My favorite sport in the world is surfing – both to do and to watch. As we were driving along recently, my wife told me that the body that runs surfing globally, World Surf league, (WSL) had announced they had a new CEO.
Later that night, when the kids had all gone to bed, I googled the news, as I wanted to see who the CEO was. I’m sure you have absolutely zero interest in knowing who it is, but in case you really care, it is Erick Logan, formerly of Oprah Winfrey’s OWN studios and initially brought to the WSL to help them get their TV content up to 2020 standards.
I’d send you the link to read the article for yourself, except the comments are pretty crude and I don’t wan to be responsible for sharing that sort of language with you. Anyway, that is the point of my article: the comments.
I am not sure why, but I finished the article and then scrolled down to read what people thought. That is when I realized how narrow-minded people can be. Essentially, the comments were largely negative. (‘keyboard warriors’, they call them; people who are probably nice in public, but turn nasty online.)
Immediately, I thought about how small-minded people are. The billionaire who bought the sport did so because his family loves it, cares for it deeply, as is shown by the $100 million he has ploughed into it to get it up to a globally acceptable level with TV and entertainment executives, yet here were all these comments just hammering the WSL about how progressive it is.
It seems the world of surfing wants to go back to the ‘good old days’. They want the care-free sport, not the CEO with the MBA and the sport run by TV executives.
The bottom line is the world has changed forever and we can never go back to the way it was. Smartphones aren’t going away. Social media won’t disappear. The old days are over, and you can either embrace the new day, or get left behind.
Churches are not excluded from this. Many are becoming more savvy in their approach to be able to survive, much to the disappointment of old-school Christians, who want it to be just like it was back in 1985.
Robert Schueller-style gowns are not coming back. Ever. Nor are Benny Hinn hairdos. They are done and dusted. Church will be a lot of online and podcasting, more and more people will access the Word from smartphones than hard copy Bibles.
Business will be digital and virtual, and even states like California trying to protect their workers in this gig economy will not be able to hold back the changing workforce in the gig economy.
What is it in your world that you need to let go of, or perhaps even learn, allowing you to enter into a brave new future, or at very worst ensure you don’t get too left behind? For all of us, the old days are over.
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Matt Danswan is the CEO of Initiate Media, publishers of Christian Woman & Co. He also blogs at www.mattdanswan.com and is the author of NOT Business As Usual.
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