Our preference for clear teaching and practical application has guaranteed our place as the BuzzFeed of the self-help culture. But we’ve bought into the lie that anything too far outside the box is a waste of time, since the returns are so meager—if and when they actually produce any returns at all. We have no patience for weird ideas that don’t immediately produce massive supernatural impact, sociological change, or next-generation revival. 

The problem is that the best ideas take time to grow, and our insistence on “fastball Christianity” (straight down the middle, no fooling around) is turning us into one-string-banjo tent-revivalists. We’re so afraid of distraction we’ve made almost every great church the same: singing, preaching, praying, eating.

Yet creative experimentation doesn’t only generate beautiful ideas, but beautiful people, also. The very process forms and funds our understanding of Christian spirituality, catalyzing both our personal development and our missiological future. If we don’t start experimenting now, it will be too late once we wake up and realize we’re irrelevant. 

Again.