Are you ready for this kind of change in the church?
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Someone said the only one that likes changing is a wet baby. The person was probably right. Change is not always a popular experience, and it can produce a lot of damage if it is not done wisely, carefully, and lovingly.
Change is never trivial no matter how small that change may be. I remember the first time I ditched my robe in a church I served. You can't imagine the uproar it caused in those pews. What is Tom doing walking around the pulpit teaching without wearing a robe?" It was as if I had ascended the pulpit in my birthday suit. I can write and laugh about it today, but I can tell you I wasn't quite prepared for the reaction I received. That experience was a stark reminder to me of the 'tumult' that change can produce, no matter how small that change may be.
Today we face major changes in the church. A friend of mine who is a church consultant suggests the last time the church faced this kind of change was the Protestant Reformation, over 500 years ago.
The pandemic has forced church change in ways most of us could never have imagined. Whoever thought that 20-40 percent of church members would suddenly be sitting at home on Sundays watching their church services over the internet. And many of those sitting on sofas and worshipping from the comfort of their living rooms, may choose never to return to the sanctuary. We may not like these changes, but they are most likely here to stay, and so we must find ways to adapt and adjust to those changes if we want to remain relevant.
I love to be in live services where I can sing, pray and worship, and where I can hold and hug other brothers and sisters in Christ. But there are some brothers and sisters who may choose to never return to be held and hugged. As a result, the church must find ways to adapt and adjust to meet our changing culture.
We should not see this as an unwanted compromise of giving in to culture, but of doing something new and exciting to reach our culture. I don't particularly like such change, and while it may be a hard and painful reality for me to accept, I know to ignore it could diminish our outreach to a sizable segment of our population that needs to hear the gospel.
I don't want to be among those echoing the famous seven last words of the church—"We never did it this way before"—and lose an opportunity to reach those who might not grow up worshipping the way I do.
When people allow their personal preferences to usurp the church's efforts to reach people for Christ, the church is in danger of becoming irrelevant. When change happens in the church that I don't like, I must always remind myself that the church is not here to serve me and my preferences or traditions. It is here to reach the world, and if that change can help in accomplishing that goal, I better be championing it no matter how I personally feel about it.
I am encouraged when I think of Isaiah's words, "See I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland" (Isaiah 43:19).
In the end, I know the church is His Church, and I can stand on the promise that because it is, the gates of hell shall never prevail against it.
 | Tom Crenshaw serves as Connections Pastor of the New Monmouth Baptist Church (non denominational) where he previously served as a three year interim.He has been married to Jean for almost 50 years, and they have four children, all of whom are teachers.Tom loves perennial gardening, umpiring high school baseball, coaching baseball and football, fishing for small mouth bass, rooting for his favorite team, the Cleveland Indians, and listening to ‘real’ country music, the classic kind. Learn More » |
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