Early Adapters

There is hardly a day that goes by that we don’t receive a phone call or e-mail from another church who is wanting to learn from something we are doing.  I am honored that they take the time to call, that they think we are doing something they can learn from, and that they like what we are doing.  However, I always laugh they talk about how innovative we are.  We are a lot of things, innovative isn’t one of them.  I refer to us as early adapters.

We basically take what the innovative churches are doing and we very quickly adapt what they are doing to fit us.

For example, we are doing a Easter Egg Drop this year.  We are excited about it, feel like it fits our vibe as a church, and will be a great thing for our community.  Since I put on this blog that we are doing it, we have had a church every day call us asking for details about how to do it.  Here’s the deal:  We’ve never done it.  We are thrilled to help out with what we have learned, but we have never done it.  We are not that innovative, but we are GREAT early adapters.

We have a close relationship with a church called Elevation Church in North Carolina.  We are honored to be part of their Ground Level Network and we consider them mentors.  They are a innovative church.  They did the Easter Egg Drop two years ago and we simply are adapting that to fit us.

We get calls daily about meeting in a movie theater.  I’m cocky enough to say we do it as good as anyone and we LOVE helping churches that meet in movie theaters.  But, we were simply early adapters in that.  We took what innovative churches were already doing (meeting in a movie theater) and adapted it to fit us.

There are very very few innovative churches in America.  There are more early adapters but there isn’t actually many of them either.  Most guys won’t adapt what they see from other churches for a good 5-6 years.  For example there are several guys I know that would like to do the egg drop.  They heard Elevation did it two years ago, they are hearing about us and other churches doing it this year, but they will still wait another 2 years to try it.  By that time, it will be old news.

Believe it or not, I think we have some things we have planned in regards to multi-site in small towns that I think we might be innovative in, but I have learned we function a lot better as early adapters.

I am not a systems guy so being innovative is easy for me.  Pulling off innovative is not.  By being early adapters we get to play to our strengths and actually do things at time better than the innovators.  The great thing about being an early adapter is you get to learn from the wins and loses of the innovators.  So when it comes time to do it, you have a better chance of success with a lot less heartache.

So keep calling us and we’ll keep sharing what we know, but just remember we are learning from the same people you are!