Innovate for Purpose

It doesn’t really matter how you feel about technology and innovation. It’s coming regardless of our opinion. But that doesn’t mean we should adopt every change that happens into our ministries. In fact, those that find themselves on the bleeding edge of adoption tend to spend a lot of money and time on things that ultimately don’t stick long term.

I’ve been through my fair share of battles around adopting specific innovation tools and I’ve learned that none of them are critical right out of the gate. The example of the race of our faith being a marathon versus a sprint is very important here.

Now, there isn’t anything wrong with integrating innovation quickly into your ministry, but there is something wrong with the communications leader (or any leader for that matter) sewing division over it. Regardless of where you stand on whatever the latest innovation is, it’s adoption needs to be filtered through the mission of the church. 

This is one of the areas where I see a lot of leadership opportunities for church communications leaders. Many innovations have the potential to be good or bad depending on how we understand them. I wrote Hashtag Wisdom in 2013 for this reason. I wanted to address the behavior that one could choose to exhibit on social media. You can represent Christ in that space if you choose to. You can also choose to sew division and hatred. The choice is yours. This is true with every innovation.

As the communications leader in your church, you have the opportunity to help your pastoral leadership see where culture is driving in these areas. Ultimately it’s up to your leadership to decide how to lead the congregation through whatever comes, but you have an opportunity to help shed light on how innovation can be used for kingdom work. The way you do that is by connecting the dots between innovation and purpose.

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