This morning in our pastoral team meeting, we talked about change - which is apparently to be the sermon topic for this week. Together, we mulled over such questions as:
- Do we (people in general) really want to change?
- What are the motives for change?
- How do we go about changing?
- What support/inspiration/prodding do people need in order to change?
- What sort of change do we need in our church?
Good question, all...but too often short on definitive answers. This congregation has changed a lot in the last two years, and we're looking at more change, but it needs to be focused, intentional change.
I am also freshly returned from the inauguration, where I stood about as far from the actual ceremony as one could possibly get and still be considered to be on the Mall, packed shoulder to shoulder with such an immense number of people that I feel the 1.9 million estimate I heard today must be about a million short. The word "change" was whispered, discussed, and shouted all around me, not just on the jumbotron, but by the crowds who had traveled to participate in the occasion. Such a hopeful feeling pervaded the event that I can't help but think of the possibilities of real, nationwide - and by extension worldwide - change.
Meanwhile, the Church Herald's February issue also seems to be very much about change, albeit not so explicitly. For some, being "missional" is merely a change in language; we can't forget that there are people and churches who have long been focused toward God and the world rather than toward their internal issues (even without knowing the word "missional." Shocking!). For others, this is such a complete paradigm shift that they're having a hard time conceptualizing what it might look like.
Nonetheless, the call is clear. The church, like the government and the culture, needs to change. But what that looks like and how we get there is not so clear.
Clayton Smith's article about emergency responders struck a chord with me. I hadn't previously thought about how emergency responders might fit (or not) in the church, but I meet people every day who, for one reason or another, just don't feel like they have a place in the church, even if they are people of deep Christian faith. Usually, these are people who are just not good at the things that so often define church life. They are not good at sitting passively while someone talks at them. Rising occasionally to recite something in unison or to sing a hymn does not help them connect with God. Spending more time in meetings deciding what to do than actually doing things doesn't sit well with them. The world of committees and sedate corporate worship is not their world; it doesn't seem to have any connection or relevance to what they deal with in the rest of their lives.
These are valuable people, valuable to God, valuable to the world, and valuable to the church. But in order to engage them, the church will have to change. The church will have to be less defined by orderly sitting and standing, and more by walking out the door.
Change is in the air. Now it's just a matter of taking the word and the hope behind it, and turning it into the action that gets us there.