We were made to live in God’s continual presence, but after the Fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, that ideal relationship between God and man, and man and man, was lost.  Jesus came to restore that broken relationship between man and God and between man and man.  To do ministry today, is to continue Jesus ministry on earth by the power of the Holy Spirit.  What did Jesus come to do?  To restore relationships!  People are often initially drawn to a faith community because it offers programs or features that meet situational needs in their lives; however,studies reveal that if people do not form a significant relational connection
within the first six weeks, they drift away.  Some may stay for the sake ofthe children or for the duration of a crisis.  But then, if their deeper need for intimacy has not been met, they disappear. (Sellon Mary K. and Daniel P. Smith.  Practicing right relationships. Herndon, Virginia: The Alban Institute, 2005.) Our society worships self-sufficiency, independence, and put a high premium on a so called “self made “ individual.  This kind of individualism is a strategy of the devil.  He wants to isolate people and when he got this right he can begin to work with their minds.  Adults and children alike long for places where they can move beyond the surface, where they can safely share their hopes and fears, and where they can explore new aspects of themselves in relationship with others in a world they never dreamt possible.  Simply stated, people are dying for meaningful relationships.  Faith communities become a continuation of the busy, impersonalized lifestyle of the world at large.  There is no difference, and a polite “hi” and “bye” become the only form of interaction between the people involved.  This needs to change if we are to do ministry Jesus’ style.  Authentic relationship forming should become the main focus of our ministry if we want to make a difference in people’s lives.

Will we define innovation in economic terms, business terms, technological terms?
Are we innovating for its own sake or to advance the kingdom of God? simple answer is to advance the kingdom of God. but we should be slow in bringing this as our answer.
What is the cost of innovation? This should be considered in two ways, cost to NOT innovate and cost TO innovate. What will we lose and what will we gain?
How does the current wisdom on innovation pertain to the issues in the church, i.e. “that at least 50% of innovations fail to accomplish the goals or dreams that they were birthed with.”
What will we do with failure of our innovations?
Actually I see two issues in his questions, one is about innovation which implies planned or deliberate change or improvement to the “way we do church” or what it means to be a Christian in our time and in our place.
the second question is one of future. What will the future look like, and what will the future church look like?
they are similar questions but not the same. each can have impact on the other. i personally believe that the future question should proceed the innovation question. if we can see some of the future needs, pressures, trends we can then begin to look at what needs to change, or where we need to innovate in the church.

This is a complex question, are we talking about Mega churches, the mainline denomiational churches, alternative church groups and movements or all of these combined?  Assuming we are looking at the big picture here is my opinion. 

1.  Leadership:  I believe we are seeing the rise of leadership that is not derived from seminaries and christian universities.  Because many of the new church models are being constructed using principles of business with men holding little to no theological education whatsoever, we will see the continual errosion of doctrinal and theological driven ministry.  Ministry will continue to be pragmatically driven, commercial, with a de-emphasis on sound theological methodolgy. 

2.  because the leadership is not trained in philosophy and theology, they will not be up to the task to tackle the questions that are most relavent to the church.  (Not to mention the mistakes they are making) Mistakes of the past are bound to continue to be repeated and some of which will have major implications for the church and culture at large.  Many groups and people will be more susceptable to false doctrine, sexual immorality, lack of discipleship and geniune christian commitment.  Innovation will continue, but it will be a shallow hollow empy christianity with little accountability yeilding a church mired in sin.

3.  the obstacles are enormous.  many disappointed with the church will probably continue to search for deeper truth elsewhere.  others will turn to smaller churches away from the mega church.  the emergent church will probably fracture into its own unique denominations and set up its own traditions that will one day be attacked by a new younger generation, up on its own self importance.  Mainline denominations will continue to lose membership but will not fade completely.  Technical innovations will abound, but when people compare our writings to those historic writings of the church, they will wonder how such a technological advanced soceity could produce such ridiculously lame and spiritually anemic literature. 

4.  sure, its obvious that the church of today will be different than yesterdays church in observable ways.  So what if church services will be communicated through the internet, or thorugh multi-site locations, or if large plasma screen and a variety of music and art forms blar to a jaded congregation, sitting fat in their multi-plex theater seats?  so what if christian education means watching the latest hollywood movies and exegeting them as if they were scriptural truth?  The task ahead of us goes beyond futuristic guessing about what a church will look like.  rather we need to address the problems that this influx of technology, commercialism, and pragmatism is having on most church goers, who know nothing of church membership, corporal and spiritual community, theological truth, and the purity of the gospel.  That is before we completely lose our ability to think all together.

bleak?  perhaps, I purposefully left out many positivies, for now, I think it suffice to concentrate on the problems.  Solutions, yes, but you would have to pay me for that.

Omar, my apology for picking on your post, but I suppose you prove your own point when you state that commercialism is one of the problems facing the church today.  You require payment for your suggested solutions?  Hmmm.

[Are there key topics that Tony’s missing?]
Corporately no, Tony covered all the corporate strategies that are alive and flourishing in business.

[What do you want to know about the Church in the future?]
Doesn’t the Word provide for us the answers about “future” questions?  Not to worry.  Enough evil in today.  A wicked and adulterous generation seeks after a sign (includes predicting future events).

[How would you answer these questions?]
I think the future of the Church will see a delivering of Believers up to be killed for their witness of Christ, more than likely as being labelled fundamentalists (radical of course).  Not only abroad but in this country (the political lines are being forged today, as well as the vain worldly philosophies that have corrupted the mind).

I think the love of many will grow cold and many will grope to hear fables and ethical stories while they fall in love with themselves.

How far into the future do we look? Tony is working on a schedule of 20 years out. there is value in gazing into the future to see the basic trends of the world, society, and church. If we don’t look far enough ahead we may miss an important trend. However, the future is tricky.  We are really limited to short bits of information. I know that when I began leading a church, there were no computers in our office. They were the tools of a small part of the scientific community. Photo copiers weren’t often in the offices of small churches. There were no cell phones, no PDA’s etc, etc. We were improving the use of overhead transparencies, and enjoying electric typewriters.
In the church we weren’t thinking that everyone would be using cell phones in 30 years, computers, PDA, in house produced video, Power Point worship presentations etc. You get the point.
We could go through the sociological changes as well, but I think we can see the general direction of my thought. We were surprised and startled byt he changes that were occurring and continue to occurr in our world.
I think to innovate for the future we need to dream, and use the gifts of future studies, to get the broad outline, but for practical needs we must look to the very short range, and make any innovations on a time line that is more like a month to six months. We also need to be ready to change our innovations and even our old ways at a moments notice.

Hey Charlie,

I appreciate your wisdom throughout the years! I, too, believe that innovation must be somewhat synonomys with your dream or vision.

There are, however, two pitfalls at the both extremes of this paradigm.

1. We can so easily get caught up in our multiple tasks of today, day after day, that we lose our vision, or worse, we never develop a vision for the future.

2. On the other end of the paradigm, we can become so engaged with our vision for the future that we fail with our responsibilities of today. Often times, we cannot effectively manage our vision for tomorrow, coupled with our responsibilities of today.  The key word is “balance.”

Hey Gary,

I couldn’t agree with you more. I’ve long been a proponent of the fact that the narrower a church’s focus is, the more people they willl reach, in that small, yet defined demographic they are targeting. If a church cast a large net and tries to reach everyone, it will reach no one. Most churches (of all kinds...Traditional, Contemporary, Purpose Driven, Cell, Church plants, home churches, etc. ) are all uniquely shaped to reach different demorgaphics. If every church would target their unique demographic (i.e., the demographic that most make up the house holds within a five to ten mile radius of their church) which best represent their community, and stop trying to cast wide nets to reach everyone, there would be a revolution within the Kingdom of God.

Many years ago I set up a large pastoral care/counseling ministry in a local church. After ten years or so I received a call from a guy who told me he was writing a book on lay counseling and I was happy to hear it because so many Christians need it. When I asked him how long he had run such a center and he said, “Oh, I just finished seminary D. Min and wrote a dissertation on the topic but I have no personal experience.”

I said, “Good. You know more today than after you struggle for several years and discover most of your theories do not work.” This why we have so many thirty somethign experts nowadays. Elders who are really youngers and know everything before they are in ministry long enough to fail a few times.

Rich,

We are not really in disagreement, if indeed you were responding to my comment.

“Those means of sharing and communicating information were merely a thought, at best, 20 years ago.”

If we couldn’t imagine what 2006 would be like in 1986, why would we be able to imagine what 2026 will be like today? The internet and iPods are no more revolutionary for the Church than radio, TV, VCRs, or the laser printer.

I don’t think anybody said that things essentially stay the same year after year. What I was getting at is that current trends run their course and are replaced by something else...so projecting the future farther out than a few years is generally a useless exercise..

-Billy Cox

I see a need to demeganize the church in order to effective the upcoming generations.  Milenials are desparte for life changing communities and they are finding that life changing communities only happen in smaller group associations.  They are increasingly techy and gadgety in their communication.  Further, some argue, and I’m not sure they are wrong, zoning concerns and building costs will confine church size as well.  In fact, in So CA, small to medium sized churches are locked out of their communities since large demoninational supported churches own “church row”; independant churches are religated to industrial parks at the fringes of their communities and to the few High Schools that will permit them.  I suspect we are already seeing the need for relationship building outweighing the comforts of a full service church where you can have everything your way and I believe the smaller communities are where heart of the Gospel is best heard and understood.  But that is easy for me to say in my 3500 member church.

Perhaps your right Rich.  But I would add that both are necessary but not from every church.  For example, while I serve at a megachurch now, I recently came from a 70 member church suffering from megachurch envy.  They dreamed of having resources like the famous church down the street but would not compromise their intimacy priority by adopting a mission beyond themselves.  They unfortunately were not “and” but rather “neither.” “And” seems healthier only in the context of Rom 12 and 1 Cor 12 - where all are members of Christ’ body serving a unique function… some megachruch, some small and some inbetween… but all necessary with their unique faith building opportunities and unique faith building challenges.