Innovation Is Resurrection Work

A New Year of Innovation: Created in the Image of an Innovating God

As we step into the new year, we enter a season of new beginnings. A new year brings new ways, new creativity, new people, and new possibilities leading to opportunities for innovation. Innovation is not reserved for experts, entrepreneurs, or uniquely gifted individuals. Innovation is intrinsic to who we are. We all share the common experience of being innovators at a young age. As babies, we tested, explored, adapted, tried, failed, and tried again. We learned about our entire world through experimentation.

Why? Because we are made in the image of God, and God creates, restores, renews, and forms new life out of dust and breath. We were born into the ongoing creativity of God. Innovation is not something we add to our spiritual lives; it is woven into the design of our humanity. If God is always creating, then God’s people must be ready to imagine new things with God.

The purpose of innovation is simple: the church belongs to God’s creative mission. Mission is not an add-on or an extracurricular activity for the spiritually ambitious. Mission is the church’s identity. The church does not have a mission; rather, God’s mission has a church. This flips the narrative because it decentralizes us and re-centers Jesus. Author and Professor Peter Bellini explains that missio Dei restores mission back to God. The church is not the main character; we participate in the larger redemptive story of God healing the world.

That is why innovation matters. Innovation is new creation work. It is resurrection work. We have internalized the idea that everything is declining and humanity is walking toward death. However, the truth is that Christians are walking toward resurrection! Resurrection faith demands newness. We do new things to reach new people in new ways in new places because we believe God is still creating.

Jesus breathes on the disciples in John 20 and says, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” Ephesians 3 reminds us that God’s intent was that, through the church, God would reveal God’s purpose in Christ to the world. The mission has a church, and to show how powerful this can be, let me tell you about Restoration Church in Reston, Virginia.

The Spark: A Lay Leader with Holy Discontent

In 2023, Michael Graham had “holy restlessness.” He looked at the world fractured by political polarization, broken families, decaying civil discourse, and the exhaustion of outrage. He wondered, “How can the church help heal the division tearing our community apart?”

Innovation never emerges from a vacuum. It grows in the soil of something already good. Michael’s experience at Restoration Church was positive and healing, so he began imagining something new through Restoration—not apart from it.

He asked, “What if Restoration could rebuild the muscles of civil discourse? What if Restoration could bring people together across differences, not to win arguments but to rediscover one another’s humanity? What if this could be a witness to Jesus?”

Restoration Church said the most important words any church can say to an innovator: “Let’s do it!”

The Posture That Makes Innovation Possible

Restoration Church holds a countercultural conviction of cultivating a lay-led and staff-facilitated culture. The church believes that the Holy Spirit calls and empowers the congregation to dream, lead, fail boldly, and try again. Restoration Church experiments quickly, ends things quickly if they do not work, and keeps listening to the community.

Innovation is not a solo act. It grows from a web of relationships, discernment, and humility.

“The mission is sacred. The method is not.” When a community embraces this idea, innovation is possible. If the mission belongs to God, then the church must ask, “Where is God creating something new so that we can join God?”

The Experiment: A Year of Listening, Eating, and Training

In 2023, Michael began the holy work of innovation as he cultivated a movement of people gathering around dinner tables to share their lives and build bridges across differences. The church achieved this by:

• Hosting small dinners
• Gathering stories from the congregation
• Training volunteers as facilitators
• Asking the community what they wanted

As a result, Michael and a team of people from Restoration Church launched a new Fresh Expression called “BreadBreakers.”

Below are the types of innovations BreadBreakers implemented:

• Product Innovation – Creating a new kind of spiritual community different from the traditional church setting.
• Process Innovation – Designing ways to launch a new community where people gather, talk, and connect.
• Disruptive Innovation – Shifting the focus of church from teaching to listening.
• Continuous Innovation – Consistently exploring new iterations and processes so that BreadBreakers can be effective.
• Sustaining Innovation – Building structures that support long-term viability.
• Business Innovation – Leveraging strategies to increase community impact to bring wholeness and healing to the community.
• Radical Innovation – Listening deeply to people who are not in the church.

This is precisely what Restoration Church was doing without using the academic language. Restoration Church was practicing God-shaped innovation.

BreadBreakers Was Born

In 2024, two months before the general election, BreadBreakers hosted its first public community dinner at the Reston Community Center. This was a “third space," a community living room, and a table of reconciliation.

Every month, approximately eighty people gather:

• There is racial, gender, political, economic, and generational diversity.
• They share a meal around round tables.
• They hear a Jesus story, often one that highlights his table fellowship or boundary-crossing compassion.
• They review ground rules:
  • We are not here to change minds.
  • We are here to learn something new.
  • We are here to listen deeply.
  • We are here to build bridges one table at a time.

BreadBreakers is not a traditional church service, but you will find the gospel message, relationships forming, fellowship happening, and evangelism taking place.

At Restoration’s Sunday worship:

• 80% are Christian.
• 20% are exploring or new to faith.

At BreadBreakers:

• 20% are Christian.
• 80% are new to faith, deconstructing faith, or re-exploring Christianity.

This is what innovation looks like when a church lives toward resurrection. The goal is not better arguments. The goal is better relationships, deeper community, seeing the sacredness of the other, and raising new leaders who believe healing is possible.

Innovation as Joining God’s New Creation

Innovation is responding to God’s ongoing creativity.

Innovation is what happens when a congregation believes:

• God is not done creating.
• Pentecost was not a one-time event.
• The Holy Spirit goes ahead of the church into neighborhoods, cultures, networks, and digital spaces.
• Innovation is not the church “keeping up.” Innovation is the church catching up to what God is already doing.

A Simple Pathway to Begin Innovating: Lessons from BreadBreakers

1. Begin with “holy restlessness.” Identify a need or longing in your community. Listen to the pain, hope, and hunger around you.
2. Gather a team of curious people – not experts, but listeners, learners, and bridge-builders. Invite laity first. Innovation is a whole-church activity.
3. Experiment small and fast. Start with meals, conversations, or small gatherings. Try simple prototypes. Fail boldly. Learn quickly.
4. Train people in new skills. BreadBreakers trained facilitators. Your innovation might require storytellers, hosts, listeners, prayer leaders, or administrators. Equip them.
5. Launch when momentum builds. Don’t wait for perfection. Start when there is enough energy and clarity to take the next steps.

6. Keep listening, adjusting, and evolving. Continuous innovation keeps the movement alive. Always ask:

   a. What are we learning? 
   b. How is God surprising us? 
   c. Who else needs to be included?
7. Stay rooted in the mission, not the method. If the mission is sacred, the method can change. Innovation remains anchored in Jesus, not in novelty.

A Call to Action: Opportunities for Innovation in the United Methodist Church

Path 1 is ready to help churches interested in innovation. Here are opportunities to learn more in 2026:

• Launchpad 2026 – Training in January and February 2026 designed to help churches launch new communities, new micro-churches, new gatherings, and new expressions of church.
• FXUM National Gathering, February 26-28, 2026, Ocala, Florida – A national movement of Fresh Expressions leaders, practitioners, pastors, planters, and innovators.
• SCD 2026, August 2-5, 2026, Columbus, Ohio – A new pathway for equipping congregations in discipleship that is contextual, creative, and community-driven.

Recommended Resources

• Paul Nixon and Craig Gilbert, Launching New Worship Community: A Practical Guide for the 2020s (Discipleship Resources, 2021)
• Michael Moynagh and Michael Adam Beck, A Field Guide to Methodist Fresh Expressions (Abingdon Press, 2020)
• Lewis Center for Church Leadership at Wesley Theological Seminary
• New People // New Ways Podcast
• Church Is Changing Podcast

Final Word

Innovation is not about fixing the church. It is about joining God’s ongoing work of new creation. BreadBreakers began with one lay leader’s longing to heal a divided world, and God breathed on it. It grew, and it is still growing. Imagine what God might breathe into next: into your church, into your neighborhood, and around your tables.

God’s mission has a church. How will you respond to God’s mission?

If you have any questions or want to establish further connections, please contact Isaiah Park at [email protected].