In 1975, Steve Sasson invented the first digital camera.
Steve was an engineer at Kodak, who at the time were the leading global brand in the manufacture and sale of camera film, along with all the associated chemicals and paper required to produce physical prints from those camera films. So dominant were they in the field of photography that popular culture referred to occasions suitable for a photograph as, ‘Kodak moments’.
So all this meant that the company was well-positioned to capitalize on this disruptive but potentially transformative innovation of digital photography. But Steve found that management’s reaction to film-less photography was, ‘That’s cute – but don’t tell anyone about it.’
Kodak management were so wedded to their inherited practices and ways of doing things that they had lost the willingness to think creatively and flexibly about change.
As the church faces a huge year of transition, with the gradual thawing of Covid restrictions and our emergence into a new normal, we need to have the humility that a lot of our personal preferences and sacred cows may have to be laid aside in order to fulfill our primary commission: going and making disciples for Jesus.
In particular, our over-emphasis on Sunday services as the answer to most things (and the absorber of 70-80% of energy and resources in most churches) is increasingly ineffective to our calling to reach the lost. Instead, we need to rediscover the power of mid-sized groups on a common mission to a specific neighborhood or network of relationships. In a post-Covid world, where gathered forms of church will in many places have lost even more momentum, we need to be willing to explore these missional forms of church.
In this video Alex shares 3 key lessons for the church from the failure of Kodak to embrace digital photography:
- Have a mindset that is open to change
- Adapt to the changing world around you
- Focus on the right things
Next Steps
- How open are you and your church to thinking more outside of the box for mission?
- What will it take to reach your wider context? Is your church willing to pay the price to do so?
- How can you make missional disciple-making more central in your life?
Equipping for Mission Coaching Cohort
You are invited to be part of a small group of like-minded leaders who are determined to consistently live on mission and equip others to do the same.
Over a 12 month process we will pour into you a custom mix of theological, philosophical, and practical training. The focus throughout will be on building a robust missional mindset alongside personal experience of everyday missionary practices.
You will develop your own back-catalog of stories and experiences, so that you can better train and equip others in these vital skills and practices.
CLICK HERE to find out more about this exceptional year-long dynamic training process, which begins in April.
Great podcast Alex!
It would be awesome to do a follow up to this walking through church history, especially recent history, to show where the church has already changed over its history. Sometimes people get focused on their current form as the only form the church has ever had that they don’t even realize that they have embraced a “adapted” form to begin with and, in turn, won’t embrace the idea of a need to continually adapt.
That would be a fascinating conversation Nick! I think generally we as humans combine short memories with a universalizing approach, which results in a view that what we personally do today is the default norm for every church across history and geography. In effect we’re saying, ‘If you really listen to Jesus, you’ll do things like we do!’ Regarding forms of church life, I did write a little about the early church’s use of oikos – extended household – gatherings in my book Discipleship That Fits. Essentially for the first 300 years of Christianity, when for most of that time the church was on the persecuted margins of society, they never met in large public spaces, but instead in homes. Yet during that time they grew at 40% / decade for over 30 decades!