Ground-breaking, pioneering, original, new, inventive, modern are all words from my handy little Word program Thesaurus that can be used for “innovative”.  There are striking contrasts between the words “innovative” and “Thesaurus” which sounds more like an extinct dinosaur than a book. Too often innovation is as rare as the dinosaurs, and like the dinosaurs today, innovation takes some real digging.

Sometimes we get lucky and they just turn up, but most of the time is takes some real digging.  But the treasures we find are worth the exploration.

For me, many times the greatest field of discovery for these treasures is the Bible itself.  Teachers and prophets of the Bible lead by God revealed new and creative ways to communicate God’s message.  With each message God revealed to them what the people needed for their time and place.  And God knows before we have need or our people have need.  The prophets and teachers of the Bible used many creative devices, maybe not as modern as projection screens and ProPresenter, but many methods long buried by the sands of time that have been lost.  Jesus use of parables was riveting for his listeners.  We may preach about the parables of Jesus, but when was the last time you tried digging up and fleshing out some of your own for consideration.  Use of physical props and activities were vivid reminders of the spiritual lessons God had for the people.  Of course I wouldn’t encourage you to marry a prostitute as Hosea did in order to get the point across about God’s faithfulness to the unfaithful, but I think you understand that God was definitely serious in conveying the message in a ground-breaking way.  We need to be willing to be courageous to dig for and display the innovations we find.