Great things take time. This is a simple principle that I have rediscovered over the past few years, and have been re-reminded of on the last Monday of each of the past two months. There are occasional surprises like Bob Dylan famously writing “Like a Rolling Stone” in 15 minutes and the Apostle Peter birthing the Christian church with a first-time altar call of 3,000 people! But we stop in amazement of these stories because they are so out of the ordinary. Most signficant things take time.

On the last Monday of March, I slow cooked ribs and chicken in a smoker for my clergy small group. On the last Monday of April, I spent time with several young clergy from the South Georgia Conference of the UMC, and we used that time to dream about innovation and risk taking. In between those two Mondays, I listened to the book “Creativity Inc.” about the animation company Pixar about their long and winding journey to become the premier computer animation studio and the standard for animated storytelling. What do smoked meat, a computer animation company, and a group of young clergy talking about innovation and risk taking have in common? Everything!

I am not sure who came up with the idea of smoking meat, but I am glad they did! It takes time to smoke a piece of meat, but meat connoisseurs will contend that it is worth it. The end result is fantastic – in fact one of my pastor friends declared the chicken to be the best he has ever had! Our conversations as young clergy this past Monday revolved around changing the culture of our conference and churches… something that cannot happen overnight. It is hard work, but it is worth it. What does the Pixar story have to do with anything? Their dream to create a full-length computer animated feature film was twenty years old when they finally broke through with “Toy Story” in the mid-1990s. 

You can grill meat quicker than smoking it, but it is tougher and not as savory. Pixar could have given up at various junctures, but they did not, and the results are impeccable. Finally, young pastors in our conference could simply accept the status quo, but the status quo has led to declining churches and nearly an entire generation of Americans growing up outside of the church. We would rather do the hard work of innovation and risk taking and see what happens. 

Significant things take time. We as a church have tried to innovate in a variety of ways, because we want to see great things happen. As we continue to long for a “breakthrough”, we must keep on seeking God and asking what new thing we might be called to try next. It takes time to do something differently, but when our goal is to see lives changed and people experiencing breakthroughs in their life, we cannot help but try. 

We are in a season of growth for our church, but it did not happen overnight. It took some risk taking – deciding to bring in a different type of pastor, experimenting in worship, relaunching our children and youth ministries, and being creative with limited resources. We are starting to see fruit of risks we began 2-3 years ago without any idea how they would turn out. But we also are not all the way to where God has been leading us. So I want to encourage you to actively engage in the five things that we ask people to engage in when they join the church: pray for our ministry and mission, be present in worship and small groups, give generously to the ongoing ministry needs and special projects, serve within one of our ministries, and share your witness by inviting others to be a part of what God is doing here! Let’s keep working together to create a story that’s worth telling.

Over the course of the next few weeks, check back in on our weekly newsletter. We will be sharing some stories about some great things that God is doing in our church, as we continue to ask God to give us more stories to tell!

-Anthony<><