I'm a pioneer at heart, a bit unique in that I genuinely love change. It's not just that I have a high tolerance for it. I seek change in the direction of restoration, growth, and wholeness. I seek it in my heart, my life, and my surroundings. I notice when things in my surroundings and my interior life aren't operating as designed, and I feel drawn into right-ordering them. In recent years, I've grown greatly in prudence and patience here, especially when it comes to seeing areas of opportunity in others (individuals and organizations).

All that being said, creating something new is a space I thrive in, as a means to an end, never an end in itself. When there's an opportunity to expand imagination and ask big, bold questions, whether to solve deep, complex problems or to realize the potential of something meaningful and new, that's where I want to be.

Innovation is a word that’s often misunderstood and overused, so I want to be specific about how I’m using it. God is theCreator, and He made us in His image to co-create with Him. A friend once pointed out that to be “inspired” is to draw infrom the spire, a picture of our imaginations connected to heaven, with God in us as the conduit. With this in mind, I see rightly ordered innovation not as change for change’s sake, but as an act of stewardship in and of itself: being faithful to the dreams God has sparked in us, and to what flows out of them, a missional imagination expressed in love.

I believe that at this moment in history, the Church is being invited into radical innovation, the "let's have freedom to re-work big things" kind: in how we relate to each other (as individuals, churches, and organizations), how we operate, how we organize our ministry efforts, and how we serve. I see this as an opportunity to bring something new, often with aspects of a return to something ancient and beautiful, contextualized for this moment. So much of what has served us well in the recent past is being challenged as the world changes around us and culture presses up against us.

There's a gap between what the Church is called to be and what we're actually seeing. She's struggling to thrive in this cultural moment. We see it around us, and researchers like Barna and Pew have documented it from many angles. I don't need to unpack it all here. One example might suffice. Imagine someone who is searching, or in real need (carrying hurt from a past experience with the Church, or navigating recovery from addiction), walking into one of our churches this Sunday. How many of us truly believe they’d be received well, taken in, loved properly, and met with mercy instead of judgement? I think that kind of welcome is rarer than we’d hope. If we keep doing business as usual, things will stay the same; in fact, they'll likely get worse. Look around: are people getting better at relating to one another? Better at being present? What we're doing just isn't working as well as it used to.

This calls for us to try something new, to stop repeating ourselves and hoping for a different result. In this moment, prudence and discernment in our innovation are crucial. So many of the choices being made around us are less and less discerned, driven by group-think and compulsion. Yet that doesn't downplay the need to step back and re-think why we do what we do, while honouring tradition and those who've gone before us. It's a knife's edge to walk, and it's challenging, especially when we're trying to run our churches and organizations, putting out a thousand fires every week, while still finding space to offer loving, intentional presence to those we serve.

So what’s the opportunity for “new”? It isn’t simply polished programs, sophisticated digital solutions, or refined content, although those may end up being necessary ingredients. The kind of innovation that I’m talking about is in relation to how we love, how we help the Church become more accessible, more relational, and more loving.

Practically, that might look like someone who brings hard questions being met with compassionate curiosity instead of a scripted response, or the person going through a divorce finding someone willing to walk with them for the long haul, or people being helped to discover the fullness of their gifts instead of simply being slotted into whatever pre-existing need we might already have. It means taking a deep look at our way of being as followers of Christ, at our ways of relating, and making more space to take in our neighbour.

It isn't a problem that the Church doesn't always know how to innovate. The Church is good at stewarding day-to-day ministry, and she's meant to be solid, trusted, and stable, like settlers are. It's understandable that she isn't typically known for stewarding innovation well, that's just not what settlers are built to do. However, in times of change, when new ground needs to be broken, the world needs pioneers: people who can be trusted to take risks, and to steward resources well as they venture into the unknown.