I can’t tell you the number of people I meet who say, “I’ve got this dream burning in my chest.” Then I bump into them a year or two later, and ask, “how’s that dream coming along?” only to find out they haven’t done a thing. Nada. Ideas are free, but actions will cost you. I often lament how many dreams never come to life. Luckily I’ve had the privilege of working closely with a lot of high-capacity leaders who repeatedly bring dreams to life. They seem to understand something that everyone else doesn’t.
There’s a gap in what most of us think about creativity. The creative life is under-understood. The cornerstone of creativity is passion. No surprise there. In order to keep pushing hard on a creative dream, you have to care at soul level. But that’s not enough to keep producing great work. You’ve got to have a process. Passion gets you creating, but process keeps you creating.
There’s one more thing just beyond passion and process that’s easy to miss. You need people. The individual creative is an oxymoron… and they’re also a moron. There’s no such thing. If we think we can do it all ourselves, we don’t understand humanity, our creative Father and the body of Christ. We need others around us if we’re going to pursue what God has uniquely wired us to do.
I’ll never forget a long dinner I hosted to celebrate the team surrounding my first book. I invited many of those who helped create the texture of the Staying is the new Going story. They helped me breathe life into those words. Without them,the message would be incomplete. The stories wouldn’t have gusto. The ideas wouldn’t be cohesive. The message wouldn’t have quite stitched together. On that beautiful night, we feasted, laughed and prayed it out into the world. It was a baby shower for a message being birthed. Their stories gave it curves, and their prayers have sent it to crazy places I never imagined it would go.
If you want to create meaningful things you’ve got to have passion and process. But don’t forget the people. Who’s your team? Who are the people around helping you create things that matter? You can’t live your calling alone. Your dreams require others.
So, who’s your team?