What Church can Learn from Apple pt.1

So I love my Mac.  I have been touting it’s incredible features, ease of use, and reliability for over a year now.  There are so many things that I love about the software, the user interface, the actual store, the employees, the design and more.

The church can learn a lot about how to win people from Apple so I thought I might as well write a few ideas and see where they go.  If other folks on the blogoverse have written this, I’m sorry I’m not trying to steal your ideas.

What the Church can learn from Apple

1.  Simplify — From the store, to the design of the actual computers, to software installation, to what their employees where in the stores you can see that simplicity is important.  Simplicity is not the same as dumbing it down or reducing your requirements.  Apple has done a brilliant job of simplifying their product so that a 4 year old can use the same computer as a 45 year old executive.  There are no catches, tricks or hidden components that you really have to figure out before you can really get the whole shebang.

The church (in general) has done a really great job of over complicating the message, the method, the programs, all kinds of things.  If the discipleship process at your church is 17 steps that’s way to many.  Do you know how many steps it takes to set up an Apple computer?  2! Step 1. take out of box.  Step 2. Turn on and enjoy!.

Jesus didn’t overwhelm his disciples with steps and programs.  He started his ministry among them by simply saying, “Follow Me.”  And he ended it by saying two steps.  Step 1.  Go!  Step 2.  Make disciples!  He didn’t spell out entirely what discipleship looked like.  He didn’t draw them a baseball diamond diagram, he didn’t give them course schedules. He kept it delibaretly simple.

The Apple commercials have two people in them with a plain white background and some noticebly subtle music.  That’s it.  Nothing too complicated there.  Each commercial has one specific message, i.e Apples are easy to use, Apples come with all the software you need, Apples are less prone to attack, Apples are compatible with just about everything.   I saw a church promo that tried to reach everybody but didn’t actually say anything.  The promo was uselessly complicated, because they didn’t know who they were reaching and hoped that by shooting at many targets they might hit one.

Simplify.  What programs do we need to kill?  What does the church need to avoid doing?  What do we need to say no to?  How many steps are in our discipleship process?  How many events are on our calendar?

Simplify.