I’m kind of concerned in some things that I’m seeing in church world. We’re hearing words like creativity and innovation, but we’re not really seeing a lot of it. What do I mean? We aren’t being creative or innovative when we steal someone else’s series and teach it. There’s another word for that: Lazy! There’s a time and place for ripping off people’s stuff verbatim. When we started our church and I was working 50 plus hours outside of the church, that’s the time to steal and thank God there are resources to help young Pastors get going. But there should come a time when we start to develop our own ideas and allow God to express Himself through our creativity. I think sometimes we’re scared that what we do may not be as innovative as some other church. What I’ve discovered is that when I am most passionate in my teaching is when the message has comes from my heart, not from what I received in the mail. I believe the same is true for you. Please understand, I’m not knocking listening to other teachers. That’s just crazy talk! We should be listening to great communicators because that’s how we become great communicators. My only concern is that when we hear great teachers teach, that we resist the urge to just copy their messages. That’s not creativity or innovation. That’s simply us being an echo of someone else. And you can always tell an echo from the original because they say the same thing after the original says it and it’s never as powerful. So let’s get creative. Let’s allow our favorite communicators to influence our style, not replace our style.