All Change!
“There is nothing permanent but change” Heraclitus
And there is nothing more exhausting. Even young men and women grow weary. But continuous change is here to stay so we all have to learn to cope.
“Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be...”
Think back to just 25 years ago (when I was sweet sixteen and hardly ever been kissed - sexual naivete in 16-year olds is certainly a thing of the past...) In 1966 we made comb-cases for sailors at Christian Endeavour ‘Floating’ evenings; we occasionally substituted a trendy song from Youth Praise for a hymn from the new Baptist Hymn Book; we wondered whether to drop Afternoon Sunday School and thought Lady Chatterley’s Lover was outrageous; Real Christians didn’t take Sunday Papers or go into a shop on the Sabbath and evangelical Christians knew that number 79 in CSSM was “I am feeding on the living bread...” (“Let’s have the girls asking the question and the boys replying...”) God was still addressed in Thee’s and Thou’s and I was taken to one side by the minister when I turned up for church in a jumper (although still with a tie) - “Would you go to see the Queen dressed like that?...”
Apart from the few gentle readers who are already thinking, “So what’s changed!” most of us are only too aware that there have been a vast number of significant changes in the world, our society and the church.
“All change is perceived as loss.”
When 70-year old George dies, we do not go to widow Edith with encouragements like: “He was pretty old and useless anyway, and there are plenty of younger, better men around. A younger husband would improve your image. So just forget George and get to like a new trendier husband.” Of course not. We understand bereavement.
But how many times have I heard (and sometimes said): “They were crummy old pews. Let’s just dump them and get the new chairs... The hymn books haven’t got anything written after 1910. We’re better off without them... The BB has served it’s purpose and is wildly outdated, so let’s scrap it and start an open youth club...”
The changes may be right and proper, but the pastoral insensitivity which accompanies them is totally inappropriate.
Alvin Toffler talks about PSZ’s - Personal Security Zones - in his classic work Future Shock. We all need them and sometimes they comprise familiar surroundings (I still remember the secure feelings engendered by the gentle hiss of the gas heaters in my old church on a winter’s evening), hymns, people, procedures... For 20 years the arrangement of bits and pieces in the drawers of my desk has changed very little. I don’t actually use the sealing wax in the Bendicks Bittermints box, but it is somehow comforting to know that it is there. When for three weeks I was living out of boxes in the vestry down in Torquay - sleeping under the Communion Table where the carpet was cleanest - my emotional life fell apart and I would find myself sitting on the floor in the corner of the vestry sobbing. My PSZ’s were shattered and I could not cope with the everyday stresses of ministry. It was a great and painful spiritual lesson for me.
“Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” George Bernard Shaw.
PSZ’s can also exist in our mindsets, and one of the hardest areas of change that we have to face up to is the change in our own theological outlook. It is why we often suppress doubts and honest questionings. “What if I were to become a liberal!” But personal change is essential if we are to grow as people and as Christians.
Last time I wrote in The Fraternal, it was on Preaching Genesis I-XI. Nearly ten years on, I would write quite a different article. My interpretation of Genesis One has changed radically, and it was a very anguished 2 years of full-time research which led me to review and alter my position.
Some leaders do not mind changing everything in the church structures as long as they do not have to change their own theological position on anything. Stephen Madden was in his 90’s and back in his old congregation when I went as a young minister to Torquay. What I admired greatly in him, was his ability to change his mind about various theological issues during his lifetime - even in his 80’s. He was secure in Christ and there was little solid ground anywhere else. He would tell me of views he had held during his ministry, and then chuckled at the thought of them.
It is interesting that old age often gives security and the middle-aged are those most threatened in the church - the men and women who have to face up to so much change in the family and at work and so put have all their PSZ’s at church. I suppose the wise, older men and women have lived through so many changes that they feel no threat in even more. As Harold Rowdon, retiring after spending most of his life teaching Church History here in College, put it, “The advantage of teaching church history when you are my age is that you’ve lived through most of it!”
“When it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change.” Viscount Falkland on the Episcopacy, 1660.
But too may changes at once can push the stress levels up to danger point. Gaius Davies in his book Stress, gives The Social Readjustment Rating Scale: ranging from 100 points for the death of a spouse, through 50 for marriage, 31 for taking out a mortgage, 24 for revision or personal habits, to 13 for the changes brought about by holidays and 12 points for Christmas! It’s a good chart to fill in when you wonder why you feel as though it’s your turn to have the nervous breakdown.
We counsel the bereaved not to make too many changes too soon, yet in personal growth and church life we often expect far too much too quickly. Despite modern technology and Instant Renewal, the mills of God still grind slowly. In my spiritual formation classes, I always encourage students to try and change but one habit at a time, and even then to take at least six months per change. We all know that crash diets really don’t achieve much. It is the steady discipline of change that which brings about real growth in Christ.
“We never did it that way before.” Seven Last Words of the Church.
Coping with personal change is hard enough but at the same time many of us are involved in institutional changes of one sort or another. And because people are involved in these changes, they involve far more than simple logic and planning.
Some churches just bury their heads in the sand and hope that it will all revert to how it was in the good old days: the “It’s Nicer When It’s Just Us” brigade. There is some justification for this as the experience of change in church life over the last 50 years has been mainly negative - where are all those young people drums and guitars were going to bring in? The church has steadily declined in most parts of Britain.
“Define the issue, get the facts, consider alternatives, make the decision, and Do It!” Leith Anderson.
But life’s not like that. As we have seen, changes involve emotions, personality conflicts and even spiritual warfare. The ‘charismatic splits’ of the last 30 years have had more to do with change, threat and security than with theology.
Most of the changes in the past 50 years have been negative - change may help some but it will hinder others
“There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.” Machiavelli
Short-term ‘units’ rather than organisations are one way forward: a choir that rehearses 6 times for an Easter Service and is then disbanded; a series of ten prayer breakfasts for men (we found they needed the teaching and experience more than women!) on a Saturday morning at a local hotel; 6 prayer meetings about the new community worker... the ‘units’ start and finish, but many organisations start, fossilize, aggravate, and eventually die. Flexibility is the key in a rapidly changing society.
Good communications are another crucial ingredient. Good teaching, repeated to different groups in different ways must precede change. Then tell everyone everything you can ; avoid secrecy and let everyone know what the elders and deacons are discussing. Give a 2 minute summary in church on Sunday. Especially make sure you spend time explaining to the opinion formers.
It’s a bit like having a baby without being pregnant for 9 months.
The leaders have spent many hours and days in discussion, in the gestation of the idea. Then the “baby” is suddenly presented at a Church Meeting which has 45 minutes to make up its mind! No wonder there are so many unhappy births. The congregation must share in the pregnancy if it is to be a healthy baby.
All this is at considerable personal cost, as for most leaders, changes mean more work, the loss of a comfortable pattern, unpopularity and grief - there is no renewal without pain. There are no short-cuts and we must all beware of manipulation - it will rebound on you! But those who sow in tears will reap in joy.
“Change is the angel of a changeless God.” Archbishop Stuart Blanche
In the sovereign purposes of God, he has called us to be a pilgrim people. He constantly shakes our world (Heb.12.22-28) so that we can clearly discern the things that cannot be shaken and place all our hope in the City of God and Jesus Christ who is the same, yesterday, today and forever. (Heb.13.8) Read through the book of Numbers and see how again and again God reminds his people that their security is not in the ‘flesh pots of Egypt’, but in God himself. That’s difficult. But Jesus warns of the consequences of longing to go back to the Cities of the Plain - “Remember Lot’s wife!” (Luke 17.32)
Whether it is personal change or change in our churches, they all throw us back onto God. “All my hope on God is founded” is never more true than in times of rapid change. Our faith is renewed; we come to an end of self and church ‘schemes’; we throw ourselves upon God and find in him our strength and shield.
Let me tell you a story by Anthony De Mello:
“A prophet once came to a city to convert its inhabitants. At first the people listened to his sermons, but they gradually drifted away until there was not a single soul to hear the prophet when he spoke. One day a traveller said to him, “Why do you go on preaching?” Said the prophet, “In the beginning I hoped to change these people. If I still shout, it is only to prevent them from changing me.””Now was your first reaction to this story that the prophet was a faithful goody - or that the prophet was an intransigent baddy? Most of us are somewhat ambivalent in our attitude to change. We want it, and we hate it. Prayer for grace and wisdom becomes an imperative.
The old nun’s prayer has never been truer:
“God, grant me the SerenitySelect Bibliography
to accept the things I cannot change;
Courage to change the things I can
and the Wisdom to know the difference.
Leith Anderson, Dying for a Change, Bethany House, 1990
Peter Brierley, Vision Building: Know where you’re Going, Hodder, 1989,
David Coffey, Build that Bridge, Monarch, 1986
Robert D Dale, Pastoral Leadership, Abingdon, 1986
Gaius Davies, Stress, Kingsway, 1988
Lyle E Schaller, The Change Agent, Abingdon, 1972
Alvin Toffler, Future Shock, Pan, 1970
Alvin Toffler, The Third Wave, Pan, 1980
Spring Harvest Seminar Notes, 1989
Leadership VIII/4, Fall 1987, ‘Change’
Baptist Ministers' Fraternal 3/91
