Transformation Requires Disruption

This is the second in a series about the concept of Successful Innovation by adopting Disruptive Techniques.

We reference the book Innovators Guide to Growth: Putting Disruptive Innovation to Work published in 2008.

The work of Scott D. Anthony, Mark W. Johnson, Joseph V. Sinfield and Elizabeth J. Altman proposes three principles that characterize disruptive growth. They cite businesses that found a way to thrive when the trends and statistics were discouraging.

We think these theories point to the missing ingredient in the Church’s long and ineffective quest to transform. Here are the three principles which, if followed, lead to growth.

1. Serving “overshot customers” or totally new consumers
2. Noting that “good enough” can be great
3. Doing what the natural competitors consider unattractive or uninteresting

Let’s look at each of these as they might apply to the Church. We’ll use our own ministry as an example. Today we will look at Principle 1.

Serving “overshot customers” or totally new consumers

What does this mean in the world of Church? The study elaborates:

A truly disruptive strategy is unlikely to find success in a current market. Making that disruptive solution good enough for current customers often requires heavy investment to fix performance limitations. Those investments can snuff out the disruptive essence of the new solution. Furthermore, bringing the solution to established markets means following established approaches, which can blind companies to the new potential inherent in the disruptive model.

This is a description of the current situation facing thousands of mainline congregations today. The Church cannot transform without the support of the current membership. The Church frequently opts to discourage current members hoping for better luck and more influence with pews full of newby Christians. They are hoping that they will buy in, ask few questions and give money to support the way things are already being done. In so doing, they are wasting the investment they made when they nurtured and educated the existing members.

This is not insignificant. The current membership with knowledge of the church and its traditions is the most likely source of both sweat and financial equity. The Church is shooting itself in the foot (not to mention missing the point of Christianity) when it undervalues its current members.

The Church has its established approaches.

• Thick manuals on how to minister to churches in transition. (We’ve read them.)
• Book after book sitting on the shelves behind the pastor’s desk. (We read many of them.)
• Changes in constitutions to give the hierarchies powers to force their ministry ideas on congregations.

In all this effort to follow accepted or conventional ministry techniques, the Church is eroding their foundation and missing opportunities that are begging for unconventional attention.

The second part of the above quote is equally important: while we are following the conventions of church building we are blinding our eyes to new possibilities — new potential.

How the Redeemer/SEPA conflict validates this principle

The Redeemer situation illustrates this principle. Redeemer members were following the Disruptive Innovation techniques, serving a neighborhood which church analysts had determined was “overshot” and totally new populations. We had never heard the term at the time.

One of the few pastors who have openly addressed the Redeemer issue (retired, of course) justified the Synod Assembly vote with a point that was never raised in either the Synod’s presentation or Redeemer’s allotted few minutes.

“There are too many churches in East Falls anyway. What do we need with a church there?”

(Let’s forget for now that under Lutheran polity this isn’t his or the Assembly’s choice.)

This is not true, the people of East Falls are largely unchurched—not over-churched.

East Falls has

• a Roman Catholic Church
• a Presbyterian Church
• an Episcopal Church
• Redeemer with its locked doors but open hearts

The Roman Catholic Church is reeling from its own conflict with its hierarchy. The hierarchy, ever attentive to their own fiscal challenges, closed St. Bridget’s relatively successful school in an attempt to bolster the numbers at a school a couple of miles away that was failing despite the diocese’s investment in renovation. (Now both schools are closed. Great job, hierarchy!)

Five years ago, when SEPA’s attention turned to closing Redeemer, Falls Presbyterian Church had half the membership of Redeemer. Their denomination decided to support the congregation with a minister who has helped them make significant progress.

Five years ago, the Memorial Church of the Good Shepherd Episcopal Church was struggling, following the unexpected death of its pastor. They turned to then synod staff member, Claire Burkat. As a consultant, she determined that this congregation, located at the more affluent end of East Falls, with a location on a side street with no parking lot (a criticism she hurled at Redeemer) had ministry potential. While supporting the Episcopal congregation in East Falls, Bishop Burkat was soon plotting the downfall of the congregation in the same neighborhood that had supported her work for decades.

It should be noted that East Falls once had

• a Methodist Church, which failed when its location became locked in the crowded streets of an old neighborhood
• a Baptist Church, with similar challenges
• a Congregational Church that closed more than 30 years ago
• and a second Episcopal Church that did not survive a conflict with its bishop

There is a track record here of techniques that don’t work. Redeemer noticed and addressed its ministry challenges with them in mind.

So the neighborhood, in the analysis of church experts, was over-served but in reality it was “overshot,” a fertile field of “nonconsumers.” Prime ministry territory for Disruptive Innovation.

When the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Church in America decided that this was the next church they could turn to as a solution to their fiscal problems, Redeemer had already taken significant and promising ministry steps. We were able to forge a new direction in part because  SEPA Synod was following its guidelines of NOT HELPING churches they determined might die in TEN YEARS. An unbelievable philosophy that is documented.

Pastors were discouraged from serving here. In that void, the laity charted an unconventional but promising 2008 Redeemer Ministry Plan, which we are still following this plan today, with necessary adaptations, despite the fact that SEPA excludes us from church membership.

During the ten years that SEPA thought we were dying, Redeemer was reaching newcomers to the East Falls area—some with Lutheran roots, some without. They were different from Redeemer’s historic membership in that their roots were in East Africa as opposed to England, Scotland and Germany.

SEPA Synod and Bishop Burkat in particular looked at our membership list and criticized it. “A lot of these names look African.” She tried to remove our African members asking our pastor to take them with him to another congregation—choosing for them which church they should attend, something she would never dare try with white Lutherans. She never counted them — reporting to the Synod Assembly in 2009 that we had only 13 members. We had only 13 white members. We had 60 or more black members that SEPA refused to recognize. They were unconventional.

SEPA wanted to see a conventional ministry here, opting to follow the trend of three other denominations that failed following the same “tried and true” ministry strategies. Pastor Patricia Davenport made a presentation to East Falls Community Council last March, repeating “We want a Word and Sacrament church at that location.” Why they evicted the Word and Sacrament church that was there was not explained. Redeemer, if given half a chance, would be flourishing and paying the debts the Synod continues to fight over in court.

And we would be forging new ministry techniques that might help others.