Saying "No": Apple Computers, Steve Jobs, and The Church

Image via CrunchBaseThe Street business website has an article entitled:  Apple's Jobs:  1,000 No's on Way to Triumph.  The article is by Gregg Greenberg.   The article is one of thousands that puts Steve Jobs up on a pedestal for all that he's done for Apple computers and the Apple consumers...a club I'm proud to belong to as I type this on my MacBook Pro.

And, regardless of whether you're reading this on a PC or a Mac or a Linux machine, I would say that one has to realize that Steve Jobs, love him or hate him, has done great things for Apple Computers.  Under his leadership we have the iPod and the iPhone and iPad.   We have iTunes which has revolutionized the music industry.  And we have computers with no more floppy drives and operating systems that are much more user-friendly than perhaps they would have been without the leadership of Apple Computers.  The list could go on and on and on...but it won't...not here.

Says the article:

Steve jobs once said the secret to innovation is saying no to one thousand things, which means he focuses just on those products that mean something to his customers and to his clients. That also means eliminating the clutter. That's why iPods, iPhones and iPads are so easy to use. Because instead of adding more features, which is what the vast majority of companies are doing, they actually eliminate features to make it easier to use.

So, the secret to innovation is saying no?  Hmmm....   See, churches are great at adding on things.  We're great at adding worship services and adding stuff to our sanctuaries.  We're great at adding programming and adding new worship elements.  We're great at adding committees and committee members.

Oftentimes, in spite of all of this, we're not really strong in adding members or adding converts or adding professions of faith.

Perhaps we need to do a better job at eliminating some of the tasks of the church...particularly in our smaller churches that are trying so hard to be like the bigger churches they see around them.

One could probably argue that the same goes fro our lives as well...that greater innovation will come when we remove some of those things we've added to our lives over the years.