“The holy anxiety for the Gospel is the only anxiety that gives peace.”
Pope Francis
As an apostolate, we have spent the past few years dancing around the role technology can play in our service to the Church. It seems nearly impossible to keep pace and keep afloat in the whitewater rapids of tech. As we have talked with potential vendors and partners, I have often been asked to describe the “Minimum Viable Product.” This phrase always rubs me the wrong way. After all, one of our apostolate's core values is the “highest standards of excellence,” how could I possibly provide something that was only "minimally viable"? Complaining about this to one of my friends who works in the secular tech space, I asked him to defend this horrible term. He smiled and said, “The vision for the product isn’t any less grand, Dan, it’s just the best we can fulfill it today.”
Later, as I thought about our conversation, I wondered, as a Catholic leader do I see my daily life as a “minimally viable product"? Do I keep the bigger vision of Christ ahead of me as I iterate my leadership response to the best it can be today, realizing there will always be room for growth? Is my anxiety to improve based in a needless and foolish perfectionism, or in the Gospel? As we strive to become the disciples we are called to be in the future, let us remember that it begins with the disciples we are today.
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