Fariza

Several years ago, I sat in a meeting where I pitched a simple software update. It would have saved the ministry hours of work each week and made us look like we belonged in the current decade. The idea was tabled then tabled again. Six months later, it was quietly forgotten, and nobody could tell me why.

That wasn’t the first time something like this had happened to me at a Christian ministry. Unfortunately, Christian nonprofits are notorious for being stuck in the past. Everything often feels archaic — the systems, the workflow, the tools, including the people you have to report to.

At times, working in these environments feels almost as ancient as our faith itself. We might as well start writing on papyrus and sealing our memos with wax because that’s the only way the boomers will pay attention, who, by the way, think that’s a perfectly reasonable workflow.

But jokes aside, the real problem is not our outdated systems or aging technology — it’s our mindset. More specifically, it’s a lack of a growth mindset. 

Most non-profit leaders I have worked with in the past were not forward-thinkers. They were not innovators. They were too traditional almost to a fault, and terrified of anything that looked like “thinking outside of the box.”

Working with these types of Christian leaders would constantly remind me that I was regressing professionally. I watched what was happening in other industries and often felt as though I was missing out on growth opportunities.

The FOMO was real.

At times it felt like real limits had been placed on me simply because I was a Christian trying to build something new. Part of me also thinks it’s maybe because I’m an immigrant, a woman, and a minority in most of the rooms I sit in. I am outspoken, and I don’t shy away from saying what I think. Unfortunately, that combination doesn’t always sit well with people.

So I move on…

I also think that the resistance towards a grown mindset in Christian non-profit and ministry spaces comes primarily from poor church teaching. It is the years of being told not to be “like the world.” We are told that it is sinful to be too ambitious, dream big, and have big goals because that is what the world tells you to do, and God forbid we are anything like them.

Everything is always demonic with the Christian folks.

Don’t get me wrong, a lot of things in this world are demonic. After all, the devil is the ruler of this world, and he wants nothing but to drag Christians to hell with him. That is his primary goal.

However, Christians tend to make this one mistake over and over again — they forget who they actually are in Christ and the authority they have in Him. And too often they begin to shrink themselves and settle for mediocre lives because they have been accustomed to believing the lies of the enemy.

Here is the tension we unfortunately have to live in as Christians: we are called to live in this world — not to be of it but to be in it.

That’s the challenge.

We also have to admit that, as Christians, we often take the very desires and talents God has entrusted to us — gifts meant to further His kingdom — and bury them because we assume those gifts are somehow not “holy.”

We have completely misunderstood the purpose of the gifts that God has given us!

Somewhere along the way, in the midst of our philanthropic endeavors “to make the world a better place,” we forgot our original assignment — to multiply and to subdue the earth the way the Lord instructed us.

We were literally told by the Creator of the universe Himself to pioneer progress.

God commanded Adam and Eve to build, cultivate, rule, steward, and expand Eden.

So who told us that innovation and progress are evil? Why do we carry such a small, scarcity-based mindset when we serve a God who spoke the universe into existence and then made humans in His image to create and develop, just as He does? By nature, all human beings are meant to be builders to further His kingdom here on earth.

Fear-based decision-making is often why so many ministries struggle to steward their finances well. They are slow, sometimes years slow, to adopt the tools and strategies that could actually multiply their impact.

Everything always takes forever to approve because leadership is unsure, overly cautious, unwilling to take risks, and unwilling to hand the next generation any real room to build and grow.

Why?

It all comes down to fear.

Christians are afraid: Afraid of failure. Afraid of the wrong outcome. Afraid of the apocalypse. Afraid of getting it wrong in a way that costs them something. We default to worst-case-scenarios thinking almost automatically. We have somehow absorbed a strange, blended false gospel — a weird mix of poverty gospel and prosperity gospel that never quite agree with each other.

We are constantly told not to love money, and are encouraged to stay content in our self-inflicted poverty, which is supposed to make us feel more “spiritual.” News flash! There is nothing spiritual about going throught financial struggles. Let’s be real, being broke sucks, especially if you live in the US where you are essentially getting charged for merely breathing.

So, we shift in the opposite direction.

The NAR movement and the prosperity gospel have brainwashed us to believe that we can name and claim financial blessings in our lives because God supposedly wants every believer to be wealthy. According to them, if you “sow a seed” — which somehow always ends up paying for a celebrity preacher’s mansion, private jet, luxury cars, or designer wardrobe — God will eventually bless you with prosperity.

Both approaches lead us in the wrong direction.

And this is the tension we live in, the in-between state of constantly swinging from one extreme to the other, leaving ourselves perpetually out of balance.

No wonder we are constantly anxious, depressed, and fearful.

And right now, that fear has a new name: AI.

I watch it happen constantly. Christians treat artificial intelligence like an end-time omen instead of what it actually is — a tool, sitting there, waiting to be picked up by someone with a godly agenda. Instead of treating AI as an anti-Christ, we could actually start shaping and training AI to benefit our God-given projects. We could use it to multiply what our ministries are doing with the limited resources that we already have.

Somebody is going to build the future with AI either way. And if the church won’t pick it up, someone else will, and they won’t build it with God’s kingdom in mind.

Here is the truth that we have to remember: not to be afraid. The Lord tells us that 365 times in the Bible for a reason.

God is literally telling you not to be afraid every single day of your life!

Innovation, progress, and forward thinking are in our God-given nature. We are emulating our Father when we create and build. When you come up with something that didn’t exist before, you are quite literally going about your Father’s business.

That means our response to innovation should never be fear, but faithful engagement.

And even if you believe a piece of technology could cause real harm down the road — that’s not a reason to run from it. Go toward it. Get inside it. Fight it from the inside, where you can actually shape the outcome. Don’t throw your hands up and say none of it matters because you are “about to be swept out of this world.” This type of thinking is not a sign of humility — it is avoidance. And it usually traces back to a particular interpretation of the end-times teaching, one that’s quietly taught a whole generation of Christians that disengagement from the world is the same thing as holiness.

It isn’t!

There is nothing holy about having a scarce, suspicious, and fearful mindset.

This type of thinking has produced a generation of passive, lethargic Christians who sit inside their own bubbles, waiting for the end to come instead of waking up every morning and actually engaging the evil powers of this world.

Remember, you cannot fight the enemy from the sidelines.

The only way to fight is to get in the fight.

“Do not conform to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is — his good, pleasing and perfect will.”

Romans 12:2

So stop being afraid of progress; instead, wake up every morning with a grateful heart, pick up your cross, and build something that matters!