How to be a smart church innovator

Church leaders today have to be innovators. I’ve tried my share of innovation, but what I tried wasn’t always smart. Larry Osborne, senior pastor of North Coast Church in Vista, CA, recently posted some helpful innovation tips on his blog. 

Students who have taken the Rockbridge Seminary online course “Leading Change” will remember the change analysis assignment using the Nelson Change Formula, a tool used to predict the effectiveness level of an innovation. Remembering Osborne’s tips may make the formula even more useful. 

1. Whenever possible, innovate at the edge of the organization – or even outside the existing structures. 

Over time, our best innovations will often be so successful that they swallow up the old.  But the goal is to have past gains swept aside by the success of the new rather than tossed aside in anticipation of the new. The difference is critical in terms of organizational chaos and pain.

2. Make sure you have both Champions of the Future AND Protectors of the Past.

If your bias is innovation, you may need to identify someone within the organization who naturally wakes up worrying about the negative effects of any proposed changes. If your bias is for protecting the past, you’ll need to find a way to give someone in the organization the freedom or even the job of rocking the boat. That doesn’t mean you’ll do everything they suggest. It does mean they’ll have a place at the table and the opportunity to have their risky new ideas carefully considered rather than relegated to the nut pile.  

3. Remember, the startup phase ends the moment we’ve gathered critical mass and some raving fans who love what we’ve created. 

When we started a video worship venue called The Edge, it quickly grew to over a thousand each weekend. But with the speed of cultural change, it wasn’t long until what was once edgy no longer pushed the envelope to the same degree. Some of my team wanted to make wholesale changes to make sure The Edge stayed edgy. But doing so would have driven away six to seven hundred of those who loved it just the way it was. Our solution was a series of subtle changes to keep things moving along and the startup of a new edgier edge called LAST CALL. It allowed us to continue to innovate without losing all we’d worked so hard to gain.

4. Have an exit strategy. 

Serial innovators make their plans with a clear exit strategy in mind. They don’t burn the boats. They unlock the back door in case they or their idea have to make a quick exit. Sometimes it’s with the words they use. Think how much easier it is to shut down an experiment than a new initiative.

Osborne’s full blog posts:

Innovation’s Blind Spot: Protecting the Past as Important as Creating the Future?

Innovation’s Dirty Little Secret

10 dumb things smart Christians believe

Larry Osborne, senior pastor of multi-site North Coast Church in Vista, California, has written 10 Dumb Things Smart Christians Believe. Honestly, it’s a reality check on the working theology held by many of your church members.

Osborne calls them “spiritual urban legends” that smart people pass on without checking biblical facts. Because they misrepresent truth, they set Christians up for disappointment and disillusionment when God doesn’t respond as they expect. 

The Rockbridge Seminary online course “The Theology and Practice of Discipleship” includes a unit on “discipleship goals and tools.” I’m wondering if addressing these “dumb” beliefs ought to be added to the list of disipleship goals a ministry leader has for the church.

Here are the chapters with subtopics:

1. Faith Can Fix Anything 

John’s faith and Susan’s cancer – Why positive thinking can’t change anything – The big problem with faith in faith – How the English language mucks up everything – How faith sometimes makes things worse – One story you can bet the kids in Sunday school will never hear – The one thing faith can always fix  - What a geographical moron and a GPS have in common with a life of faith 

2. Forgiving Means Forgetting 

Four goofy ideas about forgiveness – The myth of a forgetful God – The two realms of forgiveness – Are justice and forgiveness mutually exclusive? – The  strange math of score keeping—why it is nearly always inaccurate – The power of a good mirror – Something for Calvinists and Arminians to fight about  - The prayer of Permission – Why you might want to take a sin walk—and how God will meet you there 

3. A Godly Home Guarantees Godly Kids 

Why Don and Sharon hate it when their friends pull out the pictures – Mike and Rhonda’s head-in-the-sand optimism – The one promise lots of parents count on that isn’t really a promise—and why it doesn’t say what most people think it says – How B. F. Skinner snuck into our churches – Mitch’s foolish pride – How Ten Rules for Raising Godly Kids became Three Suggestions for Surviving Parenthood – Why bad kids often make great adults 

4. God Has a Blueprint for My Life 

Why does the search for God’s will feel like an Easter egg hunt? – Why a blueprint is a bad metaphor for God’s will—and why a game plan is a great metaphor for God’s will – Is there a reason why the New Testament ignores the kind of decisions we typically stress over? – Why God doesn’t do consulting, and what happens when we think he does – How obedience makes everything (even some pretty lousy decisions) better 

5. Christians Shouldn’t Judge 

How to get your non-Christians friends to quote the Bible – Why “Do not judge” doesn’t mean what most people think it means – When and how the idea of tolerance changed from “You have the right to be wrong” into “Nobody is wrong” – Log-in-eye disease – Did God really forget to put some important stuff in the Bible? – Why it’s a bad idea to judge non-Christians by Christian standards – Are judgment and grace incompatible? 

6. Everything Happens for a Reason 

Nancy’s cancer  ¡ Happy talk and other stupid things people say – How Romans 8:28 became the most misunderstood and misquoted verse in the Bible – Two conditions most people don’t seem to notice – Are self-inflicted wounds God’s doing? – Why Murphy matters – Can a bad thing be a good thing? – Why we might want Jesus to wait a while before coming back – The power in a path called obedience 

7. Let Your Conscience Be Your Guide 

The one type of person I’ve never been able to help – The musings of a tax dodger -A Jiminy Cricket code of ethics—why so many people trust it and why that’s not a smart thing to do – How our conscience is more like a thermostat than a thermometer – Blind spots and bad software – What heart disease does to our conscience – The one thing everyone’s conscience does with unerring accuracy 

8. God Brings Good Luck 

Why I worry when someone angles to be last in line – Tim’s rather “unusual” choice of words – The high price of unrealistic and unfounded promises – Job’s wife and Asaph’s journal ¡ Eddie Haskell Christians—do they really think God is stupid? – Do we? – Why it’s never a good idea to judge a king’s banquet by the finger food – One cliché that’s not only wrong but flat-out absurd – Why an abundant life might not be so abundant 

9. A Valley Means a Wrong Turn               

Why my Dark Years had nothing to do with a wrong turn. – How extended valleys can make our friends’ advice nearly worthless – Three simple but profound fog-cutting questions – The kind of valley we never want to leave prematurely – Shortcuts we don’t want to take, even if they work – The day a bunch of guys with iron chariots proved to be stronger than a bunch of guys with God on their side – What to do when God says, “Get someone else to help you” 

10. Dead People Go to a Better Place 

How to start a mini riot – The truth about wicked Uncle Ernie – Funeral assurances and the frantic search for a nod-to-God – Blame Jesus – The myth behind the myth – A rather testy e-mail – How and when did obedience become an extra-credit assignment? – Why Mickey Cohen couldn’t be a Christian gangster – The big difference between struggling and setting up camp – The one tell-tale sign of whether or not we love God

Read more from Larry Osborne’s blog