Luminosity Conference highlights how to create a culture of innovation

The distinction between innovation and invention is an important one, the Rev. Richard Hong told a packed breakout room. Hong, the pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Englewood, New Jersey, presented one of the workshop sessions at the Presbyterian Foundation’s inaugural Luminosity Conference March 9-11 in Orlando, Florida. The conference was designed to offer pastors and church leaders inspiration and thoughts on innovation.

Innovation is driven by the needs of the people and is not necessarily something new. Invention is something that has never been done before — “and there’s a reason for that,” Hong joked. “It’s innovation if you have never done it before. And especially, it’s innovation if it meets people’s emerging needs in your community.”  

Fire led to innovations

That theme — meeting the needs of the people in your church and your community — threaded through Hong’s presentation.

Hong has served First Presbyterian Church of Englewood since 2005, leading his congregants through a 2016 sanctuary fire and a “nomadic” period of worship in available spaces before settling in the gymnasium on their campus — all before Covid. Englewood, on the edge of New York City, was an early hotspot, suffering its first pandemic-caused death just three weeks into the outbreak. 

“People were not in a hurry to return to in-person worship,” Hong recalled. “Innovations are proactively reactive. We were not inventing needs, but reacting to known needs. People’s needs drive innovation, not technology.”

But technology became a critical element of the innovations at his church. The church began online giving in 2014; audiovisual equipment had been installed in the gym in 2017. Hong quoted technology consultant Jason Dorsey: Everyone has a relationship with technology that is driven by their age. Understanding those differing relationships is a first step in using technology to meet the needs of a worshiping community.

Hong said that the church has used online worship to increase the frequency of worship engagement. The national average for church attendance is 1.6 times per month; as frequency declines, average attendance falls, even if the membership list remains stable. Online participation in worship, he insisted, should not be viewed as inferior to in-person worship.

Demographics point to shifts in church life

Another factor is a set of national demographic shifts:

• Deferred childbirth — The average age of a college-educated woman having her first child is now 30.3, and that age rises with both income and education. In 1970, just 10% of women aged 30-34 had not delivered a child; today, that number is 40%. 
• Parents of teenagers are older today than 30 to 40 years ago.
• Seniority and salary attainment are now liabilities when companies downsize.
• Advances in health care mean that many mid-career adults are caring for aging parents as well as their children.

“Forty years ago, a 50-year-old was likely an empty nester, with a secure job, and a comfortable retirement plan, maybe even a pension,” Hong explained. “They could volunteer, serve on session or committees, and donate in significant amounts. If I ask a 55-year-old today to serve on a committee, he or she is likely to say, ‘Are you kidding?’” 

That person likely has a teenager or two at home, a full-time job, and anxiety about the financial future. Churches have to adjust their expectations. “It’s not that they don’t love Jesus. They just can’t give any energy to the church beyond worship. Having expectations beyond their capacity will drive them away.

“People need to feel loved by Jesus before they will learn to love Jesus.”

What are your church’s goals?

As churches seek to grow their membership, defining goals is critical, Hong said. Saying “we want families with young children” is too broad, because the range from preschool to high school is so wide. He suggested creating an avatar of the types of members your church wants to attract, focusing on the people in your immediate geographic area. “This focus creates a critical mass by understanding the needs of your community,” he said. “If it’s not people-centered, it’s going to fail.”

Hong believes deeply in creating a culture of hospitality in the church. Understanding how guests see the church — not how you think they see the church — is critical to welcoming them into worship life. He invites lay leaders, at church expense, to attend professional conferences with him. He asks staff and lay leaders to attend churches outside the PC(USA) as observers to bring back ideas and observations. “The question we ask is, ‘Why does whatever they’re doing work for them?’ It’s not whether I liked it or not. Can we replicate what they are doing with a different process in our church?” 

And a significant factor in how visitors assess you as an organization? Your bathrooms. “Jesus never once went to the bathroom in the Gospels, but they are critical to the guest experience,” he said with a chuckle. “People notice the condition of your bathrooms and it becomes part of how they decide whether to return.”

Innovation is a thoughtful, intentional process of understanding the needs of the people in your congregation and in your community. When Hong and First Presbyterian Church congregants do reach out into the community, the expectation is not that the efforts will immediately produce new congregants. Rather, community engagement produces “ambassadors” who will speak well of the church to their friends and neighbors.

“We want to be the church that people would attend if they went to church, but they don’t,” Hong said. “We want to have a reputation in our community such that some of them will eventually join us.”