That was the title of a recent column by Bret Stephens. He was talking about the political sphere and how protectionism, America First agendas, and antisemitism, among others, stalk like “moral and intellectual zombies” through our debates about government. But it also seems like an apt question for church boards. Do dumb church ideas ever die?
Can you think of a time in your church board work when you have exclaimed to one another, “Now that was a dumb idea!”? (Can you imagine how liberating that would feel?)
Reading Isaiah 43 together as a church board, which passages feel most deeply connected to your congregation in this time?
Which of your church ideas feel most directly connected to those passages in Isaiah 43? And which feel more like dumb ideas … er, once-good ideas whose time has passed?
The way we approach giving and stewardship.
The way we engage social media.
The way we do online worship.
The way we manage church volunteers.
The way we organize youth ministry.
One of us has led congregations for decades (and fostered more dumb ideas than he can count), so we offer you this question with empathy and understanding. Dumb ideas hang around because they help preserve a place of relative equilibrium in congregational life, where church members and leaders can feel some measure of comfort. In that spirit, dumb ideas are often safe ideas—at least on the surface.
There is also one significant difference between the “dumb ideas” that Stephens’ column calls out and the dumb ideas we encounter in church life. In the political realm, protectionism was never a particularly good idea. Antisemitism was never, even remotely, a wise or moral idea. But in church, most “dumb ideas” were once good ideas.
The Tuesday lunch group, started years ago as a way of connecting people experiencing loss or displacement. Today, it’s just an obligation on the church calendar. The folks—and the need—it addressed are no longer with us.
The youth ministry program, organized by parents who loved their own experience of youth group. A generation or two later, the needs of young people, their schedules, their view of church and God and world, have all shifted.
Churches hang on too long to ideas that once were good but now are patently dumb. How do we let go? And how do we do that comfortably, in a context where—understandably—equilibrium is its own value?
Isaiah 43:19 may offer some guidance.
I am about to do a new thing;
now it springs forth; do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
and rivers in the desert.
Churches love to quote the first couplet, with its proclamation of a new thing already springing forth! (Do you not perceive it?) But we forget the couplet that follows hard on it, and the larger context of wilderness, desert, and exile into which the chapter speaks.
Most biblical scholars date Isaiah 43 near the end of the Babylonian exile. It directly addresses the central crisis of the exile. You might think of it as a parent speaking to a child who has been separated from home and fears abandonment. The opening verse offers profound re-assurance:
But now thus says the Lord,
the one who created you, O Jacob,
the one who formed you, O Israel:
Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name; you are mine.
The next verse speaks directly to the crisis of faith and identity that people in exile experience:
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you,
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.
These aren’t metaphors for everyday troubles; they are vivid images of the dangers inherent in the Babylonian exile. That exile was not just a political catastrophe; it was a theological crisis. If God’s people were defeated and God’s temple destroyed, what did that say about God’s power? Isaiah 43 reframes the exile not as divine defeat, but as an experience of God’s sovereign presence and constancy, to be followed by restoration.
The “new thing” in the first half of Isaiah 43:19 is decidedly not a new program, initiative, or agenda. It is the promise that God will be present in all times and places—especially when the flood waters rise—and certainly when the fires of life seek to consume us.
So, what does this have to do with dumb ideas in congregational life? Almost every church activity starts from a sincere motive to help someone or to support some aspect of ministry: youth, giving, communication, and the rest. And yet, when the activity gets disconnected from the deepest needs of the congregation or community, it is no longer an idea worthy of support.
We use different words now than we did in Isaiah’s era, but there is an acute sense of exile today. People are wondering if God is present, and if God can be trusted. Church activity, however well-intentioned, becomes a dumb idea when it is separated from that context and those urgent, deeply felt needs.
By contrast, your work as a church board will be relevant and filled with gladness when it connects with the deepest needs of the people you are called to serve. Then, Isaiah 43 can be heard as a hymn of joy and trust.
But now thus says the Lord,
the one who created you, O Jacob,
the one who formed you, O Israel:
Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name; you are mine.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you,
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.
Can you think of a time in your own life when you said to yourself, “Now, that was a dumb idea!” How did it make you feel to be able to see that … and say it?
Can you think of a time in your church board work when you have exclaimed to one another, “Now that was a dumb idea!”? (Can you imagine how liberating that would feel?)
Reading Isaiah 43 together as a church board, which passages feel most deeply connected to your congregation in this time?
Which of your church ideas feel most directly connected to those passages in Isaiah 43? And which feel more like dumb ideas … er, once-good ideas whose time has passed?
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