I’ve noticed an interesting church leadership trend in the past few years.
Every year, there are a few magazines or blogs that put out an annual list of innovative churches (most notably Outreach Magazine). Here are a few examples:
- LifeChurch.tv has a SecondLife campus.
- Mars Hill (Grand Rapids) had Noomas (though not technically tied to the church)
- Granger has great videos and communication gurus.
All of which are great and exciting innovations helping us better achieve the Great Commission. And to be clear, these achievements should be celebrated. But somewhere in the last 10-15 years, “innovation” in churches has, by-and-large, become synonymous with technological innovation or innovating how we deliver The Message via technology.
To “innovate” simply means to develop new things or methods. With the American church shrinking in size and influence, innovation is undoubtedly needed. The stats to support the church’s decline have been well documented. Only 15% of Gen X and only 4 % of Gen Y regularly attend a Sunday service. Moreover, 62% of Americans say they would never go to a church service. Yet most churches are using technological innovation — vehicles like video campuses, podcasting, Facebook microtargeting, etc. — to either draw people to their services or to export the Sunday experience. Most of our innovation revolves around technology meant to draw people to something that is Sunday service-centric.
Yet the innovation that’s required is for new methods to reach the 62% who aren’t likely candidates for a worship service conversion. A re-imagining is required of how the Church can incarnate in a way that is relevant to that growing segment. So my first challenge for Christian leaders is to think of innovation beyond technological means.
But I also have some specific challenges to the Church’s growing infatuation with technology. They are…
- In my experience, Discipleship and Mission can rarely be done well at a distance.
It’s not often that true mission or discipleship happens outside of real flesh-and-blood relationships. Discipleship is meant to be life on life — day in and day out. Not only is it difficult for those we are discipling to see how we are following Jesus if they don’t have access to our real lives — but it’s also harder to know what they’re struggling with as it’s easier for them to hide things in the digital world. It’s also harder to communicate genuine support and challenge without physical proximity or context. - Technology works best when it’s supplementary to existing relationships vs. their primary mode of being.
For example, I love Facebook. I use it all the time. One of the things that I LOVE about Facebook is that I get to follow my son, Sam, who is 1500 miles away at university. I get to look at pictures of him and his fiancée, Taylor (they are getting married this weekend!!!). I get to laugh at his funny status updates. I get to follow him through the week even though I’m half a continent removed from him. The existence of Facebook ADDS to an already rich, pre-existing relationship. It affords things to our relationship that we wouldn’t have without it. - If we’re not careful, reliance on digital media can shape us to disengage from life offline.
Technological “innovation” can become counter-productive if it shapes people to disengage with the mission we’ve been called to. If it becomes a crutch to avoid the flesh, blood, and mess of real life — then we have a different problem on our hands. I’m not trying to be a Luddite or an alarmist, but sometimes, I really wonder if we are worse at discipleship and mission than we were 15 years ago because we haven’t been thoughtful with how technology is shaping us.
The church needs innovation. We need to set our sights to re-imagining, but we need to do so by getting back to the basics of discipling people and innovating how we do that. If you disciple people the way Jesus did and the way his disciples did, the way the early church did, and the way we’ve seen throughout history, you will always get the missional thing.
The problem is that we are pretty awful at discipleship. (How’s that for candid?) As you’ve heard me say before, mission and discipleship are inextricably linked. You can’t be a disciple the way Jesus envisioned a disciple without being missional. So this is what I want to say:
Discipleship is where we need innovation.
Dallas Willard put it this way: “Every church needs to be able to answer two questions. First, what is our plan for making disciples? And second, does our plan work?” Sadly, most churches have a plan, but their results don’t come close to standing against the types of disciples we see littered throughout Scripture. The plans simply aren’t working.
What does all this have to do with the church and technology?
I wonder what would happen if local churches spent ½ of the time they spend on keeping up with technology trends and innovating them and reallocated it to innovating ways to make disciples who can make disciples in every-day, flesh-on-flesh, real life? Refusing to do it at a distance, but using the digital stuff as supplementary, not as the main thing.
I wonder if we just might have a movement on our hands.
Now don’t hear me wrong. I’m not a Luddite who despises technology. Love love my iPad. A three-toed sloth couldn’t rip it from my fingers. I’m not suggesting a false dichotomy where we should shun innovating technology within the church because only then can we embrace “true” mission and discipleship. I’m saying nothing of the sort. I’m just asking us to take a step back and evaluate how we are allocating our time, energy, and resources within “church world.”
What do you think?
