hustle? We might give up or…

Why Brainstorming Meetings Suck and How to Make Them Better

Rich KirkpatrickJanuary 24, 20220482 views

Subscribe to the audio blog on your favorite podcast app: Subscribe If you want to see eyes roll, tell the team you planned a brainstorming meeting. The hope is to practice innovation, foster teamwork, or prop up low morale. Motives, whether sane or desperate, propel such a meeting to the calendar. The effectiveness of these types of meetings is another story, however. Be honest. They suck. Let me jog your memory. The dreaded no-idea-is-bad on the whiteboard turns into three people dominating the meeting while the rest watch the clock, hoping to get to the break room microwave first to warm the leftovers they brought for lunch. After an hour’s work, the whiteboard has the thoughts of these three people, and the no-bad-ideas promise fails. Passing objections and restrained snickers frustrate the goal of non-judgmental civility, however. The leader writes lists of ideas on the board, filtering, categorizing, and labeling them in…

Connection versus Content: 5 Worship Team Hacks for the pandemic

Rich KirkpatrickSeptember 3, 20200437 views

Our worship teams need to be shepherded, especially during this season. Beyond content creation, we need connection. There are a lot of innovative and practical pointers for putting online services together. What I hope to do here is address how we care for each other, equip our teams, and build community during a pandemic. How do we stay connected and even grow?

Flexing the Muscle of Imagination: The hard work of creativity

Rich KirkpatrickAugust 5, 20200496 views

Leading worship requires a heavy dose of administrative strengths. There are team members to schedule, music to arrange and distribute, plans to execute, and budgets to keep. Just because you sing and hold a guitar doesn’t mean you automatically get to create! Yes, you serve by making music and prayers work in service for your church. Yes, the desire for unique artistic expression worthy of a worship service rate high on the task list. But, imagination takes a back seat.

A Timeless Word – Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Address

Rich KirkpatrickNovember 20, 201801.8K views

It is the duty of nations as well as of men to owe their dependence upon the overruling power of God; to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations are blessed whose God is the Lord. We know that by his divine law, nations, like individuals, are subject to punishments and chastisements in this world May we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war which now desolates the land may be a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins; to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole people? We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity;…