Thursday, January 29, 2009

 

Ch-Ch-Ch- Changes

Alan Nelson, writing at MMI, says this:
Ever since my work on “How To Change Your Church,” I’ve been perplexed at how many pastors and lay leaders say they want to change, sometimes even hiring consultants, yet how few really ever get around to implementing the changes. Like so many teenagers on the last night of camp, we make tearful confessions that seem to evaporate with the light of day. They give lip service to improvement but for the most part, they’re preoccupied with tending business as usual. I got fired by a church one time that swore it was ready for something new, but when they saw it, they found it too hard to swallow.

Is this the lukewarm issue Jesus talks about in Revelations? Is it the same thing as being unwilling to leave an ailing parent or a parcel of land in order to follow the Master? I don’t know, but I’m convinced that human nature negotiates whatever it can to make us think that we want to change, so long as it doesn’t get to a sense of urgency. Such good intentions cause us to believe we’re making progress, when we’re not. If I really felt urgent about my health, I wouldn’t be carrying around this extra 20 right now. Obviously, losing weight isn’t an urgent matter to me right now, even though I’d like to be thinner.
There is truth here, but also danger. Urgency is usually what motivates dreams to action. However, unchecked urgency often results in very misguided action.

Consider the overwhelming urgency created in the wake of hurricane Katrina and the number of very unfortunate missteps taken by urgent action, unchecked by planning and thought.

Urgency in church circles always worries me, urgency is about immediacy, and God operates on a very different time frame than we do. Can "4000 years" between the fall of Adam and the coming of Jesus be described as urgent? Can centuries between the Exodus and the Davidic kingdom be described as urgent?

Nelson is right that some special motivator is needed to move the church forward, something which will entail change. I can think of no better motivator than a burning desire for spreading the Kingdom of Christ. In fact, such is the only motivator I can think of that will create both urgency and the necessary thought associated with it. I can think of no other motivator that will create a path ahead that does not veer off in some unproductive, even counterproductive, direction.

The problem is, urgency is easy to create ("The end is nigh!"), but genuine discipleship is hard - real hard - extraordinarily hard to accomplish in ourselves, let alone in an organization.

Yet I think we are called to nothing less.

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