Friday, October 7, 2011

Steve Jobs and the Church

This week marks the passing of Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple.  In eulogizing Jobs, people have described him as a genius, the greatest CEO of our generation, a true show man and a great salesman.  Steve Jobs was a man who changed our culture.  He changed the computer into a pad, a phone into a smart phone.  The world will never listen to music the same way again.

Steve Jobs impact on the world will be felt for years to come.  But like most every person in the world, he will be forgotten. ( So tell me what was the name of the man who invented the wheel?)  Yet, Steve Jobs has something to say to us as the church.  No its not that we should use a Mac or the iPhone will help our ministry (Although it might).  What Steve Jobs has to say to the church is what made him so successful.  The success of Steve Jobs is that he did not give people what they wanted.   Steve Jobs gave people what they needed before they knew that they needed it.  Steve Jobs did not mimic culture, he shaped it.

That is an important lesson for the church.  Too often, the church is trying to give people what they want.  In so doing, the best that we offer is a reflection of our culture.  But the truth of  the matter is that the church has a message that the world desperately needs but it does not know that it needs it.  The message of the gospel is the greatest need of the world.  The world thinks it needs, entertainment, success, prestige, wealth.  But the world truly needs is redemption.  We may gain the whole world, but lose our own soul.  The message we have is there is hope that we do not have to lose our soul.

Maybe it is time that the church gets back to shaping culture rather than reflecting it.  It has done so in the past, just think of men like Luther, Wilberforce, and Jonathan Edwards.  They each changed the world not by reflecting the culture in which they lived but by giving the world what it truly needed.  I think that is the message that Steve Jobs should teach us as a church.  Will we learn the lesson?  Think about it.