Unleash your creative spirit

Church Relevance has a good entry today on finding your creative spirit/genius:

Four Ways to Unleash Your Creative Genius
We all possess the ability to be creative. Often a little creativity is all that is needed to make a sermon stick or an advertisement memorable. To get your creative juices flowing, consider these 4 tips published by USA Today two months ago:

  • Explore an unfamiliar area of knowledge. For example, people who use a lot of math on the job should sign up for a painting class.
  • Spend time each day thinking. Don’t censor your thoughts, but allow your mind to go freely to a problem and see what kinds of solutions or ideas surface.
  • Practice the art of paying attention. Look for and really observe a person, an object or something in your daily commute that you hadn’t really noticed before. Try describing or drawing that object in a journal or sketchbook.
  • Use your imagination. Spend time each day imagining a different world. What would it look like? What would you do there?

    Creativity is about exposing yourself to new ideas and ways of thinking and learning how to harness the key principles your diverse knowledge to improve something. It is important that ministers never stop learning and never stop improving.

    • See you at the polls

    According to Gomer Jeffers at the DMN, Chris Bell was in Fort Worth a couple days ago for a unique photo opportunity. He was supposed to give a little old lady a ride to the polls.
    For some reason, Bell was unable to pick up the woman at her apartment. So instead of giving her a ride, he met her at the polling place for early voting.
    “Come on, man. Picking up a voter is a basic principle in any get-out-the vote campaign,” Jeffers said. “Did you at least give her gas money?”
    I wonder if they botched photo op changed the woman’s vote.
    With less than a week left before the election, who are you voting for?

    What would you do?

    I know some of you have never been to Nigeria or Africa, some of you have been there multiple times and some of you may even live there now.
    But for the sake of conversation, I pose this question to you: With unlimited resources, what would you do to fix the problems in Nigeria and the rest of Africa?
    Post your comments below. And no idea is to ridiculous or unworthy. Think outside the box on this one.

    China to rebuild Nigerian train system

    While we were in Nigeria we came across a lot of abandoned railway. The Nigerians told us that the rails were built during British rule and they had been abandoned in the last 10 years or so. But now, according to the BBC, China will buid a new railway between Lagos and Kano. A second phase will connect Jos to the system.

    China to build Nigerian railway
    Nigeria’s railways have fallen into disrepair
    China is to build a railway line between Nigeria’s two main commercial cities, Lagos and Kano.
    An $8bn contract was signed by the deputy transport minister and the president of the Chinese firm (CCECC).
    CCECC President Lin Rongxin said 50,000 Nigerians would work on the 1,315km line which he said was “a design, construct and maintain project”.
    Nigeria’s leader said the five-year north-south line was the first phase in a 20-year modernisation programme.
    President Olusegun Obasanjo, who watched the signing, said the second phase of the railway project would include a link between the southern oil city of Port Harcourt and the central city of Jos.
    The existing railway along these routes has fallen into disrepair and new tracks are to be built under the deal with China.
    China recently granted Nigeria a loan of $2.5bn and much of this is expected to be used in the railway project.
    Earlier this year Nigeria repaid a multi-billion dollar debt it owed to the Paris Club, becoming the first African nation to settle with its official lenders.
    Nigeria is one of the world’s biggest oil exporters, but it is also one of the world’s poorest countries, with the majority of the population living on less than $1 per day.