Before we Innovate...

One of the things that I get excited about is the fact that youth ministry circles are starting to finally seriously engage with the topic of innovation. It is much needed and way overdue. Our leaders are tired. Our models are worn. Twitter is full of self marketing and youth ministry products that are a kind of economic ecclesial echo chamber of…stuff. And most importantly we are not producing missional adult disciples of Jesus Christ who are participating in the unfolding of God’s Kingdom in the world.

So, yeah. It’s time for change.

So, it IS exciting to see what is in the wind. But, I also have some concerns.

I have been invited to participate in about 8 different Christian social enterprise/innovation events around the U.S. over the last few years. Most of them have not been related to youth ministry. My biggest concern when innovation, or innovation through Christian enterprise comes up, is that generally speaking we do a terrible job of grounding the goal of innovation in our theology. I was thinking about this again in an acute way over the last few days while simultaneously reading several books on innovation. I started developing some critical questions that I think we need to answer before any individual or org sets out to innovate.

1. Why are we innovating?- It is a most basic principle of design thinking that you design with the end in mind. We need to thoroughly explain to the church in North America WHY it needs to innovate. I have been serving in churches for 20 years and the majority of them are often clueless about the shifting ground under their feet. Give them a bit of data and rationale. You don’t need to overwhelm them, you do need to equip and educate about what is shifting.

2. Is God an Innovator?- This is a REALLY important theological question. What makes an innovator? Does God demonstrate those attributes beyond just the act of Creation? Folks need to develop a STOUT theological framework for innovation. If the orgs and programs we create are to reflect the life and movement into the world of the Christ, then we will need conceptual and scriptural grounding. And it will have to be way more than a wink, a nod, and a proof text.

3. Who are we innovating for?- Are we innovating for youth groups or churches themselves? The students within them? Are we innovating for those outside the church? Are we innovating with the least of these in mind? Are we innovating with a lens toward racial biases? It seems highly likely to me that innovation will simply conform to the regular pattern of the church’s neglect of those outside its boundaries. So, we had better think that through. We don’t want to end up simply with a new kind of more functional church or youth group that is growing/producing the wrong things!

4. What is required for innovation?- This is a critical question as well that has individual, communal, and institutional dynamics. We need to recognize that while anyone CAN innovate, innovation often springs out of practices, experiences, and ecologies fueled by the Spirit of God. And like all GOOD things in God’s world it is going to cost something in terms of blood sweat and tears to pull it off. Have we counted the cost of doing this work?

5. Who is doing the innovation?- I have been struck on a number of occasions about the degree to which innovation takes a secular humanistic point of view and assumes the best of human beings or human designed innovation processes. We have to ground all innovation in who God is rather than who we are. It is God who is innovating, not us. Period. End of story. (Philippians 2:13) To ground any creative or innovative activity in our activity is to court danger. Need I remind us that church leaders are reportedly more likely to be narcissistic than in other professions?!?! Need I remind us that most congregations have no thoughtful systems of accountability that intentionally limit power and authority?!? And do we need any reminding that American Christians tend to prefer powerful figures who are charismatic to restrained and wise ones?!?! Any process of innovation must involve safe guards and critical self-exploration at MULTIPLE levels.

6. What is the innovation process?- A number of the gatherings that I have attended have seemed to ground innovation in some assumptions that never get named. (Big thanks to my friend Andy Root for naming this for me at 4:30 this morning!) If we borrow an innovation process from say, Google, what assumptions does that process make about humans, the marketplace, the pace of transformation in human lives, and the God’s world itself? The key part about a process is that in terms of practical theology, it is our process that reveals more about what we actually believe about God than what we claim to believe. The process and programs we design are the most powerful testimonies to what we REALLY think God is like. What does our process say about God, our neighbor, and God’s world?

This is just a start. But, I think these are some critically important questions for Innovation.

A Flammable Ecology

There is no question that this Covid thing has been a beast. And it still is. But, even in the midst of that challenge I have been struck by the amazing ministry that is going on and how thankful I am that we have developed the ministries that we have. Our gym and landscape operations are still floating and a new online school partnership has begun. It’s incredible fruit in a time that sometimes has felt rotten.

This past week I was reading (again) the student ministry book, “The Godbearing Life” by Kenda Dean. In the 4th chapter she wades into the story of Moses and the burning bush as an image to describe us joining the Holy Spirit’s work in the lives of students. The idea is that we are and kind of flammable bush waiting to catch Holy fire as ministers and simultaneously we are a bit like Moses who needs to be on the lookout for students who are ready to catch fire. Kenda has a kind of hopeful and expectant lens when she approaches her gospel work. The Holy Spirit is always about to do something! Will we miss it!? She plays with this image over and over again. The bush, the fire, the one journeying through life. It’s one of the best youth ministry books that is out there.

At the end of the chapter she describes the church, the youth worker, the student’s family, and maybe a couple of other things as a kind of “flammable ecology” and it floored me when I read it. I have been trying to describe (for the last few years) what I see happening inside our ministries. Some students simply come to our church. Some simply come for a job. Some come for life skills or for drones. But, it’s when a student navigates several of the systems simultaneously that we seem to see the most gospel transformation. It’s often the student who showed up because a teacher made them, and then they decide they like one of the trainings, and then they need a job, and then they really enjoy their mentor, and then they go to the local college, and then they need help with a vehicle, and then they need affordable housing and a weight program. And then… And then…

It’s all of those things together that are what I call…the juice.

It’s when several symbiotic and interdependent ministries overlap that something combustible happens.

Kenda Dean’s term nails it. It’s a kind of flammable ecosystem in which a species of kid within the system often is forming symbiotic relationships with different elements of the network…and sometimes simultaneously. Adults are also shaped within this system as well though. We are training them in ministry (not well yet!) so that they can serve with excellence. And as they catch fire and grow many of them long to remain in the ecosystem for community or to help others take a similar journey. It’s a kind of interdependence or healthy symbiosis. Likewise the leadership of our different ministries have begun to cross-polinate in unexpected ways. Ideas are shared (practical and theological) and blended over time re-shaping the whole system. When we started this ministry we were all about the life skills and jobs. Now, those remain important, but we would say that human transformation is the overall goal. We know that happens through a variety of means in our emerging ecosystem.

I have been watching this happening for probably the last two years and couldn’t figure out how to name what I saw happening. It’s both theological and environmental. This appeals to me as a theologian pastor who was once both a history major and a forestry major. I have begun playing with ideas like mutualism, commenalism, parasitism, and predation as useful terms to describe what is happening in this ministry. The flammability that is here reminds me of a kind of Pyrophitic plants that require fire to germinate their seeds. Somehow, God seems to be working like that in ministry as well as ecologically. It’s a flammable ecology.