But We’ve Always Done It This Way

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At our last Beta-Vitality event the words above were identified as… evil. Well, not evil, but not helpful and to be avoided. If the church stays the same it will die. Change is a given – all of life is change and the task is not to set up some structure to fight the change but to know how to be transformed through the change.

The title of the Module is Welcoming and Anchoring Change by Anchoring a Process. Sound convoluted? It identifies a process as the anchor – the solid ground to stand on in the midst of change. Normally in the face of change we try to hold onto the structure of our lives – in the church, the programs, classes, worship schedule, staffing, committee structure – anything that feels normal. But if change is inevitable if we hold on to the structures of our church we will be resisting change and saying, “We’ve always done it this way!” To anchor ourselves in a process is to accept that we must change the structures of our church – classes must change, sometimes staffing has to be reassessed, programs will naturally come and go. What we need it guidelines to help us go through the change so that we are transformed.

One of the tools Rev. John Haller gave us is a 10 step process for dealing with change that actually starts with a bold remark: Remember to behave! The steps are:

What is under consideration? How important is this at this time? ((It seems natural to ask this but often we will assume that a new thing is good simply because we like it – we get all excited about the prospect of a new building, we work on the plans without first really discussing whether it is the right time to build.)
What is the underlying purpose that this is attempting to accomplish?
Who should be involved in the consideration? Who makes the decision?
Is this in line with our Church’s overall mission? (This begs the question, are we clear about what our mission is? I think we have made good progress in better identifying our purpose and mission, but the committee agreed we need to work on this some more. If we don’t share the vision, how will be agree on the change?)
In what other ways might this same purpose be accomplished?
(Is a new building the only/best way to deal with our growth?)
What factors must be considered? What obstacles overcome?
What next steps are needed?
Has there been sufficient prayer and consideration been given?
If this is true, Go for it!
Remember to thank everyone.

Many of the models like this that are coming into the church originated in the business world. I told the group that I have always been troubled with this because the church is different. For example, in the church, when we ask “who should be involved in the consideration?” we have to broaden the scope. In a business one can narrow those involved in making a decision in order to be more efficient. If this is done in the church many will feel left out. In Japan there is a saying: polishing the roots. It refers to going down to the very bottom of an organization to solicit feedback – in other words, everyone must be involved. In the church we are also talking about people, and the nature of our union is a family; families are very different than businesses.

Another way in which churches are different from is that businesses is that our mission is not profit, efficiency and growth. Of course we want to grow, but we are trying to create the Kin-dom of God. We have to look beyond what is good for the “share holders” and consider the whole – the good of the whole community and not just the members of it.

When we are faced with change in the church it is important that we don’t hold onto the way things have always been done. We have to pay attention to how we go about responding to change – what process are we following? We particularly have to be mindful of polishing the roots, understanding that we are a family and not a business. We have to communicate, communicate, communicate! And finally, I believe we have keep in mind that we are trying to recreate the kin-dom of God. Change is inevitable. The task is to make whatever change is coming transformative. P.Jim

So far in confirmation we have had classes on God, Jesus and the Bible. This coming Saturday the topic is, The Holy Spirit and Living a Christian life. Some of the things we will be talking about are: What is going on to perfection? What is holiness? Stages of Faith, Spiritual Disciplines, our Spiritual Biographies, Spiritual Experience and Spiritual gifts. We have a great class – please hold these young people in your minds and hearts.

Faith in an HIstorical Context

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In our Adult Sunday School class we continue to talk about the story of our faith in an historical context. Hopefully not in some dry fact based way that we may have learned history in high school, but looking at the spirituality of our fore fathers and mothers. How did they relate to God? How did they understand prayer? What was the source for their faith? We have passed the Reformation and Enlightenment now – two movements that greatly influenced how we see the world. Through the Reformation we inherited the belief that the primary source for our life and faith is the Bible. In most of Protestant Christianity this remains the case. At the extreme end you have “Bible Believing” churches. But even in our own Discipline of the four sources of faith in our Methodist Quadrilateral scripture is identified as “primary.” But in the lives of people today that may be changing.

In the first chapter of their book If Grace is True Philip Gulley and James Mulholland essentially say that it is experience that is primary. They are Quakers and since Quakers have always believed in the Inner Light of God within each person this may not be such a revolutionary idea to them, but to Baptists, Presbyterians and especially those Bible Believing churches it is somewhere between a curious idea and an anathema. I think that logically it is hard not to see experience as foundational. Once one acknowledges that the Bible was written by living people both gifted and flawed; that what they wrote was filtered through their experience then doesn’t experience precede the Bible almost by necessity? When I calmly observe myself I have to say that I experience even before I feel or think – feelings emerge out of experiences and thoughts give shape to experiences, much more than the words I now type which are one step further from my experience. If we begin to acknowledge this what could it mean for our life in the Church?

I think we would begin to see the Bible differently. Neither as an historical account nor as a rule book for life but as the story of our faith – the story of the relationship of God with the people of God. We would understand that the Bible is an expression of the experiences of people who come before us written down in narrative, poetry, prose, sayings and song – through the tools that they had to express those experiences and the feelings and thoughts that emerged from those feelings. Bible study would be less about what the meaning is, and more about how we enter into the story. We would also be telling more of our own stories of life and faith in the Church. Never in an individualistic fashion as if we could be extracted from our context and all of our relations but in and through that context and relations. In one of our Wednesday class sessions we were talking about seeing our “selves” in a more fluid way, not as a ball that remains the same traveling through time bumping into other like balls, but as an ever changing web or experiences and relationships. We cannot talk about our story outside of our relations and hopefully not outside the stories both of the Bible and the history of the faith – call it biblical relativity theory.

In a sermon a few weeks back I shared about Harvey Cox’ new book, The Future of Faith in which he claims that we are in the middle of a paradigm shift. He sees three stages in the story of Christianity: the first was the Age of Faith when a feeling of awe and wonder and trust was what defined spirituality. Then with the advent of Constantine and Christianity as the religion of the Empire there came the Age of Belief: Religion was focused on accepting proposals about Jesus and God – that is, the Creeds. Now, he says we are entering the Age of Spirit where we concentrate on spiritual experience, story and again, trust. How would our life in the church be different if we considered this – and we concentrated less on considering what we believe and more one how we experience God?

Marcus Borg, who recently passed away, wrote a final book, Convictions: How I Learned What Matters Most, and one of those things that matter most is religious experience. This coming from a very intellectual person, he describes his spiritual experience and says of them: “these episodes of sheer wonder, radical amazement, radiant luminosity, often evoke the exclamation, “Oh my God!” So it has been for me. And for me that exclamation expresses truth. It is the central conviction that has shaped my Christian journey ever since. God is real, “the more” in whom we live and move and have our being.” Amen to that. P.Jim