A Blockbuster Bankruptcy: What The Church Can Learn from The Closing of Blockbuster Video
Why The Writing Is Always On The Wall When The Old Order Insists on Doing “What Has Always Worked”
The times, they sure are a-changing! You may have heard in recent months that the embattled Blockbuster LLC video rental chain finally went bust and closed its remaining 300 stores.
This prompted many of us who heard the news to say “what? Blockbuster still had stores that were in operation?”
Many of us thought long gone are the days of heading to a store to pick up a physical copy of a movie and then go back home and after watching it, return it days later. Just writing that sentence makes me see how complicated renting a movie was, and not even that long ago at that!
It’s been at least 5 years since I’ve set foot in a store to rent a movie in that manner as Netflix recently won me over from iTunes rentals, who in 2008 had won me over from Blockbuster physical DVD rentals.
It’s always a sad thing whenever many people lose their jobs, as I’m sure this mass closure will do for those employees who have been working in the remaining stores. However, it’s becoming increasingly obvious that in the digital information age if a video rental chain intends on surviving they need to adapt to the growing and evolving ways people are obtaining their legal downloads.
Blockbuster chose not to, or at least when they did it was too little too late as they were completely unable to compete with Netflix.
We’ve seen this pattern already in the way people are obtaining their music — I’m talking the legal ways, such as iTunes and online services like the Spotify, for a few examples. Not to mention the way e-book sales are booming, and major bookstore chains have closed up shop as e-books are outselling printed versions of books.
Many a brick and mortar store specializing in electronic entertainment such as music and movies have gone the way of the dodo bird due to their inability to also corner the market online. Or in some cases, bother to adapt to it and the concept of supply and demand.
Blockbuster is merely the latest. There are more to come, as people are increasingly opting to go the way of doing much of their lives online.
Instead of Blaming Millennials for Leaving, Find out Why They Are Leaving In The First Place
We’ve seen this pattern play out the same way before.
As an avid reader I thought I’d never warm up to an electronic e-reader until I actually tried one. As an overseas missionary living in Peru, I find an e-reader of the utmost necessity since it’s much more difficult to obtain books in my native tongue here. Therefore the Internet and online bookstores, such as Amazon, help me with keeping up on world news and obtaining the latest books I seek to read.
A couple of years ago when Borders bookstore announced they were going bankrupt and closing all their stores, I remember reading an article where an employee was lamenting how electronic books and e-readers were “killing jobs”. He basically blamed electronic books and online stores for the decrease in sales for brick and mortar stores, and the loss of jobs for a role that is needed even less if the old system it’s contained in no longer exists.
The problem is not changing or evolving technologies. This would be like blaming online schools for the decline in physically attending a college or university. The thing that worries me the most about long-established franchises going out of business as technology evolves and renders them useless, is how many Christians and churches tend to not really “get it” when it comes to changing trends and technological shifts, either. When it comes to understanding culture, we’ve tended to understand it even less, it seems.
Instead of understanding why millennials are leaving the Church or expressing their faith in other ways that aren’t actually backsliding or contradicting the Word of God, it’s much easier to just blame them or find some reason they’re the problem instead of finding out the reason they’re leaving. People haven’t stopped watching movies, they’ve just stopped renting them in the ways people did in the 1990s. Likewise, many millennials are not leaving the church because they’ve abandoned their faith, but because they’re trying to preserve it.
“Blockbuster was rooted in a concept and model that wasn’t prepared for changes in either the formatting of the product, or the means of consumption by the consumers. It was a perfect system for a very limited set of options, for a very specific and limited time.” (Source: link)
I used to love going to Blockbuster and finding a movie with friends or my brother in order to watch shortly thereafter. But that was before I could instantly stream a movie online with Netflix or download it to my computer via iTunes.
Unfortunately, I could point to these rapidly changing technologies and methods for obtaining digital content and find other parallels in the Church. We view the success that past events and strategies have had, and expect them to work in the changing culture around us. I’m not talking about changing the message or adapting the Bible to the times. I’m merely referring to understanding how people communicate or receive information now. Sometimes the success of an event or a method is time-specific and not normative. God‘s calling and purposes were different for Noah, Abraham and Moses. What each did in their generation was not what every successive generation after them were called to do.
As a website builder and podcaster, I’m finding there seems to be this “cut off” age where many pastors and leaders and older people are just not persuaded that they should jump on board and get with the program given its wide reach, and its use. Granted there are many who ARE, and I’m on a few mailing lists and follow some of them on Twitter, listen to their podcasts, and so forth.
But I’ve noticed many many who don’t. Whenever I hear someone insist on sticking with “what has always worked”, I know they’re on an eventual path to obscurity and irrelevance. Many, but not all, stubbornly cling to their old ways of doing things, no matter how increasingly irrelevant some methods and mindsets are becoming or have already become. I am also not saying technological innovation in itself is a goal or the end, but rather a tool and a means to an end. It should supplement our efforts at reaching, impacting and making disciples.
I highly recommend a good post by Mike Breen at his discipleship blog, where in a previous post he stated some interesting points I’m going to borrow for this post:
With the American church shrinking in size and influence, innovation is undoubtedly needed. The stats to support the church’s decline have been well documented. Only 15% of Gen X and only 4 % of Gen Y regularly attend a Sunday service. Moreover, 62% of Americans say they would never go to a church service…
Yet the innovation that’s required is for new methods to reach the 62% who aren’t likely candidates for a worship service conversion. A re-imagining is required of how the Church can incarnate in a way that is relevant to that growing segment. So my first challenge for Christian leaders is to think of innovation beyond technological means.
In the same way, Blockbuster’s model only worked for one generation in particular and not the next. For the years where our digital entertainment needs were met in the fashion of going to a store and renting the DVD, and didn’t have the vision to adapt to emerging technologies that generation’s kids started using.
Likewise the church would do well to pay attention to how the next generation is being influenced and impacted by the culture around them and take notes instead of making assumptions that if it worked previously it will work next time.
