In this episode of the 5 Leadership Questions podcast Todd Adkins and Barnabas Piper talk with Bobby Gruenewald, one of the pastors at Life Church and the architect of YouVersion and Church Online. YouVersion, a mobil app, is currently on about 210 million devices worldwide and Church online is a platform used by more than 18,000 churches, so you can see that Bobby knows a thing or two about innovation. We talk with him about innovation and the challenges of continuing to do it well even after finding success.

BEST QUOTES

“I learn by experience; it’s not always a who.”

“How can virtual reality work as an interface with scripture?”

“When you’re at a larger church it kind of creates operational vortex and sucks in every resource.”

“We have to systematically reintroduce how we innovate.”

“We’re breaking things that are working and forcing constraints to push innovation.”

“We think the key to new ideas is to remove constraints, but in reality it’s to enforcer constraints.

“Often times the systems that make you efficient drive out innovation.”

“Efficiency is based on a lack of desperation; innovation comes from desperation.”

“Innovation isn’t thinking outside the box. It’s thinking inside a better box.”

“In some ways the success we’ve found is our worst enemy.”

“There are formulas that work, but if you rely on the formula too much it stops working.”

“I don’t want to be here in five years talking about the 15-year-old idea we did.”

“Don’t overestimate what God will do in the short run or underestimate what He can do in long run.”

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES

LifeChurch.TV

YouVersion

Managing Corporation Life Cycles – Ichak Adizes

StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath