Change or Die

This evening I was watching "Heroes" (yes, I'm a Heroes geek). My thoughts were sparked by the opening lines... "We are, if anything, creatures of habit, drawn to the safety and comfort of the familiar. But what happens when the familiar becomes unsafe…"

We are creatures of habit and we look for the comfortable. We serve a God of comfort but all too often comfort is our God. If you’ve noticed the title for my blog is "changeisgood4u". I believe that change is necessary for growth to occur in all aspects of our lives, but the familiar and comfortable are too often enemies of progress, and no where is this truer than in the church.

The following thoughts come from Erwin McManus’ book "An Unstoppable Force"...

If you don’t like change, you’d better not become a Christian. Once you belong to Jesus, change is inevitable. Our whole Christian experience is an experience of change. It is an experience of putting off the old and putting on the new. Repentance is change, conversion is change, regeneration is change, transformation is change, and sanctification is change.

When we move into talking about the local church we seem to lose our handle on this truth. We tend to think of the need to change the outside. Our communities need to change; our city needs to change; our nation needs to change; the world needs to change. Everybody needs to change except the church.

Communities around many churches have changed dramatically, yet the church has stayed the same. And while the transition has been taking place the local congregation has either been unaware or unconcerned.

The church was designed by God Himself to thrive in our radically changing environments. But it requires the church to adapt to the culture that it finds itself in. In the realm of the natural world adaptation is the difference between living and dying; I believe it is the same for the church.

Too often we have been content to keep our traditions and loose our children. At the core of so much of the resistance the church is experiencing is the preservation of selfishness and self-centeredness. It is one thing to have a preference; it is another to demand that one’s preferences be honored above the needs of those without Christ.

Change needs to occur to thrive; God wants us to remember what He has done in the past, but He demands that we not live in the past. Isaiah 43:18, "Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See I am doing a new thing!" Our memories of God’s activity in our past are to propel us into the future.

We serve the changeless God of change. He is the God of creativity, imagination, and revolution. When traditions trap us in the past, they stifle the imagination, bring an end to creativity, and make innovation impossible.

While God instructs His people over and over again to remember all His great deeds, He doesn’t call us to live in the past. As Erwin McManus says, "We must leave the past, engage the present, and create the future."

Ok, I’ll hop off my soapbox labeled "change". What do you say; is change a good thing/bad thing/neutral? Obviously some changes bring about pain, and people can change for the worse. What changes are necessary for us to make in order to thrive in our local ministry context? What is the latest change that has occurred in your life? Share your thoughts...