Have you ever heard of the Marshmallo Challenge?  Look it up! It is an amazing insight into creativity and innovation. I love to study innovation because it teaches us to think outside the box. Thinking outside the box is important because God is outside the box.  No theologian, or tradition, no council can box God in. God is so much more than our little minds can capture. We have to listen, study scripture, history, science, and  humanities to begin to understand the revolutionary ideas of God. Throughout our lifetimes we have so much to learn and put into practical growth to really follow Christ.

The ideas we have about God are not God. Any idea, thought, or concept never was and never will be God. They may be helpful symbols that point to God, metaphors, analogies, allegories, images, but they are not God as God is. They will inevitably conflict with one another and be fallible, as every symbol eventually fails at actually being the thing it is supposed to represent. The symbol is never thing being studied it is only a representation of something else.

The Marshmallow Challenge is a study of practical innovation.  A team-building activity in which teams must compete to build the tallest free-standing structure out of 20 sticks of spaghetti, one meter of tape, one meter of string, and one marshmallow. It emphasizes group communication, leadership dynamics, collaboration, innovation and problem-solving strategy.

The interesting thing about this group exercise used for students in MBA programs around the country is that when given to kindergarten kids they are almost twice as successful as the MBA students.

To my point God has a lot to teach us about innovation because sometimes education reduces innovation instead of increasing it. The book of Nehemiah has a lot to teach us about innovation that we will be able to use immediately in our rebuilding projects.

Let's invite God to teach us about innovation this week at 10:30 am.

Your friend for the rest of my life,

Pastor Tim White

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