A Ministry Flop

Normally, when someone says their efforts were a flop, it isn’t a good thing. 

But not always.

In the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, 21-yearold Oregonian, Dick Fosbury, won the gold medal in the high jump “looking like a guy falling off the back of a truck,” as one journalist put it. The Americans hadn’t been victorious in that event since 1956 and may not be still if it were not for his now famous Fosbury Flop.

Rather than employing the traditional approach to the high jump, with its straddle style forward kick over the bar, the Flop features a midair rotation of the entire body and places the jumper on the back of his head as he hits the mat. Or, as the man himself describes it, "I take off on my right, or outside, foot rather than my left foot. Then I turn my back to the bar, arch my back over the bar and then kick my legs out to clear the bar." It looked odd, but it worked better than any other technique.”

At the time, the Flop seemed to be an aberration, a one-hit wonder, so to speak. Coaches and parents alike warned against others trying it, fearing neurological injury. The funny thing is, over the last 45 years later, no one using any other technique has ever held the world record, which is now over 8 feet! (For the sake of perspective, that’s like jumping over the top of a stop sign and clearing it by a foot.)

In 1968, the Fosbury Flop was what business analysts typically call a disruptive strategy, a strategy that “significantly changes the dynamics of a commonly accepted market paradigm.” Mark Harrison, Managing Director of the Business Insight Team, takes it a step further: 

“A disruptive strategy ignores the requests for the improvements your existing customers are demanding, but concentrates on something 'less good' in terms of incremental improvements, but much better in a different dimension.”

More and more of us are seeing the oikos principle as a disruptive ministry strategy for this generation, but not because it’s a new paradigm. In fact, it’s the original Kingdom building ministry strategy that Jesus gave His church, but one that was displaced over time by a complex system of religious hierarchies, denominational contentions and programmatic ministries. Since many of our existing parishioners are quite comfortable demanding more of the same, many of us pastors find ourselves competing for the attention of already existing believers, rather than seeing new people find Jesus. 

How did an idea as simple as handing the mission of the church to the church somehow become a threat? And to what? Or to who?

One thing is consistently true about fear. It always lowers the bar.

After considering the implications of the oikos principle, a senior leader of one of the largest Evangelical denominations in the world responded in an all-too familiar way. He didn’t say, “The principle isn’t consistent with Scripture.” Neither did he suggest that our research was incorrect, identifying an oikos relationship as the centerpiece of over 95% of Christian conversions. This was his response. “It doesn’t fit the new denomination-wide evangelism program we just launched.” 

Oh. Okay.

I really am very sorry that this always seems to sound a bit condescending, but there are reasons why we’re consistently redesigning evangelism initiatives, and why the average church has won a medal in that event for a long time! Evangelism isn’t a program. It’s a purpose.

Might be time for a flop.