The Mash-Up

by Eddie Pipkin

I went to see the local opera company perform this week, and I had a great time. I realize that puts me squarely in the nichiest of niches a person can inhabit, culture wise. That’s why the opera folks are passionately invested in doing what they can to keep their work relevant, not just engaging to legacy audiences but also intriguing to up-and-coming generations as well – sound like a problem faced by anyone you know in ministry? The opera folks, producing the French take on Cinderella, known as Cendrillon, had expanded their creative horizons to bring in artists from a variety of other disciplines. The effect was transcendent! This strategy often works wonders: I call it “The Mash-Up.” And you, too, can benefit from its use.

The whole purpose of the Mash-Up technique is to get unlikely partners together to collaborate on projects. (In fact, some people just call this strategy collaboration.)

What makes the Mash-Up stand out from the normal concept of collaboration is the degree to which it embraces “unlikeliness.” Now, that’s a cumbersome word, but perfect in telegraphing the awkwardness that accompanies the beginning stages of a Mash-Up. It’s not necessarily that a collaboration doesn’t make sense as a concept – the very best results of a Mash-Up can seem obvious after the fact – but the trick is how to move a nascent concept forward, a concept which can often start as merely the spark of an idea:

A collaboration of two unlikely partners, people or programs that you wouldn’t normally think of working together.
A collaboration of two programs or events that seem unlikely to even share a common goal or purpose.
A collaboration of two partners with entirely different skill sets or modes of operation.
A collaboration of two partners who, on paper, make perfect sense but who have historically not gotten along.

Any of these combinations are ripe for breathing creative life into worn out traditions or struggling ministry efforts. If you’re stuck personally or professionally, an unlikely but timely partnership is one of the methods by which you can kick-start some fresh energy. The collaboration requires us to retool our thinking and explore our priorities. It forces us to get out of our routine and articulate exactly why we do things the way we usually do them.

It will be more work. Always, a collaboration will push us into uncomfortable places as we trade ideas, seek compromise, and share power and credit for our efforts. The fact that collaboration requires more work, particularly with an unlikely partner, is the chief reason that people avoid it (or at least never manage to get around to it – even an idea that seems intriguing in a brainstorming session can get shelved for the mythical time when we have more time and resources to hypothetically embrace it – and, let’s be honest; there’s never enough time and resources to undertake such beguiling ideas; it’s only when we take the leap of moving forward with them that the time and resources are activated).

The extra effort required of unlikely collaborations is a classic case of extra work being worth the stress and struggle:

It builds relationships (often new relationships that can lead to so many good and unexpected things down the road).
We learn new skills (because we are partnering with others from whom we can learn, even as they are in turn learning from us).
It takes our ministry (and/or our lives) in unexpected directions (because we are exposed to ideas that might not otherwise penetrate our status quo).
It requires us to deepen our faith (because the uncertainty of it all obliges us to seek practical sustenance from the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control).

These are all productive outcomes. Even if the result of the collaboration itself does not meet our full expectations, the bonus effects can spark wonderful outcomes and change our trajectory.

In the case of the opera I saw last week, the leadership had brought on board creative partners that included dancers from the ballet and musicians from the philharmonic, as well as set designers from other local arts groups. The results were beautiful and breathed refreshing moments into a familiar tale. These collaborations made logical sense in many ways, although dance is not always a feature of the more static staging of opera, but even more unlikely (in a way that will be familiar to church leaders) is that these separate arts groups can often be competitors for resources and attention. This is “silo” thinking, when each group in a space feels like resources and audience are a zero-sum game, so that one subgroup’s success means taking away the focus from another subgroup.

Church life is rife with silo thinking. Small interest groups are famously parochial in their thinking and passionately defensive of their perceived territory. These attitudes are neither healthy or biblical. They can become problematic. Such insular thinking (and actions based upon it) create intense pockets of connectedness among the insiders of specific subgroups – they often begin with a fiery sense of purpose that accomplishes great things – but that often morphs over time into an ossified attachment to the original idea and the deep connections of an insular few are outweighed by a strong effect of rejection and exclusion among those who are not part of the clique.

The Mash-Up effect is a tonic to combat the natural tendency of silo thinking.

Unlikely collaborations can create empathy between groups that have thought of themselves as competitors. They can renew our sense of shared purpose. They can open our eyes to the unique gifts of individuals and the subgroups they represent. They reinforce respect for craft and the value of underrepresented stories.

When I was teaching creative writing at the local university, there was a season in which they tried an experiment in which all beginning engineer students were required to complete a semester of “Intro to Creative Writing.” The engineering students hated it. I loved it. It forced me to rethink my whole approach, confronted with participants who saw no value in what I was offering them. It was a stimulating challenge, to get them, over the ensuing weeks, to appreciate the benefits of creative approaches to thought and expression. Most of them, by the end, begrudgingly admitted that they had learned new things that would be beneficial for them as professionals and, even more importantly, as humans navigating the world.

Thus is the power of the Mash-Up.

What have some of your favorite unlikely collaborations been? Do you have a process by which you initiate Mash-Ups in your personal and professional lives? Give some thought to what that might look like for you and the institution you serve, and be prepared to push back on the common objections people will express to pursuing them.