BLOG 3/1/15. WHAT COULD STEVE JOBS TEACH THE CHURCH?
I’m not proud. I don’t mind learning lessons from such an irascible (often disgusting) genius as Steve Jobs. After all, he, against all advice and odds, put together a whole new world of information technology, design, and marketing that makes it (according to today’s business reports) the wealthiest company in the world. Here’s his principle that I want to focus on here: Jobs felt that about every ten years his company should re-invent itself. It needed to rethink its mission, and the market, and all of the pieces of culture coming around the corner, and so form the company to effectively be there before anyone else. His accurate evaluation was that a company does something successfully, and then settles down to enjoy its accomplishments, and becomes content in being what it is, rather than looking for the next challenge, and so it loses its edge. He did not want Apple to be one more computer company among many. He wanted it to be the very best, operating way out in front. Very few understood him, and he had to terminate reluctant staff who didn’t have his passion for innovation and design. Wow! Turn the page.
What about the church? Does it need to periodically reinvent itself, and remember again what it is that Jesus had in mind for those people he ‘called out’ (the word: church actually means a people called out for a purpose) to be agents of his New Creation. Reading the biography of Jobs alerted me to all kinds of things, and it slammed me with full force when I read a major news report this week that “fewer people are attending church” than in previous days. Sound innocent? It’s not only not innocent, it is totally mindless. Since when did Jesus ever call a people to attend a place? When did Jesus ever summon a people to be the passive consumers of institutional religion, and ‘churchy’ activities? The answer: Never!
Now, I can’t mimic Steve Jobs, who had a very colorful and vile tongue when he thought some proposal was crappy—but it might help get the attention of huge segment of the church who want a secure and permanent sanctuary, and predictable church activities, so that they can experience some nebulous sense of spirituality, without any responsibility for the mission for which Jesus came, taught, suffered, died, and rose again. His Great Commission doesn’t say: “Go into all the world and create religious places and then invite people to attend them.”
Rather, he says: “As the Father has sent me, even so do I send you.” Our calling by Christ, his calling to every one of us is to mission. God know this about us, he knows that we resist long-term obedience. He commanded Israel to observe those periodic disciplines of remembering who they were, and from where they had come, and to be continually reforming themselves to accomplish these costly ends. There was the sabbatical year (every seventh year) and the jubilee year (every 50th year), when they would essentially reinvent themselves, and remember what it was that God had called them to be and to do in the world. But they conveniently reinterpreted this and created easier substitutes.
Look around you. Look at comfortable church institutions that have long since ceased (if they ever did) equipping men and women for their mission into the (often very demanding) disciplines of 24/7 life, … or for their role as the demonstrations of the radical demands of the gospel of Christ, and the willingness to lose our lives in the process. What is the solution for such misunderstood or misdirected or forgetful churches? Would your congregation, or Christian community, be up to the rigors of reinventing itself, and re-covenanting to accomplish the mission of Christ every ten years? Or, maybe to observe a Jubilee year and divest itself of all of its sanctuaries and prestigious accouterments, and begin again as those who are passionate about obedience to the teachings of Christ? I can tell you one thing: You would lose a whole lot of ‘hangers-on’ and religious folk along for the ride. You would p— a lot of people off. But you might have integrity again. You might become a highly fruitful colony of Christ’s people again. Thanks, Steve!
