I have some good advice for you today, particularly if you are in a leadership position or if you serve in any sort of ministry.  Read this and by the power of the Holy Spirit, be liberated.

Here’s my advice:  Quit trying to say or do anything new.  There it is.  Pretty simple.  Here is what I mean.

The overwhelming trend today in pastoral ministry, student ministry, evangelism, discipleship, and para-church ministry is to be inventive and cutting edge.  Everyone wants to be extreme and creative and invent the next big thing, like a Christian Facebook or Twitter or even the internet.  There is a time and place to be inventive and the church needs artistic, creative, fresh ideas from intelligent and open-minded leaders to be relevant to our cultural context with the gospel.    But there is also a time and place to be old school, simple, and dare I say, ancient.

I rejoice and support and emmulate the creative minds of leaders of yesterday and today.  Billy Graham was a creative genius in the 1950s.  Today there are men like Mark Driscoll, Erwin McManus, Craig Groeschel, Steven Furtick, Perry Noble, Andy Stanley, and Rick Warren who create new ways and utilize existing systems and technologies to reach the lost and disciple the church.  I admire these men and covet their intellect and work ethic.

But for you, you need to know that there are innumerable creative ways to share and live the gospel but there is NO NEW GOSPEL.  We may take our liberties, so long as we don’t deviate from the Man and the message of  the gospel.  The Man is the Lord, Jesus Christ.  The message, handed down from Jesus to His disciples and the church, is to repent of your sins, believe in Christ, and trust Him for forgiveness, salvation, and life present and eternal.

There is nothing new.  Stop trying to create something cool and trendy and dive head first into what God has entrusted to you; serving others by living and proclaiming the good news.  Then be as crazy, wild, out of the box, creative, inventive, and cutting edge as you can possibly be (without sin or compromising the integrity of the gospel you proclaim).  But in the name of Jesus, give up on the hopeless dream of creating the next big thing or being the next big thing. 

You will never be the next big thing because there is only one Star in the Kingdom we serve in, and it ain’t you.