Today, it’s not only Fortune 500 companies that have to innovate and adapt; churches do too. Are we in the vanguard or the old guard??
Since 1990, the # of people claiming to be “atheist” or “agnostic” has quadrupled in the US.
The Christian “brand” has taken a beating. Most youth are neutral in their opinion of Christians, but with those who have an opinion, it is two-to-one negative and 16-1 when the question is asked about evangelicals.
Just mentioned Thom and Sam Rainer. Woot.
Around the world, 90% of people believe is some spiritual figure (God). 82% of young non-believers have been to church at least once and many have attended for at least 3 months, but most who “convert” leave the church in 12 weeks (I think I heard that right).
In too many cases church has been a weekly convocation for the converted and the content.
Should Christians be wringing our hands over the secularization of society or thankful that we are no longer living in a “pretend Christian” society? Our time allows us to build a case for Christ that is based more on the fruit of the Spirit rather than apologetics.
Prisoners of prescedent locked in a jail run by the custodians of
The pace of change has gone hypercritical.
I cannot keep up. Try to get the DVD if you can.
The world is becoming more turbulent faster than most organizations are becoming resilient. Most organizations wind up shackled to a particular model and when the model atrophies, so does the organization.
When an organization misses the future, it is not usually because the future is unknowable, but because it is unpalatable.
We must consider every belief about church function and church practice to be open to debate and change. Let’s be ready for the future.
In turbulent
Listen to your dissidents, to your bomb throwers. Learn from the deviants, from the outliers. Listen to the fringe dwellers. Invite unbelievers to church, ask them how it feels and then share the info with the congregation.
“The future has already happened, but it is unevenly distributed.” William Gibson
Make change seem more exciting than standing pat. Innovation always follows power loss.
Acorns are a search strategy for fertile soil. We need to search MANY strategies. We don’t search enough to we must hope for a big acorn to growth.
The longer you are in the trenches, the easier you mistake the edge of your rut for the horizon.
We should be as unconventional as God needs us to be to accomplish His work.
In a world of accelerating change, it is dangerous to give the leadership to a few people. The organization gets stuck with their own change preferences. Hard to challenge the entrenched beliefs of the entrenched leadership.
Should we build superhuman leaders or great organizations led by people who are not superhuman?
Leaders now should seek to mobilize, connect and support.
Our organization were never meant to be flexible they were meant to create human robots.
Millennials have a hard time finding Jesus in the long shadow of organized religion.
