Ed Stetzer: Look Before You Innovate: The Secret of Change

Innovation is great—but not all innovation. The question for the church is what innovations we should pursue.

Innovation Has Always Mattered

Christianity has been innovating since its beginning. All present traditions were once innovations. Meeting on Sundays was an innovation of the early church. Meeting in buildings was a second century innovation. Yes, those aren’t as cutting edge as multisite, data projectors and church apps, but they all were innovations.

We can easily look back through church history and judge which innovations proved beneficial and remained biblical, but what about the choices churches face today? How can we best determine whether a proposed change should be considered or rejected immediately?

We need some discernment to know what should and should not be innovated. But let’s be honest: Not everything needs to be innovated. The question is, How do we know what to innovate? How do we decide? I think the answer is that some things in church should be essential, some convictional, and some things simply preferential. Keep reading

The Anglican ecclesiological matrix in Ed Stetzer's article is problematic. It does not reflect the diversity found in contemporary global Anglicanism. For example, weekly Eucharists and infant baptism are not convictional for all Anglicans. In the United Kingdom and elsewhere may be found Anglican churches that do not have weekly Eucharists and defer the baptism of children until an age when they make for themselves the baptismal vows that their parents would have made for them if they had been baptized as infants.