“The more
things change, the more they stay the same.”
That seems to be one of those universal truths, expressing the way life
seems to remain in a state of flux. Actually,
the fact that things continue to change is part of life itself. Whether we’re thinking about single-celled
organisms that constantly move in order to find food—or the larger creatures
called animals that are “animated”—by its very nature, life requires movement;
it requires change.
There is a
technical term for something that never changes: it’s called “dead.”
Congregations
are living things. As a result, they
also are constantly changing. Some see a
difference, however, between change and transition. Change is something that happens. Change is an event, whether we choose it or
not. Transition is how we experience
that change. We have very little say in
whether or not we want change (that is, of course, if we want to remain
alive!). Transition, though, is
something we can control.
In
Philippians 3, we see the apostle Paul trying to lead the people through the
change that the gospel inevitably brings. In this case, it’s the abandonment of circumcision
as a requirement for Christian faith. Whether
they embrace that as transition in the changed reality is another question. Will they come to terms with it? Will they change their practices?
In his
book, When God Speaks Through Change,
Craig Satterlee applies these ideas to congregations in interim, transitional
times. He says that in-between times can
seem “wasted and meaningless.” But that
need not be the case. “Chaos,” he says,
“is more hospitable to new ideas than are standardized methods and routines.” For Satterlee, we
need to “resist the desire for certainty and closure. Congregations often try too quickly to ‘get back
to normal’ when in reality there is no ‘normal’ to get back to.” There is no “normal,” because due to change,
we’re in a new environment, a new world.
What
changes are we facing now? If we want to
choose life, what transition do we need to follow? The season of Lent, with its focus on
reflection and discernment, lends itself well to such questions.
As Henri
Nouwen once said, “When we cling to our own positions and are not willing to
let our hearts be moved back and forth a little by the ideas or actions of
others, we may easily be broken. A
humorless, intense, opinionated rigidity about current issues might cause these
issues to break our spirits and make us bitter people. Let’s be flexible while being deeply rooted.”
(The above also appeared in our church
newsletter.)
