The Bathwater

When change happens too quickly, and we are not quite ready for any of it, we are always in danger of things going wrong. Change happens in all walks of life, whether at work, in the family, or even our relationships, however in my experience there is no more dangerous place for change quite like a church fellowship.

Since change will always happen in all walks of life, we must accept it and get used to the idea, but it is never a good thing to make changes without taking the other affected people along with you. If they are left behind, the intended changes can only partly be made, if at all! However, I believe the greater danger is that some will be so adamant about the benefits of change that the baby is thrown out with the bathwater. Not only does nothing positive happen, but we are left further back than we were before the change was proposed. There are times when doing nothing is better than any change.

Now here’s the dilemma. We dearly love in the Lord those who differ from our own views, and like them I want our church both local and general to grow, but…. what if those strongly held beliefs on each side do not come together, or agree? What if each side thinks the other has it partly or all wrong? On one corner the old timers who don’t want to change if it’s for change’s sake, and on the other side the younger progressive who wants the church to change in order to better relate to the world and the sinner? Both would agree that the end result of changed lives for the Kingdom is the most important outcome, but there needs to be some agreement in how we go about it!

An engineer is responsible in helping to make change happen, and in my case that would have been a new process or product introduced in an assembly line. The changes were usually obvious, needed, and went ahead without any difficulty. Occasionally however, a change would fail, either in part or the whole, and had to be cancelled. My experience was that undoing the change was more difficult, expensive, and took longer than the effort and time taken to put it into place. One of the real deep seated outcomes was the loss of confidence in the minds of the staff who operated the assembly. They rightly expected those with the authority and responsibility to think it through beforehand and get it right by the time it was implemented. My parallel is this: Much care is needed to prevent changes being made in a church fellowship which would create more problems than they would solve. This could show itself in regular attendees losing morale, confidence, respect, and sadly in some cases attendance. No one wants that! A rule of thumb is, the greater the proposed change, the greater the risk of it going wrong at least in part. It is worth remembering that human nature is the same as in Bible times, and more importantly that the Gospel still applies because:

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Hebrews 13:8

Grand Old Duke

You might just remember playing the party game and singing this song:

“Oh The Grand Old Duke of York

He had ten thousand men

He marched them up to the top of the hill

And he marched them down again.

When they were up they were up

And when they were down they were down

And when they were only halfway up

They were neither up nor down”

Now we find ourselves between Christmas and the start of a fresh new year, and after the events of the past year, possibly feel in “no man’s land”, or “neither up nor down”. Join the club, because this can be a dead week. Neither the fun of Christmas giving, nor the wonder of what lies in store for the year that’s yet to unfold. These can be down days.

We need to be reminded that although for us, every day is not the same, and our feelings go up and down, blow hot and cold, feel dark and depressed, our great God is none of these. It is important that we stop feeling, and start thinking and taking God at His Word. He is not subject to whims of feeling, but a sure and certain God in His dealings with us. So faithful pilgrim, when we feel down, remember, and hold on to these words which will get us through:

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Hebrews 13:8

Similar?

Picture the scene. There is a disturbance and your life is threatened, so you call the police to step in and stop the gang fight right outside your house. A crowd is gathering to watch and some are stepping in to take a side, and then the police arrive. Only now you realise the police are also dressed like the brawling gangs, so when they try to stop the fighting no one knows who is who, and the criminals escape while the police sort out who is on their side. It’s so much easier when you can tell the lawbreakers from the lawmakers, right? That’s a very good reason for our emergency services wearing a uniform. You know who they are.

Why then do Christians try their best to fit in with the rest of the world and be like them? We try to be one of them, because we don’t want to scare them off we argue. A similar discussion follows with dress code, music, places we go, movies we watch, magazines we read, what we drink, and the list goes on. In the meantime, we see our declining church attendance, and continue to think being the same is the answer, so when one similarity fails, we try to add another, and we find that doesn’t work either.

If you want a different answer, you have to try a different approach. Doing the same thing time and again, gives the same result time and again. The Christian life makes us different on the inside, and so we should be different on the outside too. What will the enquiring, unsaved person think when they look at us, and see a mirror image of themselves? If we are going into the world to fight against the evils of sin, shouldn’t we be seen as different?

We are called to be a sanctified (set apart) people, with an obvious love for the Lord and each other. That means seekers of truth should be able to know where to turn, and who to turn to because they should see Jesus in us. Churches do not need to copy the clubs and pubs in the world with lights, music, and feel good speakers who do it better than us anyway. We should be preaching the gospel of repentance and salvation, not cosying up to people and groups who already may know where the truth lies, but all they can see in us is a shallow form of Christianity. May we never be like the church group mentioned in Matthew 23:27 when Jesus says “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of …….all uncleanness.