As Fall approaches, churches everywhere are gearing up for the restarting of many of their programs. As we do so, I have been thinking about innovation. How necessary is it to stay ahead of the curve creatively when dealing with church programs? Why is innovation important?
What was the first task God gave Adam? Name EVERY animal on the earth. That took some creative thinking, don’t you think?
We are the body of Christ – a living, vibrant entity. God is the Creator, and He created us with a creative spirit. God is glorified in the music, art, writing, dance, and other expressions of His people because He gave us the creative spirit used to produce these offerings. God delights in our offerings, the same way we delight in the works of the hands of our children (wrote about that here.) By God’s standards, they are infantile. But He desires our worship and our praise.
When dealing with church programs or ministries, it is easy to be complacent. After all, there are already people coming to our church, and things seem to be working. But to what extent is that good enough? What is the spiritual temperature of our church? How faithful are we at making disciples and giving the Gospel? If this church disappeared tomorrow (God forbid), would the community notice? WHAT CAN WE DO?
Dr. Jerry Falwell used to say, “If it’s Christian, it ought to be better!” (I’ve quoted him before.) “Good enough” ought not be in our vocabulary.
At my church, we recently adopted a new vision statement: To reach the lost, and to grow the saved to be like Jesus. As church leaders, the tricky part of that philosophy is that there are SO MANY ways to do this! Are there any we should ignore or be afraid to try?
Because we are from within trying to draw people in from the outside, our outlook can be limited because we deal with the same people, facilities, personnel, and situations on a daily basis. I have learned that it is important to take a step back from time to time and try to look at my church from a visitor’s perspective. While no facility, music program, or Bible study will reach the lost on its own, we should strive to make our church as accessible, pleasant, and welcoming to those on the outside as we can. And we should constantly be on the lookout for methods, technology, policies, literature, PR, materials, and other things we utilize that would be more effective if handled differently.
Bottom line: we all learned in physics class that everything is in motion. If the church stops moving, we stop being effective.
God created us to be creative. What should we create (or recreate) that could impact our church and our community for Christ?
Not a Camouflaged Soul 