5 Things Team GB could teach Church UK -part 3

The importance of Innovation

There is no doubt that one reason Team GB has done so well is that great quantities of money has been poured into British sport.
Money alone though does not guarantee success,but it does pay for both great technology to aid performance and even more importantly for great coaches who use innovative method that improve training and the performance of talented athletes
Despite the popularity of Fresh Expressions I still hear (though less than I used to ,thank goodness) the last 8 words of a dying church " we have never done it that way before"
Society is changing rapidly.we are now in a post christendom era.

I know the Good News of Jesus does not change but the way we communicate that truth has to change
Regular readers of this blog know that I think Alan Hirsch,Mike Frost Reggie McNeal and the other proponents of the missional movement, have some really important, and thoroughly biblical, things to say about the ways we might change but before we even get to that point there needs to be a willingness to try new ways ( or as Hirsch would put it "The Forgotten Ways") I sense we are getting there slowly. I knew a church once where the average age of those who attended was getting higher and higher. Numbers were dropping rapidly and it became obvious, even to those most reluctant to change, that it was" a change now or die moment." That church eventually did embrace change and over time flourished.

Perhaps we are at a similiar moment in the life of ChurchUK?                                                                        

One final word on the olympics and the lessons we could learn.Everyone enetering the stadium was welcomed and made to feel at home.People were always on hand to answer questions and to make people feel at ease,that this was their games Perhaps  the church in the UK  could learn from that too!