Evotional.com - Mark Batterson

I love God ideas--ideas that originate with the Spirit of God. There is nothing more compelling or inspiring that a God-ordained idea!

Victor Hugo said, "An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come."

I think the multi-site movement is a great example of an idea whose time has come. I've read estimates that one-third of all churches will be multi-site by the year 2020. When we first dreamed of meeting in movie theaters @ metro stops I didn't know of any multi-site churches. There are now more than 1500 multi-site churches.

Isaiah 43:19 says, "Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up, do you not perceive it?"

God is always doing a new thing. But if we're too focused on the past we miss out on the "new thing" God is doing. We do ministry out of memory instead of ministry out of imagination. We keep doing what we've always done.

Andy Grove of Intel says, "There is at least one point in the history of any company when you have to change dramatically to rise to the next performance level. Miss that moment and you start to decline." The same holds true for churches.

I'm more and more convinced that God ideas are the thing that makes ministry fun and exciting. It's also the key to exponential impact. I'd rather have one God idea than a thousand good ideas.

I have a theory: everybody has great ideas but most of us never do anything with them. Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari, once said, "Everyone who's ever taken a shower has had an idea. It's the person who gets out of the shower, dries off and does something about it who makes a difference."

We've got to be good stewards of God ideas!

There is an old proverb: the shortest pencil is longer than the longest memory. Abraham Lincoln had a creative way of capturing his ideas. He put them in an idea drawer. He said, "Often an idea would occur to me which seemed to have FORCE...I never let one of those ideas escape me, but wrote it on a scrap of paper and put it in that drawer. In that way I saved my best thoughts on the subject, and, you know, such things have come in a kind of intuitive way more clearly than if one were to sit down and deliberately reason them out."

You never know when you're going to get a God idea. Suzanne Langer says, "Most new discoveries are suddenly-seen things that were always there." The live nativity we just did is a great example. It was a "crazy idea" I got driving home from an outlet mall. But I took the time to record a voice memo on my phone so I wouldn't lose the idea.

Habakkuk 2:1 says, "Write down the revelation."

For what it's worth, Leonardo Da Vinci, who might be the most multi-talented person who has ever lived, never went anyplace without his notebook. He was constantly recording ideas and observations. Even on his deathbed he took detailed notes about his symptoms. We still have seven thousand pages of Da Vinci's journals. In 1994, Bill Gates purchased 18 pages for $30.8 million!

Your ideas may be worth may than you think :)

A few years ago, Catherine Cox did a study of 300 of history's greatest minds. She found one thing in common: All 300 geniuses recorded their thoughts and feelings, their ideas, insights, and observations, their reflections and questions in a journal of one kind of the other.

Dave Goetz, founder of CustomZines.com, says, "For me, when an idea hits me, it strikes fire, almost like God speaking. I know that sounds heretical, but there it is. The more time that passes after the idea strikes, the less heat it gives off. I forget parts of it, it doesn't seem as great. Ideas have a short half-life."

When God reveals something--anything--you need to write it down. It's idea stewardship!

For what it's worth, my blog serves a number of purposes. But one of them is idea drawer.

Blog on.