An interesting conversation has been had this week in the blogosphere about valuing Christian creatives. Here’s how it went down:
- Rick Warren launched a contest to find a design for the cover of his latest book.
- Church Marketing Sucks wrote an open letter to Rick about spec work, explaining why they think this is a bad idea for Christian creatives.
- Michael Buckingham from Holy Cow Creative followed this up with a post entitled ‘It’s not about a contest‘.
- Church Marketing Sucks wrote a follow-up to the debate (sadly notifying that the comments had to be shut down).
There’s a lot you can read on those posts about the challenges and opportunities of spec work (i.e. running contests where there’s only one winner). I’m not keen to open up that conversation again here, but you might like to check out the conversations at the links above.
What I am interested in discussing is this – how can we best value the Christian creatives in our churches and ministry organisations?
These people do such a wonderful job, and our communications materials, websites, outreach activities etc. would be all the worse without their eye for design and skills to match. I am so grateful for the creatives at my church who do a stellar, God-glorifying job. I thank and praise God for you.
I’d love to hear how we can ensure these people in our churches are valued, appreciated and encouraged. Any ideas how we can do this?
PS – wow, there were a lot of contest entries! Check them out here.
Some more commentary…
http://shawnwoodwrites.com/2009/09/my-conerns-about-artists-part-one/
Thanks for sharing that link, Steve. Everyone – this is a 5-part blog post series – you can check out here.
Good question, and interesting website! Keep up the great work