Church Disrupters

“Disrupters” have been all over the business news for several years now. Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, CNBC—are all writing stories and making lists about those people for whom “no one company is so essential that it can't be replaced and no single business model too perfect to upend.” [Caroline Howard, Forbes Staff]  Venture capitalists and looking for them; business schools are studying them; aspiring entrepreneurs want to be like them. These are people who don’t just think outside the box, they smash the box to build something new. It can make them wildly successful and rich. You’ve heard of some of the businesses they’ve started—Netflix, Amazon, Uber, Kickstarter, airbnb—or maybe you haven’t. Even those of us who aren’t social media savvy can still see how the pace of change is disruptive to our lives, sometimes good, sometimes not so good. However, Good News is here, too. We’ve seen this before.

Jesus was and is a consummate disrupter. He afflicted the comfortable and comforted the afflicted. He moved through his territory on a mission to show us that in order to participate in the Kingdom of God a person has to give up all that comfortable stuff that keeps us in thrall to something less. God isn’t satisfied with our current business model for running the world. Jesus’ message is that there is something entirely new, just waiting to be born, that demands we do some box smashing. I follow a blogger who put it this way in a recent post:

“Jesus is an artful, courageous-but-loving disrupter of homeostasis. His goal is to help people, like us, who are prone to resisting change to keep changing in God’s direction. We’re working on being disrupted and disruptive.” [Rod’s Blog]

Following Jesus will most likely put us in risk-taking positions. Sometimes we will be indecipherable to others. Until the new business model takes effect, those who cling to the old model will likely ‘poo poo’ what's happening. What change is God provoking for the new business model at the little church with a big mission? ...and don't mean just the financial one.  There's spiritual disruptions to take place.