Why I’m Investing in Frontline Innovation

In the past few weeks I’ve invested a ton of my energy in Open.

Open is a series of open-source-styled youth ministry training events that I dreamt about for nearly 2 years and was finally able to launch last Fall. When we launched it we quickly learned that it wasn’t just a dream I had… but a dream of a lot of people. Consequently, it’s grown way faster than I’d planned on.

Here’s a short description from the manifesto:

There aren’t many places in the church where all ideas have the same opportunity to be presented. Everything is editorialized, shaped, and packaged. Every idea is filtered through a lens.

We think something is wrong with that. Deep in our souls we know the solutions to the problems we face today are already out there, waiting to be discovered.

Open is just that. Open. The Youth Cartel sets the table, plays host, and invites anyone and  everyone who has an idea to the table for a day where we all have equal value for our ideas. Whether you are a big dog with 20,000 people writing down your every word, a college student with some crazy ideas, or somewhere in between, the table is open–we will give you your shot and equal time to share your idea.

Read the rest

So, it’s a 1-day conference for youth workers. That alone isn’t really that special. There are lots of good ones already.

But what makes it interesting, what gives the event an electric vibe I’ve never felt at another event, is that each Open event is locally organized and shamelessly favoring frontline youth workers over people who hit the national training circuit. It just brings its own energy to it that you have to feel to appreciate.

Then we take all the presentations, recordings, whatever we gather, and we share it on a central Open website… tons of great content totally free.

Why is that? As I engage with folks all over I am hearing amazing ideas… new stuff that’s just not coming out anywhere. Some ideas are radical, highly experimental or so localized that they might only really work in one place. And many are soft innovations on existing stuff that’s adapted and really seen some traction in ministering to adolescents.

I think Open has its own energy because it’s grassroots, bottom-up, when everything else out there is top-down. There’s a hunger to hear from new voices and when people share an idea they are super excited about it tends to create new ideas.

So… Why Doesn’t That Happen Elsewhere?

Oh, it does. Just not at scale. I’ve not invented the wheel. Other events do some of this. But I’m not aware of any in youth ministry that do it as a series of interconnected events. (Open basically brings an event technology from the tech world, things like Barcamp and WordCamp were the models… we just fixed some of what breaks those events.)

The problem is that there’s no place for new ideas to come out because the deck is stacked against the frontline person. A person who is serving as a full-time youth pastor at a church doesn’t have a way to share that idea, there’s no real mechanism within youth ministry to find that person. And because they are in a local church, working hard there, they don’t often have the ability to make the connections which could result in them writing magazine articles, speaking at conferences, or writing a book.

So…

  • They don’t know the right people.
  • They don’t have the time to run all over the country building relationships which could lead to their ideas getting out.
  • There really are quite few spots at the existing events and TONS of competition for those few spots.
  • They aren’t known enough to get picked to speak at a national conference.
  • In short, they are so deeply in it that they don’t have time to talk about it.
  • Their ideas just aren’t commercially viable. (Yet) In other words, it’d cost more to get their ideas to the marketplace than they might generate to even break even.

[Sidebar: Nevermind the fact that there are tens of thousands of people doing youth ministry who are either not self-identified as youth workers or youth workers don’t consider their work youth ministry… more on that another day.]

That’s where Open comes in. We facilitate building a local organizing team, we help them partner with a local college or seminary, we connect with sponsors to offset most of the costs, we put out a call for submissions to anyone who has an idea, and we put together a great event where no one gets paid and people coming just pay $25.

Then we share any profits. (A third goes to the local organizer as a thank you for all the hard work, a third goes to a local charity of their choosing, and a third goes to the Cartel to offset the expenses of hosting… basically, it covers my flight & hotel.)

In other words, nobody is really making money. Certainly, no one is making a living. And that creates an environment which fosters the exploration of new ideas without the weight of commercialism.

So why do I invest in this?

Read between the lines. I lose money by doing this. More than just the physical cost is the time investment as it takes over a hundred hours of my time to pull one of these off. (Not to mention the 15-20 hours I spend exploring cities that haven’t yet panned out.)

I do it because it’s literally an investment in the future of youth ministry. And I’m fortunate enough to share this vision with enough people who are willing to sacrifice of themselves to make the same investment.

I do it because there are ideas out there which need to be shared. And when you get a group of sharp people together with people sharing ideas, new ideas are sparked. It’s a quest of curiosity.

I do it because I believe in Open Source is a virus that the church leadership desperately needs. We need places where someone can fork an idea shamelessly and that be celebrated. We need places where hierarchies and stuff like that are broken down, where the ministry world is truly flat.

I do it because I believe the best ideas are already out there. I do it because I think the next wave of innovation will come from people doing ministry on the frontlines.

And, with that in mind. I do it because this is my gift to the community. I’m not trying to hold onto Open, I’m trying to give it away.

Open is an open invitation.


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