In 1884, George Eastman founded the Kodak company and patented the first roll of film. This invention revolutionized photography. In 1900, Kodak released the Brownie camera, the first camera aimed at mass ownership. It cost $1, was easy to use, and it quickly made Kodak a household name. Later, the company created the standard film that would be used by the film industry for nearly a century. Then in 1975, a Kodak engineer invented a truly groundbreaking piece of technology: the first digital camera. In 1975! Executives for Kodak quickly recognized the potential of the first digital camera and had the technology hidden, because they recognized that it was the death of film. The corporation that became a world leader by inventing and innovating chose to destroy their invention rather than risk their film sales. In the late 80s, when digital photography became an inevitability, engineers at Kodak created the first mass marketable digital camera, only to have it rejected by their executives because it would damage film sales. When digital cameras became popular in the 90s, Kodak again refused to invest in the technology because they were concerned about damaging film sales. In 2012, Kodak filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The company that became a household name through innovations that put a camera into the hands of most people, lost sight of that approach in the name of protecting the comfortable position they held. Reading of the rise and fall of Kodak made me think about the church. The early church was given a mission by Christ at the end of his earthly ministry: Go into the world and make disciples, baptizing them and teaching them to do all that he has commanded. It’s not a complicated mission, but it is a revolutionary one. The call to become a disciple of Jesus involves more than just showing up to church on Sundays and listening to sermons. It is a call to become a new person who is first and foremost a follower of Christ. It is also a call to take on the mission Jesus commissioned them to take on. In the space of 300 years, that simple mission took the church from an obscure group of a few hundred in a backwater country to the largest religion in the world. Unfortunately, in the thousands of years that followed, many in the church have shifted their focus from making disciples of Jesus to building bigger buildings, keeping the doors open, having comfortable pews, wielding political power, Christianizing the culture, or some other thing that is not actually the mission of making disciples. As Kodak demonstrated, it’s easy to drift from the things that make the church a world changer. It’s easy to lose focus on our mission. I often read books and articles that lament the decline the church and its influence in the world. In reality, what they are seeing is the result of the church getting distracted from its primary mission. Fortunately, returning to it is easy. The earliest believers had a fraction of our resources and opportunities. All they did was tell folks about Jesus and share their lives with each other. Disciple making is just helping each other grow spiritually while living life together. Jesus did it by traveling around with 12 guys and teaching them about God while they went. We can do the same with our kids and those we share our lives with. Some of us need help growing ourselves. A simple way to start is to ask a more mature believer to spend time with us and help us grow. We just have to remember that the mission of the church is disciple making and then do it.
