Change Is Constant

All the church leaders I know consider themselves flexible, innovative, forward-thinking. So do I. We North Americans, after all, have an image to uphold as pioneering spirits. If there's a job to do, and if some creative adjustment is necessary to accomplish it, well, we'll do it.

We like to joke about the crusty folk who resist change by invoking the seven last words of the church: "We've never done it that way before" or the more acceptable modern paraphrase, "We tried that before; it didn't work."

We like to consider ourselves immune to such primitive prejudices. Yet in my more honest moments, I find I resist some changes as much as anyone.

Change is good, but even good transitions involve loss.

Years ago, I heard Fred Craddock tell of being parked at the curb, waiting for his wife to finish shopping, and seeing a young woman in her late twenties sitting in the next car, dabbing at her eyes with a Kleenex.

"I didn't know why she was crying," said Fred, "but I had time, and I'd had a course in psychology, so I decided to figure it out: Her husband's in a tavern around the corner. The budget won't permit the new dress she'd picked out. She's gotten a letter from home, her mother is ill.

"I went through the whole thing, when out of the barber shop in front of me came a young man, about thirty. He had in his arms a boy who looked about three, and the boy's hair was cut as short as can be. Back in the car, the young woman grabbed the boy, kissed him all over his head, and cried and cried."

Then, according to Fred, the woman said something to the man. He shook his head, but she kept talking. They argued.

Finally, red-faced, the man got out of the car, went back inside, reached under the barber's chair, picked up a lock of blond hair, and came back out.

"Now," Fred reflects, "if I'd gone up to that young woman and said, 'Why are you crying? Do you want your child to stay a baby forever?' she would have said, 'Oh, no, no, no. But … I've lost my baby.'"

Put in that context, something happens to the flavor of the words when they come out of the mouth: Change is good. But even good transitions involve loss.

Yes, most of us are for change, at least in theory. But changes are bittersweet.

In the church, what determines how I feel about a particular change?

Most of the time, the key to my attitude is whether I am initiating the change (in which case I'm all for it) or someone else is imposing the change upon me (which tends to make me resistant).

Sometimes proposed changes will cause us more work. Other times, they may be a painful good-bye to certain relationships or a comfortable pattern.

But perhaps the biggest reason we resist changes imposed upon us is that they demonstrate that someone else has more power, and they are creating changes we have to live by. Or else it's a situation that's beyond our control (like the inexorable movement of time), and we're not always convinced we like that.

I thought about Fred Craddock's story recently after some staff changes here at Christianity Today. The departures and the arrivals are all good. But they are painful, too. Our church is going through transitions, too, with the same mixed emotions. No matter how well the vision is cast and the reasons for change enumerated, so many feel like their first-born has just been shorn.

As we talked with pastors like Jonathan Falwell and Jason Meyer and John Mark Comer and others about this issue, all of whom have made significant transitions recently, I was impressed once again that our posture toward change (whether chosen or imposed) is still at heart a spiritual test: Will I accept what God is doing and embrace my new role with faith and hope and love?

Marshall Shelley Editor