Coping with Change
“Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe” Hebrews 12.28
I must have told you about the strict Baptist minister visiting Newmarket. Out of curiosity he goes to the race course and knowing that nobody knows him there, decides to have a flutter. He goes to the paddock first and is intrigued to see a Catholic priest praying in Latin over a horse. He is even more surprised when it wins. The priest prays over two or three more horses and they all win.
So finally he lays half the church funds on the next horse the priest prays over. The horse starts well but then keels over before the first fence and dies. The minister is distraught and rushes to ask the priest what happened. “Ah that’s the trouble with you Baptists,” the priest replies, “you don’t know the difference between a blessing and the last rites.”
It’s said that the Seven Last Words of the Church will be “We’ve never done it that way before.” The Church does not have a good track record for coping with change. Whether it’s Copernicus and the earth going round the sun, or a new Archbishop who is being tried for heresy before his episcopal bottom has touched the throne.
And we Anglo-Catholics are sometimes the worst. ‘How many Anglo-Catholics does it take to change a light bulb?’ ‘Change!’
Heraclitus had the measure of things in his much slower culture than ours: “There is nothing permanent but change.”
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.
First there is a very important characteristic of the human psyche.
“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.
I remember trying to get rid of the pews in one of my churches. I knew I had lost when I found myself denouncing the pews as uncomfortable, jerry-built, Victorian monstrosities. This was no way to prepare people for a bereavement.
What I and others said about the pews may well have been true, but their departure from people who had sat in them for 20, 30, 80 years would be perceived as a real loss. My arguments were pastorally insensitive. (They removed the pews ten years after I left.)
Alvin Toffler, in his classic work Future Shock, talks about PSZs - Personal Security Zones. We all need them and often they comprise familiar surroundings with the comfort that they bring. I still remember the secure feelings engendered by the gentle hiss of the gas heaters in my old church on a winter’s evening.
For the past 30 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, I thought I could cope until my nice new flat was ready.
But I couldn’t. My emotional life fell apart and more than once I found myself sitting on the floor in the corner of the vestry sobbing. My Personal Security Zones were shattered and the everyday stresses of ministry overwhelmed me. It was a great and painful spiritual lesson for me.
And what is often true about the routines of our daily life and ordering is sometimes even more true of our mindset.
It was George Bernard Shaw who observed that “Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”
One of the hardest areas of change that we have to face up to is the change in our own theological outlook: our view of God and the church.
There is sometimes a psychological play-off we indulge in. As we become less certain about some of the doctrines of our faith we become more dogmatic about liturgical procedures. We may not be too clear any more about what we believe concerning heaven and hell, but we know exactly what speed the ‘Our Father’ should be sung!
Stephen Madden was a retired minister in his 90s when I went as a young minister down 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 80s. He was secure in his faith 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 all their PSZs in the church.
Of course 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 of 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 encouraged students to try and change only 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.
Archbishop Stuart Blanche once wrote that “Change is the angel of a changeless God.”
All this unavoidable change is there to help us grow in grace. 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)
If you read through the book of Numbers which tells of the Israelite pilgrims on their long journey from slavery in Egypt to the Promised Land, then you will see how again and again God reminds his people that their security is not in the ‘flesh pots of Egypt’, but in God himself.
Or while Abraham lived with God in his tents among the hills, his nephew, Lot preferred the security of the cities of Sodom & Gomorrah. But our Lord warns in the Gospels of the consequences of longing to go back to the secure Cities of the Plain with that enigmatic little phrase in Luke - “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.
Now an interregnum is not a time for major changes. It is hard enough to be bereft of our Vicar. For many of us he was a very important part of our Personal Security Zone. We are too fragile for too many changes too soon.
But it is a time for taking stock. For thinking about where we are, and praying about where we might be. Some will be frustrated because they want to get on with things. Others will be apprehensive about an uncertain future.
In these ‘in between’ days, the old nun’s prayer has never been truer:
God, grant me the SerenityAnd in all the changing scenes of life, we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, regular in our attendance at the sacraments, gratefully receiving the security of the Body and Blood of Christ. As the writer to the Hebrews puts it:
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can
and the Wisdom to know the difference.
“Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe” Hebrews 12.28
