There was a day when people didn't bring electronics to coffee shops. They brought books, played a game of chess with a friend, or perhaps wrote in a journal. But then came 1999. In 1999, an important technology became reliable and cheap enough to be included in personal laptop computers. At MacWorld in 1999, Steve Jobs announced this feature in his trademark casual manner as "One More Thing." Here's the video (3 minutes 26 seconds long):
The technology Jobs introduced as part of the iBook line, of course, was WiFi: a wireless internet connection. The crowd cheered when they realized that he was not connected to any wires as he was surfing the internet. This was big news, and a very welcome addition that soon became standard on all laptop computers.
Imagine if today you walked into a computer store and asked to look at notebooks, and the salesman bragged that a particular laptop was "fully loaded and equipped with WiFi technology." Well, I'd hope so, you might think. And doesn't a car come equipped with a steering wheel? What laptop doesn't have WiFi?
WiFi was new. Once. The thing is, New doesn't impress for long. Sure, something new has it's moment on the stage, and for a while it's appreciated and fawned over. But soon, New just becomes...expected.
In ministry, New doesn't last for long. Now, this doesn't mean that New is a bad thing. New can build momentum. New can make people consider going back to church after several years away. New can be fun. (And yes, it's okay for something in church to be fun. Really.)
New can be useful. People came to Jesus because he did things they had never seen before. He taught with authority. He performed miracles with striking regularity. Those things helped people become reconciled to their Father. But not everyone who came to see stayed. And when they inevitably asked for more new things, he declined to give them the show they wanted and instead pointed them toward the Scriptures. Because he knew that New would not change people's lives. It was only a door, an invitation. He knew that for people to be really transformed, the had to be reunited with the Father through the Son. For the Son of Man came not to impress, but to save.
So, New is useful, but it doesn't impress for long. If you try to impress people with New, they will use up whatever New you give them, and then demand more. If you give them more New, they will continue to be impressed. If you don't, they will move on. After all, whatever New you create will one day be like WiFi: expected and taken for granted. So instead of using New to impress, why don't you use New as a door, an invitation? Because in reality, there is nothing new under the sun. But there is Someone who makes all things new, and people need him far more than they need to be impressed.
