1. You Don’t Have a Relevant Church If You Increasingly Think Most New Ideas Are Bad Ideas
Hey, it’s easy to resist new ideas. But if you think back, there was a time when you were likely far more open to new ideas.
Now you’re older and wiser, and you’ve got a way of doing things.
The human mind is great at preserving the status quo. You can think of 10 reasons why a new idea won’t work, and you and your team never hesitate to list them.
The leadership graveyard is filled with the bodies of leaders who say, “We haven’t done it that way before.”
Not every new idea is a great idea, but embracing no new ideas is a terrible idea.
When was the last time you embraced a radical new idea? If you can’t answer that question, you’re already in trouble.
2. You Don’t Have a Relevant Church If the Copyright Dates on Your Music Are From Another Era
You can argue about church decor all day long, or about the less tangible aspects of church life, but few things give away a church’s true age than the copyright dates on the music it sings.
Many churches will embrace change to an extent, and then they stop.
Many churches think they’re relevant and current. After all, they have a band, not a choir. They have screens, not books.
But dig a little deeper and most songs they sing were written somewhere between 2002-2012. In other words, they froze a few years ago.
The danger here is that they think they’re being relevant, but they really aren’t. The truly new songs, they’ll tell you, are too long, too non-melodious, too weird to sing.
Besides, our people love the songs we sing because they know them.
Again, there’s nothing wrong with singing older songs, but if all the copyright dates are older, it’s a sign that you’re actually not that relevant.
