Change

Not long after moving to California to  preach in the late 80s, I was at a seminar down in the Silicon Valley.  I went to a local sandwich shop for lunch and noticed a tip jar with sign taped to the outside, which read, "If you are afraid of change, leave it here."

The church where I was preaching was learning and growing and changing at the time, but not without some real resistance.  A very vocal segment of the membership was not on board and even some in the leadership had serious problems with it.  I wouldn't necessarily say they were afraid of it, I think their attitude was a bit like Will Roger's viewpoint on death: "It's not that I'm afraid to die.  It's just that I've been alive for as long as I can remember and I don't like change."

The problem with change is that it is unfamiliar and unpredictable.  It is impossible to say how much different it will look like and what it might lead to in time.  Even for people who are not particularly happy with how things are gong (i.e. church decline) are often not welcoming change (i.e. new growth) as it looks so different that it is unsettling.  Often unhappy people are willing to "deal witth the devil they know rather than face the devil they don't know."

I'm not suggesting that all change is good or that all change is to be accepted.  But I am saying that change happens in any living organism.  If it does not, life come to an end.  The only people  not changing are found in communities know as cemeteries.  If you are doing nothing else, you are growing older.  When you stop dong that, you stop period.

And, growing older comes with change as does all growth.  Some of the aging process is welcome (wisdom) some is not (girth) but change is coming.  But that doesn't mean we are simply pushed along by the forces of change.  We can navigate those changes in ways that are more or less beneficial.

For instance, metabolism slows as we age.  We can continue to eat like we've always eaten and "blossom" as we age.  Or, we could modify the way we eat preventing the middle age spread. Our  mental processes slow down.  So, do we just let the light go out or do we read more, expand our horizons, challenge our precepts?

As churches age, things change as well.  The vibrancy of the beginning gives way to the complacency of the plateau of the managing years, which gives way to the decline of the end.  Churches, like people are born, live and die.  Unless, they are reborn, make a fresh start, speak a new language of a new generation.

Ready or not, willing or not, change will come.  The only question is: Are we going to navigate it or be "like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind" (Js 1:6)?  The sailor doesn't resist the wind, he sets his sail to allow reaching his destination despite the changes in the wind.  As individuals and as church communities, we must do likewise or we will be driven off course by the winds of change and very possibly upon the rocks of our own undoing.  Jus' Say'n.