Ideas & Problem Solving Stagnation
David Brooks, one of my favorites over at the New York Times, has an interesting look at the idea and problem solving stagnation of our time. It’s the problem with culture and Christianity right now. We are trying to use the same thinking that created problems to problem solve. For the new church start movement in my denomination that means you cannot grow our brand, if that is the goal, by embracing a pentecostalism that enjoys the freedom, but cannot embrace or practice a theology of inclusion. The same is true for those that authored the rewrite of the order of ministry. Making it easier to becomes “ordained” without accredited education so small congregations can afford a minister or to “legitimize” ethnic minorities whose culture does not value an educated minister will not solve the problem of shrinking membership, finances, or lost respect in the community. What is will do is help our brand blend in. What it will do is ensure recreating the wheel and having old fights long settled return for another round of fighting. Regression does not equal wholeness nor does downsizing or defunding the very uniqueness, education and inclusion, that helped draw persons to our brand of Christian witness in the first place. Have we decided as a denomination that the best days are behind us?
Where Are the Jobs?
by David Brooks | The New York Times | Oct. 6, 2011The roots of great innovation are never just in the technology itself. They are always in the wider historical context. They require new ways of seeing. As Einstein put it, “The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.”