Why is Creative Risk-Taking So Important?

When I was a kid, my mom snuck off to worship early on Friday mornings. And every month or so, it was her turn to bring muffins to share for breakfast afterward. I remember she always made sure to have all the ingredients in the pantry, so she could whip up her one and only recipe (blueberry bran muffins — see recipe below), and take them warm to church.

Like my mom’s muffin recipe, adaptive leadership requires having certain ingredients in the pantry, before you need them. The capacity for creative risk-taking is one of those ingredients. If your congregation has a good capacity for creative risk-taking, it makes adaptive change more possible. As a leader, if you’re more comfortable with creative risk-taking, it’ll be easier to learn and do good adaptive leadership. This is a key indicator I watch for whenever I start work with a new congregation, or start coaching a new leader.

Does your church support creative risk-taking? Do you feel permission and the psychological safety required to take creative risks? Here are three things you can do to build a culture of creative risk-taking in your church.

1. Start small. Micro-dose creativity, risk-taking, and failures so people can experience them safely.
2. Prepare for failure. Talk about risks and costs, feelings about failure, and how you will handle failure when it happens.
3. Resist the temptation of costless idealism (blue-sky thinking).

Checking on your capacity for risk-taking is like making sure that you have good ingredients in your pantry before you need them. Congregations and leaders that had a higher capacity for creative risk-taking going into the Covid-19 pandemic found they had the ingredients they needed for adaptive change, at that moment when they urgently needed them.

But not all congregations and leaders have those ingredients in their pantry. Perhaps for some of you, you knew as soon as I raised this issue: “no way is creative risk-taking possible or safe in my church!” Or you’ll find it out as soon as you try a few of the ideas above.

If creative risk-taking is off the cards for your congregation, get curious. You can learn a some very important things if you’re open-minded enough. Ask: What holds us back from taking creative risks? Ask honestly, openly: What (or who) are we afraid of, and why? (There’s often wisdom to be found when we’re afraid of something or someone.) Game out the question: if I tried something and failed, what would be the consequences? What can I learn about my church from these insights?

It’s always the right time to work on enhancing capacity for creative risk-taking. It’s one more thing to have in the pantry before you need it. You don’t want to go looking at the last moment, and find you don’t have what you need.

To learn more, check out:

The Fearless Organization, by Amy C. Edmondson

If you want help building adaptive capacity in your congregation, or understanding the obstacles that stand in your way, click here to send me a message.

Mom’s Blueberry Bran Muffins

1 cup milk (for best results, use 1 cup Half and Half, and 2 tbsp milk)

1/4 cup oil

1 3/4 cups All Bran

2 egg whites (1 egg)

1 1/4 cup flour

1/3 cup sugar (1/2 cup if you like them VERY sweet)

1/2 tsp salt

1 Tbsp baking powder

1 1/4 cup blueberries

Heat Oven to 400 F

In large mixing bowl, combine:

1 cup milk (Half and Half)

1/4 cup oil

Add:

1 3/4 cups All Bran

Add and mix well:

2 egg whites (1 egg)

In a separate bowl, sift and stir together:

1 1/4 cup flour

1/3 cup sugar (1/2 cup if you like them very sweet)

1/2 tsp salt

1 Tbsp baking powder

Add dry mixture to wet mixture, stirring only until moistened.

GENTLY fold in:

1 1/4 cup blueberries

Stir as little as necessary to mix the blueberries around.

(For best results: add 2 tbsp milk and stir 3 or 4 times)

Spoon into 12 muffin cups

Bake at 400 F for about 20 minutes or until golden brown.