Another characteristc of effective educational leadership, according to John Roberto in Faith Formation 2020, is the capacity to go into uncharted waters (or as Captain Kirk would say, "to boldly go.....). "Blue Ocean" refers to open opportunities where there are no competitors, as distinct from "red oceans" that are jam-packed with people doing similar stuff. His two examples of "blue ocean" businesses are Netflix, the US online movie rental company, and Pierce College, a US post-secondary college that decided to focus on adults, and to augment their campus offering with localised in-situ learning and online learning, well ahead of other institutions.
Roberto's references include an article by Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne (245kb PDF), their book titled - guess what? - "Blue Ocean Strategy", and the book's website. Key factors are to identify a 'target audience' and to consider the strategic factors involved (time, cost, availability, location, etc). Really?
I have to say that this section contains no examples of local churches doing something refreshingly new and different. It seems to me that this is really a subset of being innovative.
At the same time, it raises questions for me about church amalgamations. Robin Trebilcock used to say that if you put five plates of cheese sandwiches together, you end up with one big plate of cheese sandwiches. If what is needed across a region is a smorgasbord of spiritual growth and community experiences, then to go from, say, five similar communities into one isnt necessarily an improvement. If that new combined 'congregation' in fact provides a range of community experiences in different styles, places and times, according to local cultural characteristics, then it is a different proposition. It's one thing to reduce the competition, but its another thing to step out into new territory.
The Pierce College example is interesting, because it suggests that a congregation might see itself as a 'campus', and explore what on-campus,on-site (off-campus, in situ) and online learning opportunities might look like. A bit like what a theological college could do...
Roberto's schema ('faith formation', not 'Christian education') with multiple audiences pushes the church to consider which groups of people without current church connections might be open to experiences of spiritual growth, and to meet them in situ. hmmm..... sounding like 'fresh expressions' to me...
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