Recently I read a biography of Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple Inc., the computer company. As an audible book it entailed 25 hours of listening. I had heard an interview with the author, Walter Isaacson, and decided I’d get a good start listening to the book during my 16 hours of driving around Minnesota one weekend.
I was surprised how immersed I became in the life of Steve Jobs. Not that I admire him. He was petulant, childish, impulsive, selfish, and easily provoked to angry outbursts that devastated coworkers and friends.
And he was a crier. Whenever things weren’t going his way, the waterworks would flow. His personality may have prevented him from achieving even more than he did.
Jobs was a creative genius who emphasized that product is more important than profits. When profits drive the business, the products and the business will ultimately suffer, he believed.
He was brilliant at imagining a new product that no one knew they would want but once he had created it, people thought they couldn’t live without it. He exemplified the modern adage of Henry Ford: if he had asked his customer what they wanted, they would have said they wanted a faster horse. But in fact, Ford imagined, created, and sold a new form of transportation—the Model T. People couldn’t have imagined it but once they had one, they couldn’t live without it.
Jobs’ innovations so influenced the industries of music, communications, and technology that he figuratively took them from the horse to the Model T.
Beauty and simplicity
Jobs was also adamant about design: beauty and simplicity. He obsessed over color, shape, font, and anything related to aesthetics. (When he had a liver transplant at Methodist Hospital in Memphis, he berated the medical staff about the design of the equipment even as he was barely clinging to life!) Design was important to him and therefore detail was important to him so he “sweated the small stuff” when it came to design and detail.
Jobs practiced Zen Buddhism. (That doesn’t seem to have controlled his fits of anger.) He grew up Lutheran. At age 13, he brought to Sunday school one week a picture from a news magazine of two starving Biafran children. He asked the pastor, “If I raise my finger, will God know which one I’m going to raise even before I do it?” “Yes, God knows everything,” the pastor responded. Then Jobs pulled out the picture and asked, “Well, does God know about these children and what is going to happen to them?” “Yes, God knows about that.”
Jobs said he didn’t want to have anything to do with worshiping such a God and he never went back to church. As he faced his last days, he told the author that he was about 50-50 in believing whether God exists.
I wonder what we in the church might learn from Jobs. I don’t admire his leadership style (while creative and strategic, he didn’t have some skills for leading an organization), his lack of philanthropy (although money was never a motivating factor for him) or his personal character.
It’s difficult to apply the principles of business to the church. What if we think of our “product” as our mission: to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world?
And what if profits are like metrics—membership, attendance, people involved in small groups and mission work. When metrics drive the mission, then the mission suffers. So it’s important that we keep the mission central. Yet Jobs, who did not think profits were primary, still paid attention to them. Likewise we need to watch metrics because they indicate how we are doing in terms achieving our mission.
Try something new in 2012
We need to keep imagining new ways to share Jesus and act as the church through our worship, study, service, outreach, evangelism, and care. A young pastor said to me recently that a woman in his church responded to something that the church wanted to do that was new and creative by saying, “The Bible says that the church is the same yesterday, today, and forever!” Well, she got part of it right!
I want to commend any of you who are trying to do a new thing in reaching new people and cultivating spiritual vitality. It’s not easy. Maybe that’s why Jobs was so cranky! (No excuses for us, we’re Christian!)
Jobs was able to learn from his mistakes (except in relationships and social interactions). We too need a spirit of experimentation and to learn from our mistakes or failures. My general philosophy is that if we learn from our mistakes or failures, then they’re not mistakes or failures but learnings (albeit, sometimes costly learnings)!
In this new year, I encourage all of you and your congregations to do a new thing. Engage in an innovative way to reach out to others through one of the basic functions of your church. Take just one—worship, service, study, outreach, advocacy, personal devotion, children’s ministry or whatever God is calling you to explore and play with. Be innovative, but deeply rooted in the traditions of our faith, developing the design so that it’s beautiful but simple.
Remember: it’s Jesus Christ who is the same yesterday, today and forever–not the church!
