Who Are You Listening To?

After being in seminary for way too long (on and off for a decade!), my favorite reading these days usually comes from somewhere in the “real” world – local and national newspapers, magazines (the good, the bad, and the shameless…Do you know what Brittney did this weekend?!), books from my monthly book group, titles on the best seller list, and recommendations from my wonderfully creaky neighborhood bookstore. I do occasionally pick up the latest missional church book or a recommended read by a trusted colleague, but mostly I stir clear of anything that smells like it’s “inside the church box.” So, yesterday found me reading the cover story from this month’s Fast Company magazine, a piece by Clive Thompson entitled “Motorhead Messiah.”

I will save you all of the crazy engine details from the article. Let’s just say, this guy is putting in juiced-up, environmentally-friendly, biodiesel and electric engines in some of the biggest gas hogs on the road. Can you say mean and green…Hummer!?! This guy is doing things the folks in Detroit say are impossible. So much so that, when Goodwin had his Hummer parked overnight at a hotel in Denver, he woke up the next morning to about 20 awe-struck guys standing around his car. Anderson says:

“As it turned out, they were engineers for GM, the Hummer’s manufacturer. They noticed that Goodwin’s H2 looked modified. ‘Does it have a diesel engine in it?’

‘Yeah,’ he said.

‘No way,’ they replied.

He opened the hood, ‘and they’re just all in and out and around the valves and checking it out,’ he says….
One engineer turned and said, ‘GM said this wouldn’t work.’

‘Well,’ Goodwin replied, ‘here it is.’

If you’re in any sort of renewal work, this probably sounds way too familiar: That’ll never work. We’ve never done it that way. Change that? I don’t think so. No one will ever go for it. Where are we going to get the money for that big idea? I could go on and on. But, here’s the deal. GM is actually listening. I don’t expect things will change as quickly as Goodwin would like, but he has the ear of the people who can really make a difference.

Which begs the question: Who are you listening to?

Anderson reminds us,

“America’s most revolutionary innovations, it has long been said, sprang from the ramshackle dens of amateurs. Thomas Edison was a home-schooled dropout who got his start tinkering with battery parts; Chester Carlson invented the photocopier in his cramped Long Island kitchen…As the theory goes, only those outside big industries can truly reinvent them.”

The truth is that organizations today – including way too many of our churches – are full of people like those folks in Detroit, standing around looking at each other, doing the same things year after year and expecting different results, hoping this will be the year we have more people in our pews, more money in the offering plate. And maybe, just maybe, we need to be listening to those beyond our walls.

If you’re feeling “stuck,” maybe it’s time to start conversations with people who look at things differently than you do, people who seem to you to have a strange perspective, people for whom new ideas are not so scary or insurmountable. Maybe it’s time to listen to what’s happening in your community, to intentionally meet people beyond your church walls, to be on the lookout for a new word from God, spoken to you through somebody you meet at the grocery store or something you experience at the movie theater. One of the most important things that happened, during a congregational renewal effort I was part of, was that people (not just the pastor!) got out there and started knocking on doors. We weren’t trying to “sell” people anything. We were just out there getting to know our neighbors and listening to what they had to say. It changed everything. It changed us.

Here’s a thought for the day: Your “motorhead messiah” might be just one introduction away.

- Tana Kjos

Comments

[Dan]

After a great deal of thought on this bot Pro and Con...
I would suggest that you explore more of the reasons behind the comment's about why the engine could not be made, as they parallel in many way's why many established church efforts at revitalization do not work well. It is not a case that it CAN NOT be done, but based on the past and the accumulated debt (of all types) many times it will not be accomplished in the time needed, irregardless of the brilliance of the one who starts it.

Dan