Monday, January 22, 2007
On Innovation
Monday Morning Insight recently linked to Outreach magazines list of "America's Most Innovative Churches." It contains a list that I can only describe as "the usual suspects," and then I wondered if "innovation" is a trait for which the church wants to be known.
Is there room for "innovation" in the gospel itself? Lord, Lord, I hope not. I hope I need go no farther on this question.
Has the mission and ministry of the church changed? Again, I hope not, we were given that mission and ministry by Christ Himself upon His departure.
So, in what context is "innovation" even required? Well, certainly culture has changed and culture is the context for our presentation of the gospel. Therefore, it can be argued that our method of presentation of the age-old message, in fulfillment of that age-old mission requires innovation. But I think that limits the gospel to being just a message.
I've looked, but cannot find studies to verify this contention, so take it for what it's worth, but consider an analogy. I have no reason to doubt the claims of eHarmony.com to being the most successful Internet based match-making service - but the question is why? Is it because their sorting/matching system is better than others? I honestly doubt it. Let me explain why.
Marriage is not based on matching characteristics, it is based on hard work and genuine committment, born of love. Pretty much anyone that has survived the honeymoon knows this. In fact, most marriages my wife and I encounter that seem "good" somehow, are marriages of quite different people. We certainly are. Something other than "matching," I don't care how sophisticated, must be at play. My guess, it's the marketing.
eHarmony does not advertise for dating, they advertise for matchmaking. That means the people that are going to come to them are people that will be MOTIVATED previously to marriage, and serious about finding it - people willing to do the hard work and make the committment, not people looking for a fun way to spend the weekend. They are successful because their marketing "pre-selects" their clientele to provide that success.
All that nonsense about their questionaire, etc. is little more than the instrument they use to create that marketing, read "pre-selection." In other words, the real innovation in eHarmony is not the questionaire or computer systems they use, but the marketing.
So, when it comes to "innovation" in the church, one must ask where the real innovation is and if it too somehow pre-selects the clientele. Well, everybody knows the role marketing has played in church innovation in the last decade or so. I argue that all marketing is a matter of pre-selection, the question is simply which market segement is being selected.
So, what kind of clientele are all those innovative churches preselecting? People looking for transformation, or people looking for some sort of "church-lite"? If the former, wonderful, if the later, one must wonder seriously about the value of all that "innovation."
Related Tags: church, innovation, marketing, transformation
Is there room for "innovation" in the gospel itself? Lord, Lord, I hope not. I hope I need go no farther on this question.
Has the mission and ministry of the church changed? Again, I hope not, we were given that mission and ministry by Christ Himself upon His departure.
So, in what context is "innovation" even required? Well, certainly culture has changed and culture is the context for our presentation of the gospel. Therefore, it can be argued that our method of presentation of the age-old message, in fulfillment of that age-old mission requires innovation. But I think that limits the gospel to being just a message.
I've looked, but cannot find studies to verify this contention, so take it for what it's worth, but consider an analogy. I have no reason to doubt the claims of eHarmony.com to being the most successful Internet based match-making service - but the question is why? Is it because their sorting/matching system is better than others? I honestly doubt it. Let me explain why.
Marriage is not based on matching characteristics, it is based on hard work and genuine committment, born of love. Pretty much anyone that has survived the honeymoon knows this. In fact, most marriages my wife and I encounter that seem "good" somehow, are marriages of quite different people. We certainly are. Something other than "matching," I don't care how sophisticated, must be at play. My guess, it's the marketing.
eHarmony does not advertise for dating, they advertise for matchmaking. That means the people that are going to come to them are people that will be MOTIVATED previously to marriage, and serious about finding it - people willing to do the hard work and make the committment, not people looking for a fun way to spend the weekend. They are successful because their marketing "pre-selects" their clientele to provide that success.
All that nonsense about their questionaire, etc. is little more than the instrument they use to create that marketing, read "pre-selection." In other words, the real innovation in eHarmony is not the questionaire or computer systems they use, but the marketing.
So, when it comes to "innovation" in the church, one must ask where the real innovation is and if it too somehow pre-selects the clientele. Well, everybody knows the role marketing has played in church innovation in the last decade or so. I argue that all marketing is a matter of pre-selection, the question is simply which market segement is being selected.
So, what kind of clientele are all those innovative churches preselecting? People looking for transformation, or people looking for some sort of "church-lite"? If the former, wonderful, if the later, one must wonder seriously about the value of all that "innovation."
Related Tags: church, innovation, marketing, transformation
