Diffusion of Innovations

CNLP 836 | The Strengths, Weaknesses and Moral Failures of the Mega-Church Movement: Jimmy Mellado on Healthy Growth, Scale, and Lessons from an Olympian

The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast, 15 October 2026. The book comes up at 52 min 6 sec in.

Guest Jimmy Mellado describes encountering 'Diffusion of Innovations' by Everett Rogers while trying to understand what the Willow Creek Association actually was. He explains the book as an executive summary of 4,000 studies of how new ideas spread through society. Mellado then traveled to meet Rogers at the University of New Mexico, where Rogers identified the WCA as a 'diffusion network' — a framing that shaped Mellado's entire understanding of the movement.

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