In an age of Velcro, brewed decaf, and microwave popcorn, everyone is affected by change. Hundreds of thousands of people changed jobs this year. Some forty million changed addresses (including the Shelleys).
Not long ago the LEADERSHIP staff was musing about changes in church life.
“Yeah, church camps used to be tent frames and army cots,” said Jim Berkley. “Now they’re air-conditioned retreat centers.”
Kevin Miller and Larry Weeden immediately contributed a list of what’s “out” and what’s “in.” Trips to the Holy Land, for instance, are out; Christian cruises are in.
Also out: guitars, “facilitating,” and mega-anything. The in list featured electronic keyboards, “taking charge,” and power-anything.
“And before long,” Kevin predicted, we’ll probably see HONK IF YOU LOVE JESUS changed to HONK IF YOU LOVE JESUS . . . AND DISCLOSE YOUR FINANCIAL STATEMENTS.
Amid the laughter, I began reflecting on our ambivalent feelings toward change.
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 change is necessary to accomplish it, well, we’ll do it.
We like to joke about the crusty folk who resist good ideas 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 once; it didn’t work.”
We “change agents” are beyond such primitive prejudices.
Yet in my more honest moments, I find I resist change as much as anyone.
Fred Craddock tells 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,” says 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 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?’ ” Fred reflects, “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: We want some changes.
Yes, most of us are for change, at least in theory. But changes are often 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 more resistant).
Sometimes proposed changes will cause us more work. Other times, they may be a painful good-bye to what had become 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’ve been thinking about Fred Craddock’s story recently as our church is in the process of adding a pastoral staff person, revising the makeup of the church board, and launching a building program and fund-raising campaign-all simultaneously.
As a member of the church’s executive committee and one partly responsible for launching these ventures, naturally I’m all for the changes.
But it’s also good to remember that for many people who haven’t been wrestling with the underlying factors for several years, these changes may feel like their first-born has just been shorn.
Marshall Shelley is managing editor of LEADERSHIP.
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