Eastman-Kodak was a model for success in the 20th century. The photography giant once owned 90 per cent of the market in the industry. But when the market started to change and digital photography started to replace film, Kodak was slow to adapt. A year ago Kodak filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
Just like Tommy Hilfiger, a once dominant company that tried to stay ahead of trends, and in the process forgot their core values, Kodak is the other extreme to the problem of how to deal with change.
Just because it’s always worked doesn’t mean it will always work.
Kodak was once THE pioneer of the photography industry. Starting with founder George Eastman in 1885, they were at the forefront of every breakthrough in the film and photography industry for a century.
It’s hard to argue with a model that produces a 90 per cent market share. Imagine if we sat here today with 90 per cent of the world’s population serving Christ!
Still, Kodak was unaware of the change within their own market. While companies like Apple began to revolutionize the industry through digital imaging, Kodak continued to invest in better and more efficient ways to use film.
What lasted over a century took only a decade to be virtually dismantled.
Your “product” may be great, but if it doesn’t meet the needs of the customer…
Even at the end, nobody did film like Kodak. They endured threats from rivals like Fuji and continued to stay atop the film market. The problem was the demand for the film market began to disappear and nobody at Kodak seemed to notice until it was too late.
Many of Kodak’s film rivals successfully transitioned to the digital world: Fuji, Canon, Sharp and Sony are all examples of analog companies that successfully adapted to a digital marketplace.
They all did one thing that Kodak did not: they let go of their successful analog models and invested in the reality of a digital market.
The Digital Church
The Christian Church has enjoyed an even longer run at the top of the “religion market” than Kodak had with film. Like Kodak, the church faces a similar challenge. The Christian “model” isn’t broken, per se, but that doesn’t mean it’s not time for a change.
Successful marketing doesn’t necessarily mean being the first on the block to have the latest bells and whistles. If in that process you divert from your core values (in Christianity, the cross of Christ), then all the latest technology in the world isn’t going to help your cause.
At the same time, leadership can’t be blind and deaf to the market. They’ve got to understand what the people need and want. And that isn’t something that remains static.
I recently had a conversation with a church leader who wanted to put together a “manual” for his congregation on how to evangelize. After I shook my head, I told him that the step-by-step checklist he was looking for didn’t exist.
Reaching the lost and the hurting of our world is no different in many respects than it was in Jesus’ day. You have to go out among the lost and the hurting, discover their needs, and address them.
In Jesus’ day, that meant meeting with the outcasts and the downtrodden, those whose needs society had not only failed to meet, but had ignored. The lepers, the poor, the ostracized. Those were Jesus’ target audience.
That same audience exists for today’s church. There’s no manual or checklist for how to meet their needs other than to relate to them and offer help where no one else has.
Different Times, Different Needs
One hundred years ago when our culture was still very limited in its mobility, the church’s function as a “community pillar” met a great need. Membership in the church community was of critical importance to its members who would spend most if not all of their lives together. The church was one great family filled with many families who laughed, cried, celebrated and mourned together as they passed through life.
Today’s world is nothing like that. Our world is transient. Families aren’t being born, working and dying within a 25 mile radius. That means the needs of the people in the community are now different.
While our world has gotten more integrated through improvements in travel and technology, it’s allowed us to redefine our sense of community. We now have a number of options where we can share those life moments. Church can still be one, but that’s no longer needed to be a vital role.
So what is needed?
Are there still the disenfranchised among us? Are there still people suffering? Those are the people who Jesus targeted for his ministry.
Our “community” model worked well for a long, long time. And if the world hadn’t changed, it would probably work just as well. But it has.
That means we’ve got to get back to our core value.
Kodak forgot that it was really about what George Eastman started doing back in the late 1800s: bringing home and preserving quality images of life. Instead, they became about the medium, film, rather than the message.
Is the church facing the same challenge in the digital world? Will we remember the message, the good news of the risen Christ who sets the captives free, or will we stay stubbornly stuck to our traditional media?