America’s Most Innovative Churches
In their own similar end-of-the-year post, Outreach magazine (spurred on by Tony Morgan) has released it’s list of 25 churches that are the most innovative in their ministry. I’m not going to list them, you can find it elsewhere. (Here’s a link).
But I’ve got a beef.
It seems that the same churches appear on every major end-of-the-year list, from the fastest growing to the most influential. I’d like to say something: just because you are the fastest growing or have much influence doesn’t mean you are the most innovative. It simply means that you’re the most innovative that people have heard about. Innovation in ministry is rarely seen, unless you are first growing fast (numerical status) or if you are already an influential church (celebrity status). Innovation doesn’t precede these statuses in our society, it seems to follow.
The whole thing seems backwards to me. The truly most innovative churches are more than likely churches we have yet to hear about, and very likely will never hear about. They simply spurn creativity and encourage jealousy among ministries, as well as contributing to the demise of localized, missional ministry. More on that in a separate post.
2 Comments
I agree – not being sour grapes our anything having served at one such church (NewSpring), but it seems shady to me that the list creator’s church came in at #2 and many of the top 10 are pastored by the ajudicators.
Also striking that the super-majority are boomer-seeker-style in methodology. Not a good representation.
I have to disagree with Jonathan’s “shady” comment. Where do you get a panel qualified to rank innovative churches without going to innovative churches? If the adjudicators DIDN’T include pastors of such churches, someone would be crying foul on that basis. Frankly, I hope each of these pastors listed their own church first. Otherwise, they have no business on the panel.
I wonder why we need to take issue with these lists. Why don’t we take issue with churches that AREN’T reaching people for Christ or growing good disciples. Better yet, why don’t we focus our energies on doing these things ourselves?
As far as the most innovative churches being the ones we never hear about, there is a degree of truth to this, but it’s a slippery slope. How effective is their innovation if they aren’t doing anything new enough to attract at least SOMEONE’s attention?