Putting Disruptive Innovation to Work
Principle 3

Doing what the natural competitors consider unattractive or uninteresting

Many business books show in great detail how companies that act in the right way can crush existing competitors. Successful disruptors almost never seek a head-on collision with established competitors.

Interesting advice. Churches almost never take it. Most churches set out to be like every other church within their denomination. Many of them fail.

This is the root of the thinking of the pastor who claimed the East Falls neighborhood had enough churches and therefore Redeemer didn’t matter. There is an assumption that all churches do the same things in the same way.

This is the thinking of church professionals. Church members know that every church is not the same. They know their attendance means more to them than just sitting in the pew and walking through the weekly rituals led by a different ritual leader. That’s why members who move from one neighborhood often hop in the car on Sunday morning to travel 30 miles to the church that feels like home to them. That’s why people shop around when they move to a new neighborhood. That’s why people care. We need more churches that are different.

Small churches cannot survive if they try to minister in the same way large churches do. This doesn’t mean they are unable to do strong and worthwhile ministry.

In our Ambassador visits, we saw several churches doing things differently and well.

• Prince of Peace, Lawncrest,  has made reaching out to varioius immigrant groups the cornerstone of its ministry.
• Prince of Peace, Plymouth Meeting, is centering on issues that relate to family problems—serving families with members with autism and focusing on the effects of bullying within the family structure.

These are ministry niches that larger churches bypass. Remember, from a regional body’s viewpoint, a primary purpose for ministry is support of the regional body.

Unfortunately, there are other examples, some of whom are probably on Synod’s endangered list. (They deny they have one, but they referred to it in court. They claimed Redeemer was the first of six churches they intended to force into closure. Five congregations can thank us for slowing the slaughter.)

Larger churches would see service to these segments as charitable outreach. The efforts would not support their budgets. The bigger the church, the bigger the burden of the budget. Attention given to these ministries is therefore limited to the typical church budget for charitable outreach. If you are guessing that this is a minimal figure, you are probably right.

People served by these niche ministry churches would be lost in larger churches. It would take years to prove their leadership worth. If they are going to be active, they are going to be part of smaller ministries.

Redeemer, East Falls, learned this lesson. Naturally, older members discussed finding newer members who were “like them.” But they were with able to see beyond themselves, as painful as it may have been at times.

There was no need to maintain a mainstream-style church in face of neighborhood apathy for the way churches usually do business. It would have taken tons of money to support a minister for years to rebuild this kind of ministry after a decade of synodical neglect. But Redeemer was able to rely on other strengths. We had a decades-old reputation for having good daycare programs that the neighborhood traditionally supported. As a congregation we were open to the diversity that visited us. We had a part-time pastor for three years who facilitated this openness. We had lay talents that could serve and bring others into service quickly.

We built a valuable ministry around our strengths and did not try to fit our strengths into the mainline vision for church growth. We were succeeding.

Unfortunately, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America did not understand Redeemer. They were blinded by what they thought was easy access to our wealth. A lot of good ministry effort in East Falls has been wasted.

Disruptive Advice to small churches: Find a niche ministry that the bigger churches can’t serve and pursue it doggedly.