"Innovation" is a term not typically associated with religious institutions, which tend to be oriented toward conserving and maintaining tradition. Yet at its heart, the Christian church is about innovation-embodying God's new life, hope, and community for the world. It is time to claim this identity amidst powerful disruptive forces in today's world.
The triune God's mission is about innovation. God creates the cosmos from nothing and forms humanity for right relationships with God, one another, and the whole earth. When those relationships fall into estrangement, God patiently reforms community through Abraham and Sarah, Israel, Jesus, and the church. Jesus is the one in whom humanity is reborn (recapitulated). The church is a community of the Spirit giving witness to an alternative and hopeful future.
We live in a moment of profound social and cultural change fueled by digital technology and globalization. Organizations of all types are struggling to adapt to new patterns of belonging and participation. Many churches and church systems seem caught and at a loss, unsure what to do as established practices break down and people disengage. Long-treasured ways of connecting and supporting Christian communities do not seem meaningful or accessible to emerging generations or neighbors. Leaders try harder at the old patterns, but feel frustrated and drained by pushing against cultural currents beyond their control.
This is a moment to reenter the central stories of the faith, stories that are not about institutional success or progress, but God claiming and calling unlikely, fallible people into the adventure of God's mission. This mission proceeds in the Bible through a great deal of messiness, error, and ambiguity, not the linear-sequential steps of a modern strategic plan. God is the great innovator, and God calls humanity into participation and partnership in that innovation. Fundamentally, we are not in control.
What does this mean for local churches and other Christian communities who find their communal life eroding amid these seismic cultural shifts taking place? We might take our inspiration from the stories of Abraham and Sarah, elders suffering the absence of children and a future, who are called by God into a nearly quarter-century of wandering before God's promise is fulfilled. We might reenter the stories of the prophets, who redescribe the world in light of God's presence and leadership in the face of empires and exploitation. We might look to Jesus, who relies upon the hospitality of the world as he embodies an alternative kingdom. We might indwell the narratives in Acts of the Spirit leading the apostles through improvised encounters with strangers as they share the hope of the gospel.
