Creativity, Chaos, and Starting Ministry Before You’re Ready
Mark A. Taylor reflects on the temptation to delay ministry until every question is answered. Using Disneyland’s chaotic opening day as an illustration, he argues that creativity can be messy, hard work can cover mistakes, and determination can carry a project toward a worthy vision.
- Waiting for perfect clarity can keep good ministry from starting.
- Disneyland’s opening shows how big visions can begin with real-world disorder.
- Creativity, hard work, and determination can move a project toward a positive end.
By Mark A. Taylor
Starting before every question is answered
Sometimes we wait to start a program or ministry till we have answered every question, anticipated every problem, and considered every cost. But sometimes we must plunge ahead with only the best guesses we can gather at starting time. This is true for every kind of enterprise.
Even Disneyland.
Disneyland’s opening day disaster
The ads promoting the attraction’s 50th anniversary this year give no clue to the confusion and near chaos that accompanied the park’s first day. Wide eyed children queuing for a chance to hug Mickey Mouse in 2005 don’t know about the missteps and mistakes when Disneyland’s gates first opened.
They probably haven’t read Mouse Tales, David Koenig’s “behind the ears look” at the venerable theme park. His account of the park’s Opening Day describes it as a disaster:
- The 11,000 passes printed for the invitation-only premier were easily forged, and someone erected a ladder over the fence at the back of the park to let in people without tickets. More than 28,000 overran the place.
- Asphalt on Main Street, poured at 6:30 that morning, was so sticky under the California sun that some guests walked out of their shoes, caught in the goo.
- Fess Parker, portraying Davy Crockett in the televised opening, appeared at the wrong time and was soaked by the sprinkler system—before a live audience.
- Restaurants ran out of food, and there weren’t enough drinking fountains. (A plumber’s strike had forced the park to choose between building washrooms and drinking fountains.)
- Traffic jammed roads for two miles outside the park.
- The day was plagued by breakdowns, hopelessly long lines for the few operational rides, and even a window falling on a guest’s head.
- Reporters the next day called Disneyland “Disney’s Folly,” “a Hollywood spectacular . . . a spectacular failure.” Opening Day was soon dubbed Black Sunday.
It all makes your worst VBS nightmare or junior camp catastrophe seem like a picnic, doesn’t it?
The book goes on to record similar problems the following day, when the public was first invited. And when a record heat wave hit Anaheim several weeks later, attendance fell off and didn’t come back throughout the park’s first financially-strapped winter.
Chaos as a by-product of creativity
But today nobody cares. Disney’s dream to create “The Happiest Place on Earth” kept him working and driving. Succeeding generations have solved some of the earlier problems and refined the creation of an experience now sought by people everywhere.
It makes me realize that chaos is sometimes a by-product of creativity. Hard work covers a multitude of mistakes. And determination can push a project to a positive end, especially in pursuit of a captivating vision.
It sort of makes you wish we had more Disney types in the church, doesn’t it?
Author: Mark A. Taylor
Mark A. Taylor, who served as Christian Standard editor from 2003 to 2017, retired in June 2017 after almost 41 years with Standard Publishing (Christian Standard Media).
