Some brief observations regarding Spirit-led Innovation . . .

Note: In this series you will note that  I mix the the language of "New Ministry Development" with "Ministry Redevelopment," because in the Episcopal Church, both are offered within Hospice Ward settings. (For more on that, you might read this post.)

 

 

Spirit-led innovation – what is it?

 

In my recent experiences I’ve determined that this is not just a concept borrowed from the business equivalent – “continuous process improvement” – in which you make a lot of little improvements in issues of liturgical style and taste, or maybe shared leadership. It is also not just “product or service innovation,” in which you create new offerings to attract new parishioners, but leave the existing ministry model in place. From what I’m learning from vital ministries around our church, “Spirit-led innovation” may include both of these, but at its best, involves tracking the work of the Spirit out in the world through uncharted territory.

 

I find it helpful to keep in mind that ministries can experiment with Spirit-led innovations without changing much of their present ministry, initially. However, in the Episcopal Church, because we come from such a staid culture (one that often prides itself in staidness) to follow the Spirit through change is to challenge the traditional misunderstanding of tradere.

 

To understand the scales of ministry innovation, envision a spectrum of safety traded for the sake of predictability. Put hymnal revisions and visitor welcome programs on the left end. Maybe put sermon seminars and public church in the middle. Put Spirit-led innovation on the right end. At the left end, changes are small, cheap and quick; results are fairly predictable. At the other end of this imaginary continuum, change can take an unknown amount of time and money, and then those initial innovations may not work, at least not initially. However, strategic innovations led by the Spirit (hopefully!!) offer greater potential for growth, especially the “nonlinear growth” that transforms ministries. Unfortunately, leaders with experience on this end of the continuum are sort of scarce in many of our religious institutions. I’ve been interviewing several here in our Episcopal Church and I’d like to offer the following observations.

 

Some observations regarding Spirit-led Innovation

1. In all vibrant ministries, the original vision or the original Idea is merely a starting place – a hunch. You’ve probably heard a Bishop announce that, from now on, things are going to be different in the Diocese of Utopia. She’s got a God-given Holy Spirit-inspired and world-changing idea.  She studies, plans and organizes (maybe even calls in a consultant) and then, almost imperceptibly shifts her focus away to other matters. Everything withers because she’s bought one of the great myths about innovation – that it is all about the great idea. It’s not – a great idea is only the start. Unsupported, even the best idea will die. For innovation to succeed, at least one Leader must protect the idea by generating funding, resources and support without a lot of managerial involvement, and by helping the Church or the Diocese learn quickly from the trial steps in developing the idea.

 

2. To lead Spirit-led innovation within established (or inherited) Church, it is imperative to remember that organizational memory springs from powerful sources. What are they? Songs, Rituals, Architecture, Vestments, Smells, Signage. If you would redeem them, recognize the challenges involved.

 

When you lead an Episcopalian ministry that looks unlike anything previously Episcopalian, expect an internal “auto-immune” response.[1] For many of our leaders in traditional settings, it is actually much safer to repeat the behaviors with which we are already comfortable and just put a fresh face on them. That isn’t Spirit-led innovation. When you commit yourself to following the Spirit, you cannot follow some prescribed process. Instead, we read and reread John 3 and ask, “Where is the Spirit blowing today? That’s what will shape us in this moment!”

 

You might consider trying on the following four questions as a way of getting at some new practices and the accompanying fresh awareness.

1.)    How do you smell the Spirit at work?

2.)    What are the principles by which you allow your encounters to shape the music and ritual offered to the gathered community?

3.)    What are the theological “starting places” for these principles and practices?

4.)    Are the “Fruits of the Spirit” enough evidence that it is God at work and not an overactive imagination?

 

Eventually, once it gains momentum, new ministries gather to themselves a fresh sense of identity, but from the beginning, the leaders are helped to recognize that they are called to the work of co-creating a new future. In fact, Otto Scharmer would assert that the new ministry’s primary responsibility is to allow the Spirit to birth the future that is longing to emerge.[2] To engage this process probably means shifting our focus slightly away from the way that the Episcopal Church has historically defined itself, its core competencies and even its ministry model. At the same time, this new ministry wants to “borrow” expertise from Inherited Church, and to design itself so that it is constantly learning. To consciously set Inherited Church habits aside, start fresh with new systems. Gather new people (creators, not implementation experts), organize them differently (a flatter structure, not a hierarchy), and breed an independent culture that is open to risk, and that emphasizes fresh experimentation and Holy learning. To maintain a balance between revering what was and focusing on what is emerging, you might consider exploring the practical and theoretical implications of what the Church of England refers to as the “Mixed Economy” approach to a “both and” way of offering ministry. You can learn more on that, here.

 

3. In our present context, starting new ministry with Diocesan support can make matters much easier or much harder. Usually it’s both.

 

4. Strategic experiments face critical unknowns. It has to be that way. The way through the Wilderness of Zin was a two week journey. It just took forty years for Israel to get comfortable with this point. They had to “relearn” the nature of God from their cultic roots.

 

Primary focus? Learning!

To survive, emphasize learning. Your greatest learning task is to address these unknowns through better predicting and functioning, even though an innovative ministry can’t use formal prediction tools or intuitive rules of thumb. Instead, you must learn through “trial-and-error” as you engage in repeated experiments. Make your experiments clear, repetitious and speedy (as soon after one another as possible, so they stay fresh in your memory). Determine what you think will happen. Plan, execute, measure your results.

 

5a. New ministries in new contexts are best if started with as few assumptions as possible.

 

5b. New ministries in existing settings are best when built from scratch, with new choices in staffing, structure, systems and culture.

 

Forget, Borrow and Learn

The three core challenges in establishing new ministry within the Episcopal Church are:

forgetting, borrowing and learning.

 

Forget: Try to purge the spirit of your ministry from the Institution’s anxiety and tendency toward self-preservation – forget about it. Diffuse it.

 

Borrow: Which “areas of expertise” does this new ministry need to borrow, and in what proportions? Where can you use predictions and where do you have to deal with uncertainty? How should you evaluate leadership performance in a project that requires risk or could even collapse? Institutional memory might lend you the core beliefs that let your new ministry react quickly to challenges, but if you don’t forget the old responses, you are doomed to fail. Borrowing Tangible and Intangible Resources only when they support the innovation. Do not borrow culture. Invent culture as needed. You want to forget Mother Church’s constraints and staid culture, but you also want to borrow resources from Her, as needed. This often creates tension, turf wars and divided loyalties. Such tensions accompany any new project, because as the new ministry succeeds, it may seem to consume Inherited Church’s resources and depict it as seemingly obsolete.

 

To lead redevelopment of an existing ministry in severe decline, gather a mix of experienced and inexperienced individuals for your core team. Set up new behavior models of mutual learning, especially in accountability and emerging relationships to authority. One tough challenge is deciding when the new ministry needs to show itself as self-sustaining. Balance that pressure by pointing out how many of our ministries in big buildings and downtown properties are reliant on diocesan subsidies and they offer no new learnings, whatsoever. Too often new ministries are held to arbitrary demands that they demonstrate sustainability, when, in reality, we need to expect them to require support at first (they are experimental, after all) and give them grace periods.

 

6. Managing tensions between the new and the old is “Job One” for the leadership of a ministry redevelopment.

 

7. “Competing interests, outside influence, internal competition and Diocesan politics are the enemies of community learning.”

 

8. Contract with Diocesan Leaders for an accountability around learning as well as results measured in attendance and pledging numbers.

 

9. Ministries find their connection to that which the Spirit is birthing via strategic

Innovation (Lots of intentional Trial and Error).

 

To innovate strategically, we seek not so much to do things differently, as much as to accurately track the birthing of the Spirit’s new life. We start with very different questions and hoped-for outcomes.

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[1] Social Autoimmunity is the failure of an organization to recognize its own constituent parts as “self” and necessary to the well-being of the whole, thereby blocking the potential healing and direction offered by its own “prophetic” leaders.

[2][2] You might explore Dr Scharmer’s approach by downloading Chapter 21 of his text, Theory U.