The Church After Innovation, Andrew Root
The Church After Innovation, Andrew Root
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The Church After Innovation
Questioning Our Obsession with Work, Creativity, and Entrepreneurship

Author: Andrew Root

Narrator: Mike Lenz

Unabridged: 9 hr 44 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 03/14/2023

Synopsis

Churches and their leaders have innovation fever. Innovation seems exciting—a way to enliven tired institutions, embrace creativity, and be proactive—and is a superstar of the business world. But this focus on innovation may be caused by an obsession with contemporary relevance, creativity, and entrepreneurship that inflates the self, lacks theological depth, and promises burnout.

In this follow-up to Churches and the Crisis of Decline, leading practical theologian Andrew Root delves into the problems of innovation. He explores where innovation and entrepreneurship came from, shows how they break into church circles, and counters the "new imaginations" like neoliberalism and technology that hold the church captive to modernity. Root reveals the moral visions of the self that innovation and entrepreneurship deliver—they are dependent on workers (and consumers) being obsessed with their selves, which leads to significant faith-formation issues. This focus on innovation also causes us to think we need to be singularly unique instead of made alive in Christ. Root offers a return to mysticism and the poetry of Meister Eckhart as a healthier spiritual alternative.

About Andrew Root

Andrew Root is Carrie Olson Baalson Professor of Youth and Family Ministry at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota. He is the author of more than twenty books, including Faith Formation in a Secular Age, The Pastor in a Secular Age, The Congregation in a Secular Age, Churches and the Crisis of Decline, The Church after Innovation, and The End of Youth Ministry? Root is also coauthor (with Kenda Creasy Dean) of The Theological Turn in Youth Ministry. He is a frequent speaker and hosts the popular and influential When Church Stops Working podcast.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Robert on January 14, 2023

We live in an age of innovation. Change is taking place everywhere. Those who succeed in this age embrace innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurship. It's happening in the wider world, of course, and for the most part, I'm glad. I like my smartphone, vaccines for a virus that has spread across the......more

Goodreads review by Conrade on October 11, 2022

Each year, Apple enthusiasts celebrate the latest new iPhone. Software gets upgraded with more features that are better, faster, and more powerful than the previous generation. The old gets replaced by the new. It is a modern phenomenon that many of us are used to. Just like the Olympics where the p......more

Goodreads review by Diane on March 15, 2025

As with the other Andrew Root books that I have read, the writing is at times dense, and the references are from many different disciplines (history, theology, philosophy, popular culture), but the conclusion bears fruit. "Perhaps in our secular age of authenticity and the drive for singularity, what......more

Goodreads review by Mmetevelis on September 07, 2023

This is a well argued book about the professional context that main-line clergy find themselves working in. Root with one hand firmly rooted in social theory, and the other incisively observant about the culture exposes the beating pulse around church inc. which is the constant flood of authenticity......more

Goodreads review by Todd on October 21, 2022

Andrew Root argues that the church's infatuation with work, creativity and entrepreneurship is driving us further from our mission, and further from the presence of God rather than closer. I like Andy's work, and I've read all of the other books in this series. This book, however, felt a little like......more

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