Sometimes we get stuck in the rut of thinking the church should have one look, one feel, one experience, one message that hasn’t changed in two thousand years. The reality is that even Jesus put his message in context for the people he was communicating to. When he talked to fisherman he used fishing metaphors. When he talked to farmers, he spoke of the grains in the field.

Dogma is the hard and fast rule. The way things were, and to the dogmatics, the way things should be. Context is the variable that is constantly changing. The mold isn’t fixed. People are different. People who live a mile apart can have tremendously diverse contexts. Things that were once solid, welded, defined, are now taking new shapes and providing flexibility in our experiences.

The Gina Project at BMW represents an aggressive shift in thinking about how we can experience our environments. The user defined experience is going to change the way we do things. Even in the church. Whether it’s through providing content at the touch of button or having our people be a part of developing content and the community around it.

Are you flexible? Are you ready to reach people in their context? Put your innovative foot forward and think about how people experience Christ in your community, or how they could? Be there.

If the church really is the body and Jesus the head, then we should have in mind the human way of doing things. Responding and anticipating the felt needs of our communities.

Check out this video on the GINA project: