Innovation
The ADD Generation
When assessing the idea of innovation in our churches, it is of great importance to have an understanding of a key element in today’s generation. This element is known as A.D.D. That’s right, the generation we want to reach suffers poor concentration with a very short attention span. Now please keep in mind that I write of this idea while living in this generation myself.
I wonder how many pretzels I ate tonight… Oops, sorry.
This idea is essential to comprehend before indulging yourself in the rest of this book. The major reason behind innovation in the church is taken from this idea.
Think about it. The junior high and high schoolers of our generation wake up five days a week to go to a school consisting usually of six classes, each measuring approximately an hour long. From one tedious class to the next they are given large amounts of information (often times in lecture form) that will stick with them until their next class starts (if even that). These students do this for seven years and leave high school not even able to remember the names of the 50 states of America.
And yet, can we blame them?
You see, the problem here does not lie completely with the students. Sometimes it lies with the teachers. Take a moment to reminisce about favorite teacher and all the great slow motion moments you had in their class. Now why were they your favorite teacher?
Because they gave the most boring lectures ever?
Because their monotone voice could soothe you to sleep like no other?
Oh wait! I know!
Because they could somehow speak for an hour straight without stopping!
Chances are that the teacher who sticks in your mind the most had a different way of teaching. They were innovative, creative and had passion behind their teachings.
I remember one of my favorite teachers…
*Jamin looks to the sky to reminisce as the screen turns black and white and blurs into past memories.*
His name was Mr. Zainea. The truth is that I had a hard time getting good grades in his class, but to me it did not matter. I learned ten times more in his class that I did in most of my others. Why? Because he cared! He was passionate about what he did and because of that he showed interest in his students. He showed us that he wasn’t in the teaching business for money (not that teaching really gets anyone anywhere financially) but that he was in it for us.
It seemed like every day he had something new and creative to do to get his point across. Whether it was showing a clip from the Simpsons, taping quarters to the bottom of his shoes and attempting to tap dance on desks, singing a song with his guitar or playing his trumpet, he was always looking for new ideas to keep our attention.
In other classes I would have to struggle to stay awake or find my own creative way to learn. I remember having a hard time paying attention in geometry so I would turn the notes I took into full blown comics. My superhero “Math Man” would return again and again to beat off trapezoids, skateboard across angles and explain how proofs worked. But I could only entertain myself with the idea for so long and soon returned to listening to the tedious lectures with the attention span of a child waiting to open his Christmas presents (It seriously took me about ten minutes to figure out how to end that sentence).
*We now blur back to color and reality*
The truth is, if you want people to come out of a message or lecture having learned something, you better have some form of innovation, creativity or entertainment incorporated in your teachings. The world is constantly trying to catch people’s attention and typically education is not the avenue that attention is grasped through. And a lot of times when you know you are about to be taught something, you pull out your pillow and drool away. In fact we are so used to pulling out our pillows that we are completely caught off guard when a speaker walks on stage to talk and catches everyone’s attention with a joke.
A perfect example of keeping people’s attention in a message would be my dad. Being the children pastor he is, he has accustomed himself to teaching with different forms of entertainment. Whether it would be having comedic conversations with his puppets, singing some crazy songs, or telling stories, Dad is always ready to teach through entertainment. And it works! And the cool thing is that it works for more than just children. I tell you, I have never seen so many old people laughing at some of things he does.
Every once in awhile Dad will get the chance to act out one of his stories to the entire congregation on a given Sunday. While his stories may have up to 10 different characters, he is the only actor which makes for quite an interesting show. I recall in one story he told he was acting out four different kids at once as well as a cat. From one character to the next he jumped around. Two of the boys were bullies and tossing a cat through the air to each other while a little girl (the cat’s owner) cried about it and yelled at her brother to make it stop. The whole church was cracking up and at the same time receiving the message that was being told through it. Again, people strive to be entertained and as a church we should be trying harder than anyone else to do so. After all, we have the most important message of all.
***
So now that we know what the problem is, why do we have such a hard time being innovative in church?
Well, one of the reasons is that it takes time. If we are going to add more to our church schedules then that means there has to be more planning, writing, and assessing. Our world is already hectic enough as it is so why would we want to add even more to our plate? And who’s going to work on these ideas? Are we going to have to hire a creative arts director?
All of these questions are very important to look at but none of them should not stop us from innovating because it is more than a want at this point in time.
It
is
a
necessity.
If you keep telling yourself “I’ll do it in the future,” then you might as well scrap the idea in general. It needs to start NOW. The church is declining quickly and if we want to attract new people to church as well as stop people from leaving, then it is a necessity that we are creative.
Another reason we are having a hard time being innovative is because we have become way to comfortable with tradition no matter how recent tradition is. At my church, “Cornerstone,” we went through a phase where all we had all this technology and up to date equipment to use and we somehow still created tradition. Every week we had the same set-up with the same amount of familiar songs and the same way of doing messages. We had all this other stuff to use and yet we were not using it to its full advantage.
What was once brand new and attractive had become old and routine. Something had to change if we were to get our messages across and engage people in worship. And as you might guess, that something was innovation.
