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Photo Courtesy of UMC LEAD
Trash Soccer Ball
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Frugal Innovation
This video shows how one man uses found materials to create soccer balls.
A professor recently showed me the video below as an example of what he calls “frugal innovation.” In the video, we see a man in a Congolese village picking up scraps of garbage from the ground and packing them into a dense clump. He then takes pieces of string and, with impressive skill, tightens the clump of trash into a soccer ball that works as well as any FIFA regulation ball.According to Nesta, frugal innovation “responds to limitations in resources, whether financial, material, or institutional, and using a range of methods, turns these constraints into an advantage.” It is creating something new out of old parts. Trash becomes a soccer ball.
Frugal innovation is not trying to do the same thing with cheaper materials. It means starting with the perceived weakness, and building on that. In India, General Electric is paving the way in frugal innovation by “taking the needs of poor consumers as a starting point and working backwards.” According to the Economist, “frugal innovation is not just about redesigning products; it involves rethinking entire production processes and business models.”
The idea can actually be seen in the story of our Christian faith. The way Paul put it was, “…[God] said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.’ So I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.” In this construction, God does not work in spite of weakness, but through weakness.
Or we may think of that little story of Jesus on the cross. The symbol of utter helplessness, a Roman crucifixion, becomes a symbol of eschatological hope.
The question before us, then, is simple: What is frugal innovation for a mainline denomination like the United Methodist Church? We know our limitations all too well. Everywhere you turn, someone is talking about debt, building liabilities, or institutional faults. How can these constraints, though, be turned into advantages? How can we make assets out of liabilities?
One obvious answer lies in the buildings: old churches, their congregations thinning out, collecting debt and becoming increasingly unable to pay for it. We could look at these buildings and see only a trash heap of debt and liability. Or, we could see an abundance of space. I have written before about the “shared-space” model practiced by the Center for Transforming Communities in Memphis, TN. The CTC turned an old church building into a gathering place for multiple congregations, non-profits, and individuals. As the work of non-profits and churches grow more intertwined, how can churches see their empty spaces as an opportunity to empower others seeking to do the hard work of loving our neighbors?
When planting new churches, do we follow the old model: meet somewhere temporarily until there are enough people and tithes to buy a building, then keep growing until population shifts send us into decline in fifty years and the church has yet another building to figure out how to frugally innovate? Or do we ask how a church, the body of Christ-followers, can gather and serve and love without the weight of a mortgage?
What about the people? How often do we hear the term “aging congregation” applied disparagingly to a church? We look at a community and see only the demographic constraints of their age. Anyone who has spent any actual time with these elderly people, however, knows how many unseen gifts lie in their minds and their hearts. They have the gift of stories that can enliven our faith and color the world around us in ways we have never seen. They have the gift of skills lost to twenty-first century technology. They have the gift of wisdom that comes only from a long life of experiences. Learn how to identify those gifts, harness them for the revitalization of a congregation, connect people across generations, and that “aging congregation” can become a thriving community where we see people’s humanity before we see their age.
These are just some of the ways frugal innovation can happen in local congregations. Where do you see opportunity for frugal innovation? What about at the institutional level? How about the ways in which we train and ordain clergy?
If we can collectively look around us with new eyes, seeing opportunities for innovation where we once saw only broken things, we will not just be practicing a new business plan. We will be practicing resurrection: new life out of what seems dead.
Gabe Horton is a student at Vanderbilt Divinity School and a pastoral intern at Belle Meade United Methodist Church in Nashville, TN. This article is reprinted with permission from UMC LEAD.