Color Outside The Lines

Rating:
Summary: So you think you're not creative?
Review: Dr. Hendricks has produced a marvelous book that captures an all too often missing ingredient from the skill sets of today's leaders: creativity. In the author's words, this book is about "the newness of life in Christ, the creative, redemptive side of our salvation." Since The Fall, man has been steadily drifting farther and farther away from God. Along with this distancing is the decline of creativity as stale thinking replaced an awareness of God's creative essence. Armed with this recognition, the author illustrates the fact that every creative act ultimately points toward God as The Creator. Hendricks' desire is to produce churches and leaders that are aware of the gift of creativity so they might become fully alive in Christ, ever-growing, driving change within the church, flexible, and unsatisfied with the status quo.

Color Outside the Lines neatly divides into three parts. In the first part Hendricks defines and examines the many facets of creativity. Part two introduces the creative problem-solving process and offers many techniques to accomplish it. Part three concludes the book with several chapters that focus on the application of creativity. The value of this three-step method is its completeness. Hendricks does not stir up a longing for creativity inside the reader, only to leave him to his own devices. At the conclusion of each of twenty-two chapters is a series of short exercises designed to awaken the reader's God-given creativity. By the time the reader arrives at the last page he has come full-circle along side the author's creativity. Not only did the reader participate in a discussion of creativity, he discovered his own repressed creativity, and was given a charge by Hendricks to allow this now awakened creativity to consume the his life.

Rating:
Summary: A Very Uncreative Book About Creativity
Review: I must start by saying I highly respect Howard Hendricks and his incredible impact on Christian thinking over the past couple decades. He's a great man of God who deserves a lot of credit for promoting the Gospel.

I applaud Hendricks' overall philosophy that individuals (particularly Christians) need to embrace the unknown and explore their hidden potential. But of all the books about creativity that I've read, this is one of the dullest. Hendricks stops at nothing to lull the reader into a false sense of mental comfort, rather than truly challenging readers to higher levels of innovation. His "proven methods" and "nine steps" are nothing more than the "tried and true" routines of the past, not revolutionary ideas for expanding the mind's capacity. The book is full of cliches and traditional (ie., old-fashioned) brainstorm activities. Worse, it reduces the creative process to a scientific formula, asserting that creativity is best wrought through some prescribed (and prescripted) convention.

"Color Outside the Lines" may be okay for someone who wouldn't know creativity if it bit them on the nose. But if you want to fuel your brain on the good stuff, try reading "Walking on Water" by Madeleine L'Engle or "Orbiting the Giant Hairball" by Gordon MacKenzie.

Rating:
Summary: A Very Uncreative Book About Creativity
Review: Long-time leader and professor at Dallas Theological Seminary has written a volume that takes church leadership to new frontiers. . Pelted with quotes by notables (Drucker, Bennis, Nanus, et al), the author, with characteristic lightening flashes, tackles subjects such as personal and organizational creativity, leadership and family principles. Let this generation of Christian leaders rise up and call Hendricks blessed!! Five Stars!!!

Rating:
Summary: This is a home run by one of America's premere leaders.
Review: Long-time leader and professor at Dallas Theological Seminary has written a volume that takes church leadership to new frontiers. . Pelted with quotes by notables (Drucker, Bennis, Nanus, et al), the author, with characteristic lightening flashes, tackles subjects such as personal and organizational creativity, leadership and family principles. Let this generation of Christian leaders rise up and call Hendricks blessed!! Five Stars!!!