I recently heard an interview with legendary car designer Frank Stephenson. He has led design teams from all over the world with companies like Ferrari, Maserati, Fiat, Romeo, Alfa, Mini, McLaren and more. He is a leader in innovation and change in the car design business. Frank talked about the differences between car designers and car engineers. He said that the crazy ideas from the designers scare the engineers who are responsible for executing those ideas. But he said that’s what the designers are supposed to do. We live in a world where if you don’t find a way to adapt and change then we run the risk of becoming obsolete. The COVID-19 pandemic proved that. What he was saying is that designers are wired to take risks and push the limits. Frank also talked a lot about curiosity and creativity and the affect on the product as well as the individual within an organizations. Here’s 3 takeaways from Frank Stephenson that I learned and how I’m applying them to the church:

1. Be Curious About Everything

Without curiosity you can’t innovate. That’s the bottom line. How often do we create space and margin for our teams to be curious about things that have nothing to do with a current project they are working on with a deadline? We see it too often in the church that pastors and leaders think curiosity slows things down or if there is no tangible product to show for time spent then it’s a waste of time.

Frank Stephenson says “Curiosity let’s you connect bits of knowledge from different sources (podcasts, books, You Tube videos, etc.) which leads to new knowledge.”

In order to be curious time can’t matter.

In order to be curious you need a place and environment to apply your curiosity. One of my favorite things to do is to talk to smart people who have nothing to do with the church. Even better if they’re not Christians. This is a space where I can just be curious. I don’t need anything from this person it’s just a lab for me to throw out ideas and thoughts and get feedback. Being curious and vetting ideas doesn’t always mean bringing in a whiteboard and writing out ideas. Being curious happens in everyday conversations on the subway, in the park, at the grocery store, at a kids soccer game, at the gym, etc. Read books that have nothing to do with church growth or theology or Christianity. When designing new things pull from everywhere. A saying made famous in Silicon Valley says “Questions are the new answers.”

Curiosity may not be the most important thing in innovation, but it can be the thing that sparks innovation.

An excellent way to get new ideas and innovations is to be curious and look at places that seem to have almost nothing to do with your current project or the church. Look at other industries and read books and articles and listen to podcasts that are out of your normal Christian bubble. Learn about philosophy and art and engineering and medicine. Most innovations come from taking your existing experience and combining it with a new idea to create a third idea that did not exist before.

2. Innovate or Die

The great management guru Peter Drucker said those words, “Innovate or die.”

COVID-19 proved that he was on to something. We have to constantly change the method if we want to continue the mission. Frank Stephenson said that car engineers typically don’t like to be pushed in this innovative direction because it puts them in a position of having to figure out something very quickly that hasn’t been done before. They would rather rely on past solutions and the current status quo to turn out work that they’re guaranteed will not fail. They want to know that it’s quality and they know what it’s going to cost. The moment the designer gets excited and starts envisioning the future and coming up with ideas that haven’t been proven or developed, that puts the engineer at risk that he may not be able to deliver on the product.

Do we do that in the church? I believe one of the best ways to succeed is to fail faster than everyone else. If we want our teams to innovate then we have to create an environment where it’s ok to fail. And unlike the car engineers we have to be ok with not having the shiny finished product by the deadline and be ok with having a ton of R&D instead that will help us more in the long term.

Too often in church we have pastors and leaders who function more like engineers than designers. There is a place for both, but if the engineers are making the creative decisions instead of the designers then that’s not innovation, that’s stagnation and playing it safe.

Designers are wired to take risks and push the limits. The church is wired to be risk adverse and keep the status quo.

Pastor and author Craig Groeschel says, “You can have control or growth, but you can’t have both.”

3. Design Everything

Frank Stephenson says that you should be able to see a car and recognize that it’s part of that car company. The design of that car is a language that acts as a brand recognition factor. Features on the car like the colors, shapes, style make the car look unique to that band similar to a brother or sister in a family that look similar. Engineers like to keep the design the same and not shake things up. Designers want to continue the general look of that brand, but be progressive in the design so it doesn’t get boring. Stephenson also thinks that computers play a part in design but they can’t create the design. It’s the human hands that are using the technology of the computer to create the design.

In the church it’s so important that we design things specific to our setting and our environments. What works for your setting may not work for my setting.

It is always better to sacrifice quality to conserve authenticity. It’s better to use a low quality image from an iPhone than a stock photo from a website.

People can’t emotionally connect to a computer, but they can connect to you or something you produce. You are communicating something with everything you design. You’re not going to convince someone to start tithing at your church because of a graph. But you might convince them if you design and tell a story of how God worked in a family who started tithing. Weather you are using top of the line cameras for that story or a cheap camera on a tripod people will connect to that story and design much more than a computer generated graph.

I recently was in Paris, France for 10 days and the thing that stuck out to me the most was that everything there was designed for beauty instead of efficiency. We are humans and God designed us with feelings and emotions and everything we see makes us feel a certain way. We enjoy looking at beautiful pieces of art or beautiful building or beautiful food dishes. We should treat our churches and services and websites the same way. Our designs in our churches should tell a similar, but distant story. Engineers care about the final product and producing it in the most efficient way. Designers think about how things make people feel and producing that in the most effective way.

Efficient doesn’t always mean effective.

Effective won’t always be efficient.

One last note on that.

Design is everything, but everything isn’t design.

Sometimes in the church we put entirely too much effort and energy into aesthetics and design and in the process neglect everything else. Remember you need everything else for design to truly succeed. No one wants a car that is well designed and looks great on the outside but has engine problems. It’s the same thing for our churches. We can’t have pretty graphics and LED walls and good lighting and cameras but have bad systems on the inside. We can’t have good videos that tell testimonies but have no plan for discipleship. We can’t have a great website for people to sign up to serve but no clear, actionable step or process for people to serve.

What attracts people to your church is not what will keep them there. If the great design gets them in the doors we have to make sure that our systems and processes on the inside are designed just as well.