The Radical Ability to Change

Over the last year I have been in looking at systems of change and how to create a process of change in congregations that are helpful and healthy, so that the congregation will be prepared to change again in the future as needed. Anyone who has spent a long time working in a church knows that it is often the simplest things, like changing the color of the carpet in the sanctuary that can create the largest fights amongst good Christians. The famous seven last words of a church are "we've never done it that way before." Change is not something that comes easily to people in general and the church in particular. Today I was told the story of the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Carondelet and the work they did in the Twin Cities area. The most interesting part of their profound and energizing story was one that happened very early on. When the Sisters first arrived in St. Paul they started out by opening up a school to teach. A few years into their experience, a wave of cholera swept through St. Paul. As the story was told me, the Sister's took down the sign above their school that said "St. Josephy Academy", crossed out academy and wrote "hospital" and then they hung the sign up again.

What I want to know is how do we in the church get to that point? How do we get to the point where we are not only listening to where the spirit is calling us, we are actually willing to act on what we hear? How do we get to the point that we can not only see Christ in our neighbors and in our community, but we can also reach out to him and follow him where he will lead us? I work so hard to help the churches I serve to have a vision that there are times I am ready to settle for any vision, rather than working for us to find God's vision for us.

I think churches need to have the sort of flexibility that the Sisters have. When I think about church buildings, it seems we often build them in a way that does not lend them to change. We build houses of worship that do not have a lot of functionality, even for different forms of worship. I am not saying we need to build churches that are nothing more than empty shells, waiting to be filled, but we do need to see them as being more than what they are today, remembering that what they are needed for tomorrow could be something different. Sometimes the biggest problem with churches is not how the spaces are designed, but how they function in our mind. Sometimes the problem is not that we cannot use the space for something, but in our heads we cannot.

Jesus reminds us that the Sabbath was made for humans, not humanity for the Sabbath. Churches are made for us as well. I think we need to look at how we continue to be open to the new ways that God is calling us into action in the world. We in the church need to learn to shape ourselves in ways that are flexible to how the winds of the spirit blow in our lives, how God wants to shape us and mold us, each and every day. I do not know what it will take too live like that, to be like that, but the more I think on this, the more I want to shape my life and my ministry in that way.