environment COLLABORATION

The environments for our kids and teens went to a new level when we embraced the power of COLLABORATION. When we collaborate we have a better shot at producing sticky environments for kids, teens, and college students. Collaboration means we choose to create and at the same time include the influence of other people on our team. Instead of creating in a vacuum it is so important to have other people on your team sharing ideas, providing feedback, and evaluating. I know that some of you are leading the most creative environments in your church. You are the ones pushing the envelope as you lead your next generation environments. Some of us are serving in churches where creativity flourishes. In my context we are trying to push the envelope in every are of the church when it comes to creativity and innovation in our environments. Our environments have so much to gain from collaboration. Planning and creating in isolation only holds our kid, teen, and college environment back. Here are ways we are trying to collaborate while we create for our family ministry environments...

• In Aqua (our college ministry) we have built a creative team using people connected with the university we serve. Every element for our monthly gathering is processed through our creative team. I am amazed at what this team pulls of through collaboration.
• We choose to partner with First Look, 252 Basics, and XP3 Students when it comes to curriculum in our family ministry environments. Every week we have the chance to be 10 steps ahead in the creative process because we work with the team at Orange.
  
• When is comes to graphic design, web design, and print projects we have several amazing people we collaborate with. They make us look like we know what we are doing!
  
• At RELEVANT (our teen environment) our staff works together with our worship team to process elements in the weekly gathering. We also work with our tech team at Grace Community to find new creative ways to mix up our venue.
• At Cross Street Live (our family experience) we are able to bring creative minds together to lead and create from all over Grace Community Church. Our actors, tech crew, dance team, and production team all come together to make every month AMAZING.

In each of these environments one thing is consistent...these experiences are not created in a vacuum. If you really want to take the environments you lead to the next level move toward environment collaboration. Get more creative minds involved in the process!