In a recent very awesome blog post (it’s so awesome that you should stop reading my post, read his post, then come back to this one), Steve Knight, quoted a New York Times op-ed piece that suggested:
We need a Steve Jobs of religion. Someone (or ones) who can invent not a new religion but, rather, a new way of being religious.
After reading his biography, though, it’s pretty clear that Steve Jobs was a narcissistic, vindictive, workaholic, Grade A jerk. Trust me, the Church does not need another one of those. We have plenty, thank you.
However, Jobs obviously had many positive attributes (and of course these are what the NYT author was referring to) that allow us to overlook many of his negative ones, and I agree that Christianity needs an inspiring leader with some of Jobs’ creative and innovative attributes.
I’m a huge Apple fan and back in August I shamelessly worked Jobs into a sermon, shortly after he retired. Here’s what I said:
What do Steve Jobs and Apple have to do with how Christians are supposed live and how they are supposed to treat others?
Well, I don’t think we as the Christians should ever take the lead from anyone other than Jesus Christ, but perhaps the story of Apple reminds us that, as Christ followers, we should remain on the cutting edge of creativity and innovation, in society, when it comes to how we live our faith and engage the world.
The focus of the sermon was on the second half of Romans 12, studying it as an example of how we, as the Church, have lost our creative and innovative edge in the world. Early Christianity was known for it’s radical forms of hospitality and extraordinary grace, however, many Christians today are perceived as exclusive, bigoted, and hypocritical. So it’s not, in fact, a Steve Jobs we need to look to, but it is Jesus and the early Church that can steer us away from being just another brand and product of a consumeristic society, and instead steer us towards new ways of being creative and innovative when it comes to practicing our faith, that will move us closer to realizing God’s kingdom on earth.
One personality trait of Jobs’, that ultimately saved Apple, was his ability to hyper-focus on a project (this is more unflatteringly referred to as “micromanagement,” when that hyper-focus does not result in genius and successful ideas and products). Whether or not we do it as intensely as Jobs did, focusing on one or a few things can lead to better and better quality results and experiences. This is something I’ve been thinking a lot about since I finished reading Jobs’ biography.
So, what if we slowed things down and hyper-focused on just a few areas in ministry? This won’t make folks happy who want to try and fix everything all at once and want instant results, but I truly believe that it takes bold, patient, and brave leadership to bring about positive and lasting change.
Over the next six months, at the ministry I serve, we are going to back away from some things and try to focus harder on some other things, particularly our outreach to new students. How would your ministry or even you life change if you refused to be overwhelmed by a mountain of activities, projects, programs, and initiatives? Pick up to three things that are both vital to the success of your ministry, and that you and others feel like need some major attention, and spend some time making those things the very best they can be. I think that’s something all of us can do, and we don’t even have to be jerks about it.
When it comes to the big picture, the early Church seemed to be really good at living out Jesus’ vision of living God’s kingdom on earth, an alternative to an imperialistic and oppressive empire that was gripping the world, at the time. So maybe it’s time to zoom-in our focus on Jesus’ vision and figuring out what it means to be Christian in a Church that seems to stray more and more from its original creator and innovator every day.
