Snow Shovel

My snow shovel stinks! It's made of cheap plastic. The only place that has any strength to it is at the tip -- there is a narrow piece of steel there. My snow shovel works best when I flip it over and pull it over the snow instead of pushing it. Basically, I need a new snow shovel. Even though I need a new shovel, it hasn't stopped me from going out and shoveling. In fact, just today I had to shovel, and yes I had to use my crappy shovel. But, shoveling with my shovel made me think...

To often in churches, people complain that they don't have the tools to do ministry, or to be creative in ministry. They look at large churches and say, "if I only had the tools they have then I would do a lot of creative stuff." Let me just say this, don't wait to be creative in ministry. Use what you have. Let me explain...

Early in my youth ministry career, I wanted to use media in our Wednesday night gatherings. I wanted to show pictures. I wanted to put the words to our songs on the screen. I wanted to be able to show movies, and do creative stuff to communicate the message of Jesus. I could have waited until I got the right tools to be creative, but instead I just went to work, using what I had.

Every Wednesday, I would create a power point show on my desk top computer, haul the desktop computer into the room we were meeting in, and hook it up to the cheap portable projector we had. It was a lot of work, but I didn't. Sure, it would have been easier if I had a laptop, but the resources were not there. Years later, yes I did this every Wednesday night for years, I got a laptop, which made life easier.

Here are some other things I did instead of waiting...

• For years I moved pool tables, ping-pong tables, and other stuff from storage to our fellowship room. I wanted a cool place for teenagers to hangout on Wednesday Nights, but we didn't have our own space. So, every week we converted the fellowship room into a youth room. It was a ton of work, but years later we built a really sweet youth building, and the ideas for the building came from what we did for years in the fellowship room.
• I wanted a cool header to this blog, but since I don't have photoshop (because it's $600 and I don't have time to learn another program) I decided to create the header in powerpoint, and then I took a screen shot of it. I just went to work instead of complaining and waiting until I got photoshop.

I have a bunch of other examples to, but if you are in ministry my advice to you is "don't wait until you get all the latest gadgets to be creative." Just start being creative. Don't let not having all the cool tools, prevent you from communicated the good news of Jesus in a creative way. Just do it.

By the way, next year I will have a new snow shovel... maybe even a snow blower. But until then, I will use my faithful, old snow shovel.