Dear Friends,
This Pandemic season is bringing a lot of change with it, and such change can be unsettling. Someone once said the only one that likes changing is a wet baby. That 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.
Today we face a culture that is fast changing, and that change has not been lost on those of us in the church. Outdoor services, masks, social distancing, and online zooming for meetings and small groups are a new phenomenon for all of us who are so used to the traditional way of doing church. This change has been hard for church members, but it has been especially hard for pastors. Many of them are stressed by these changes-increased workloads, inability to be with their people in time of need, endless hours of video taping services, and incessant chatter about masks or no masks- are taking their toll on them. Just yesterday I read an article, “6 Reasons Why Pastors Are Quitting Their Churches ” during the pandemic, and they are doing so in large numbers because the changes have been just too much for many of them to handle.
Change is never trivial no matter how small that change may be. I remember the first time I ditched my robe while pastoring one Sunday morning a number of years ago in a church I served, and you can’t imagine the uproar from some of those in the 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.
When people allow their own 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 have to 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.
In the book, Gaining by Losing, J D. Greear, shares a story of how one of his members dealt with change. She had a great appreciation for hand bell music, and she became upset when she discovered the church was about to sell their hand bell set so they could purchase some newer music equipment, specifically some new guitars. “This lady, who loved worship, was more of the organ, bells, and horns persuasion than the drums, guitars, and rhythm one.”
Confronting the pastor, she shared something that he didn’t know. Those hand bells, which had been stored away in the closet for years, were the result of a gift her mother had given to the church shortly before she died.
In speaking with the woman, Greear writes “After a couple of long, awkward seconds, I said to her, “Well, don’t you think your mom in heaven would be glad to see us using instruments that would help us reach this next generation-including her grand kids and their friends?”
“She thought about that for a second, and then said, ‘Well, yes . . . I suppose my mom would be happy with that.’”
“She requested that we not sell the hand bells but donate them to another church, which we gladly did. Yet she did not resist seeing them go, and she did not leave our church when we shifted our worship to a more contemporary one. Today over 2,000 college students attend our church each weekend.”
Greear concludes the story with these words: “Because of the selflessness of this woman and many others, our church is reaching a whole new generation (Gaining by Losing, J. D. Greear, p. 90).
It is true that as Robert Schuller once wrote, “every end is a new beginning.” And those of us who protest change may miss the joy of seeing what God is ready to do with “new beginnings.”
See you Sunday!
Yours in faith and friendship,
Tom
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