The Innovation Dilemma in the Church
Do ministries suffer from the innovator’s dilemma? Yes, they do. It is hard for us in leadership to see it, though, because often we are living inside the system that is suffering from it.
A problem we face as leaders is that the original mission is almost always overtaken by the way that mission is delivered. In 2005, the late Clayton Christensen wrote the book The Innovator’s Dilemma. He observed what happened inside businesses when they successfully developed a service or product and brought it to market. The dynamics hold true for ministries as well.
As a business has success with a new product, increased demand requires more organization. The delivery process is refined. There may be investment in the system that produces the service or product. People within the organization become convinced that their service or product – what they see as “The Best Way” – is the best or right solution to getting the mission done. Bureaucracy grows around its delivery and a self-perpetuating loop reinforces the value of The Best Way. New people join the team. Some are specialized and only participate in one aspect of the system that has developed. They do not have the perspectives of the whole, but they are very good at doing what they know how to do.
In the business world, the innovator’s dilemma reaches its peak when a new competitor enters the market. There is often an innovative improvement, and the incumbent organization, focused on delivering The Best Way, cannot adapt. They are experts at doing what they do best, not this new and novel solution. Their success has doomed them because they have become so good at what they do. The organizational culture affords no other means of delivery.
Do ministries suffer from the innovator’s dilemma? Yes, they do. It is hard for us in leadership to see it, though, because often we are living inside the system that is suffering from it. Another reason it is difficult to identify is that our competitors are different. We are competing against worldview and cultural change. We may have developed culturally relevant ministries, but rapid change has now made our Best Way, whatever it might be, irrelevant because the people it was designed to serve are growing old, the next generation is always different from the former generation, and culture has changed.
The classic example from business is Seagate, a company that once dominated the hard disk industry. As customers moved from larger drives to smaller ones, they squeezed more and more profit from the factories creating hard drives. They got really good at creating 5.25-inch hard drives. Then the industry shifted to smaller drives using different materials. Seagate could not innovate fast enough. Smaller players, not invested in the same production facilities, took over and Seagate faded.
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The Book Jesus Loved Most
When people who love the Bible and love Christ are shown how to see Christ from the beginning to the end of the Bible, their joy explodes. Seeing the beauty, sufficiency, and necessity of Jesus Christ from every part of the Bible — including from the Old Testament — has the power to truly, deeply, and eternally change our lives.
Sunday school has marked me since my childhood — literally. I have a scar on the top of my right hand from being burned by the popcorn popper when I was about 3 years old. Sunday school has left much deeper impressions, however, in my heart and soul and in the way I have read and understood the Bible for most of my life — especially in terms of how I have read and understood the Old Testament.
For most of my life, I saw the Old Testament primarily as a series of disconnected stories about people showing how (or how not) to live the life of faith. I knew that the Old Testament spoke of Christ, but in my mind, that was limited to the prophecies about the coming of the Messiah.
I did not see that all of the Old Testament prepares us to understand who Jesus is and what he would do. I didn’t understand that from Genesis 3:15 onward, we’re meant to trace the woman’s line to the promised offspring — the descendent of Abraham, the son of David — who would deal with the curse and the serpent for good. I was in my forties when I began to understand that the Bible is one story of God’s redemption through Christ.
When I began to understand that the Old Testament can be understood only in light of Christ, a new world opened. I determined that I needed to go back to kindergarten in terms of understanding the Bible’s story. I bought several books on the topic, including one that revolutionized my Old Testament reading.
Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament
I got no further than the introduction of Christopher Wright’s Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament when I read a passage that blew my mind. Speaking about Jesus’s connection to the Old Testament, he writes,
These are the words he read, the stories he knew. These were the songs he sang. These were the depths of wisdom and revelation and prophecy that shaped his whole view of life, the universe and everything. This is where he found his insights into the mind of his Father God. Above all, this is where he found the shape of his own identity and the goal of his own mission. (11)
This paragraph caused me to think about the humanity of Jesus more deeply. It challenged me to read the Old Testament differently. And it sent me on a mission.
Humanity of Jesus
Though Jesus is fully human and fully God, the deity of Jesus has been easier for me to grasp than his humanity. This passage caused me to stop and give more thought to what it must mean that Jesus “increased in wisdom and stature” (Luke 2:52). Jesus grew in his own understanding of who he was, what his life was all about, and even what his death and resurrection would mean from meditating on the Old Testament Scriptures.
Jesus, typical of Jewish boys of his time, learned from hearing the Old Testament scrolls read in the synagogue.
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We Need Gospel Clarity
A life that seems to have no interest in Christ and his church nor pays any heed to his commands is not a living, active faith promoted from within by the Holy Spirit. It is a non-existent faith. It is belief that some words you said years ago is good enough to deal with your sin once and for all and to secure a place in Heaven for you. I’m afraid that isn’t a teaching you will find anywhere in the Bible. Apart from ongoing, active faith in Christ there is no salvation and telling people otherwise is not loving them, it is actively encouraging them on their way to a lost eternity.
I have lost count of the number of times I have heard a story approximating the following. Somebody has grown up going to church, hearing the gospel and made a profession of faith or prayed the sinners prayer. They apparently go on with the Lord for a bit until, eventually, drifting away from the church and Christ. If pressed, they might still say they believe, but there is absolutely nothing about their lifestyle that gives any indication that this is any more than mere words. For many, there isn’t even a claim to love Jesus.
This sort of story does the rounds and few Christians wouldn’t be able to tell you of one they know about. But I have also noticed, with troubling frequency, how many people under those circumstances still want to insist that person is a believer and belongs to the Lord. There is no sign of fruit, no evidence of belief and often no understanding of the gospel. But nonetheless, we still hear that the Lord still has them, for some reason. This concerns me deeply for two reasons.
First, it doesn’t do anything to help those people come to Christ. If we continue to affirm that somebody is a believer who has clearly departed from the faith, we are doing nothing other than comfort that person all the way to perdition. In all honesty, I cannot wrap my head around why you would want that for your family and friends. Why would you want them to go on in the false belief that they’re alright as they are by telling them the profession they made years before – despite every evidence to the contrary that it ultimately wasn’t genuine – are somehow still believers?
If we claim to love our family and friends, we surely can’t be content with affirming them in beliefs that are actively damaging to them. They don’t need our reassurance that they’re safe in the Lord; they need the gospel. They need to hear that they aren’t okay and, if they carry on as they are, they will remain outside of Christ and face all the disastrous consequences of being so. To comfort somebody as a believer, to affirm faith that clearly doesn’t exist, does them no favour at all. It is actually damaging the very people we claim to love.
I have heard similar things said to comfort believing parents regarding their unbelieving children. But again, it might feel nice to tell people that the Lord still has their children, but we don’t actually help them or their children by pretending it is so. Instead, helping people see the reality of the situation – that without ongoing, active faith in Christ there is no salvation and that is effected by the Holy Spirit, who is obviously absent in the heart of someone who has no concern for holiness – means they can continue to hold out the gospel clearly to those who need to hear it.
I appreciate with family and friends it is not always the easiest thing to do. Especially if the gospel is considered to be something we have heard hundreds of times before and have no interest in it.
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2 Things You Need to Know about the Exclusivity of Christ
Written by Derek J. Brown |
Thursday, April 28, 2022
There are no restrictions based on a person’s economic status, religious background, relative morality, geographical location, or family circumstances, for all are called to come to Christ (Matt. 11:27-30; John 3:16; Rom. 3:22). There is only one place to find salvation (narrow in location) but all people are invited to come to Christ for salvation (broad in invitation).As you share the gospel with your friends, family members, classmates, and business colleagues, you may find that they tolerate much of your worldview until you press the point that Jesus is the one true Savior and the only one who can deliver them from eternal judgment and bring them into right relationship with God. In other words, your spiritual conversations may coast rather smoothly until you land on the exclusivity of Christ.
To speak of the exclusivity of Christ is just a way of saying, along with the apostles, that “There is no other name given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). It is simply an affirmation of Jesus’ own words when he spoke to his disciples in the upper room just before his execution: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). Here are two things you need to know about the exclusivity of Christ.
1. The exclusivity of Christ is narrow, but not in the way you may think it is.
People usually don’t take well to these claims because they believe they are far too narrow. And we would be dishonest if we didn’t agree that these claims are, in fact, narrow. Yet, the exclusivity of Christ is not narrow in the sense that it is offered only to those who meet certain conditions, like an elite members club.
In her article for CNN travel, “10 of the world’s most exclusive members clubs” Michelle Koh Morollo quotes Vincent Lai, a managing director of an elite concierge service: “Those who are invited fulfill certain requirements, they usually have economic capital but most importantly they carry a lot of social clout.” These certainly are exclusive clubs, and they are narrow in the sense that only a few select people in the world qualify for entrance.
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