Innovative Focus: Why Innovation?

After analyzing certain problems for so long that they become perfectly clear and obvious to me, I can often forget that they may not appear that way to everyone else. This only becomes problematic when sharing my potential solutions, which can sometimes fall flat, as they don’t address someone else’s clearly felt need. Simply put, people don’t respond well to solutions for problems which they don’t clearly perceive or understand themselves. In many ways, this is the reason some don’t understand what good news the Gospel really is. For them, they haven’t come to grips with the problem of their own emptiness, corruption of heart, and certainty of death, for if they did, the Gospel would be true water to their parched souls.

On a more personal note, I have been encouraging innovation within the Church for many years now, but have recently been reminded to clearly explain why. It is not simply because I am a creative person or spent 10 years as an R&D Engineer, although that is definitely a factor. The reason for forwarding innovation comes from the recognition that the Church in America has been in a decline for several decades. Pick any metric: church attendance, Biblical literacy, health of leadership, influence on culture, or attrition of the next generation from the ranks… they have all been in steady decline for awhile. This does not me that there aren’t bright spots or that the Church isn’t having a real impact. It does likely indicate that what we are doing is no longer truly effective.

To combat this decline, most of what I have seen is people doubling and tripling down on the same strategies that have been around for decades. In many cases, far from helping, this has seemed to only have exacerbated the problem. So: “Why innovation?” It is because our current strategies aren’t working well and if you follow the trend line, you know where it ends up. To be clear, I believe the mission, message, and principles of God found in Scripture are immutable. What I am praying for is Spirit inspired innovation and strategies for advancing the Kingdom. Just like Paul was willing to become all things, to all people, that he might save some, we need to be willing to adapt and embrace the new. So I say unto you in the Grace of God: Keep Innovating!