Dialectical Innovation
“Being unable to get to Him because of the crowd, they removed the roof above Him; and when they had dug an opening, they let down the pallet on which the paralytic was lying.”
—Mark 2:4
Observation:
“Hey Jesus is in town! If we could only get Johnny, our paralyzed friend to him he could be healed” shouts an excited young Jewish man to his three friends. After this moment of excitement these friends become disheartened at the sight of the massive amount of people trying to crowd into the house where Jesus is ministering.
“What are we going to do now? We are never going to get past this crowd and through the door to see Jesus” must have said one of the four friends.
“What if we don’t try to get through the door?” asks another of the four friends.
“We could lower Johnny down through the roof right in front of Jesus!” the friend retorts excitedly.
So being unable to get to through the crowd to Jesus these four men had to think fast and innovate in order to get their paralyzed friend to Jesus. Digging a hole in the roof of a house is not exactly a brilliant idea, but it was the idea that allowed this group of men to accomplish the task in front of them and successfully deliver their friend to Jesus in order to be healed. Their quick thinking and innovation led to their friend’s healing.
Application:
It is not always the brightest ideas that are the best ideas to lead a person to success. Innovative ideas that allow a leader to get to where they need to go and do it before someone else beats them to the punch are often the best ideas. Innovative ideas are not even always new ideas, but they are at least a new perspective on an old or popular idea. The healing of this paralytic man was the result of his four buddies’ ability to look at a popular idea from a new perspective. Everybody wants to get to Jesus, not a new idea, but literally dropping by was a new take on the popular idea. The people who saw these guys on the roof must have been like what are these guys up to? Once they saw them drop their friend through the roof in front of Jesus the thought that went through everybody’s’ mind, except the owner of the house I am sure, was why didn’t I think of that first? Great ideas only have impact when they are implemented and you only get credit if you implement it first. But like the four friends sometimes you are not first with the great idea or your idea is just like everybody else’s idea. The difference between everyone left outside and the four friends is that they were able to take that common idea and make it an exceptional idea by being innovative and implementing it first.
Over the years I have had many good ideas but more often then not they have never taken root or if they did died lacking longevity. When I was in my early twenties I started a record company called “Embassy Records” with a three friends that I had grown up with. Now starting a record label was not a new idea, neither was releasing mixtapes, but what made Embassy Records different was that we took these ideas and found a way to make our presence known on downtown street corners, on club stages, outside the club, on the radio, even on local television and we did it with a $500 seed investment and tenacity. Besides a couple of bad business decisions, what ultimately killed Embassy Records was our failure to continue to innovate. We had initial success because we were very innovative and did things no other record company was doing in the city Vancouver by being very adaptable. Other record companies and artists took what we were doing and either just copied are idea sloppily saturating the market with inferior products that weakened Embassy Records’ brand identity, while other companies took what we did and figured out innovative ways to take it farther than we did. The result of this was that Embassy Records got left behind and stuck in a crowd. Embassy Records was like the first person in the above passage that said lets go see Jesus for healing, not a new idea, but new in this region. The companies that copied our idea of doing mixtapes were like the crowds that surrounded the house that Jesus was in blocking the four friends from getting in. The companies that took our idea and innovated further on it were like the four friends who figured out a way to be successful in the midst of a crowd trying to do the same thing.
The Church cannot lose its creativity and ability to be innovative. But far too often the Church in recent times has found itself copying what others are doing, and copying it sloppily. The Church cannot afford to spend its time copying what culture is doing. The Church needs to be setting culture and the only way that is going to happen is when we regain our creative spirit and ability to be highly innovative.
Prayer:
Lord, please show the Church how to regain its creative spirit and ability to innovate. Be our guide in this world and help the Church to stop following culture, but become the forefront of culture in this world. In Jesus name I pray Amen…
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