Reflections on 2020: Change

Hey friends,
welcome to Sunday evening conversations as we start the season of
Lent and as we try to in a digital format recreate something we’ve done
here for a long time a soup and study that has happened on Sunday evenings in Lent.
This year of course we do that differently and as we thought about the
topics and what we might put together we came to this idea of a conversation
about what we have learned.
We hope that you’re able to join us on Wednesdays as
well when we’re releasing interviews with people asking them that very
question what their experience of the past year has been and what they have
taken out of it.
Those are really interesting snapshots of different
people’s experience but we thought that the two of us that Michael and I would
spend some time reflecting on some of the themes we think we have identified
as we have navigated both professionally and personally this strange
and odd season that we have all been through because on one hand we are all
kind of going through the same thing on the other hand each of us have a little
different picture of it and a little different experience of it and we start
tonight in what I think is the obvious place the reality of change and the
difficulty that change poses for us and no secret that in the year 2020 and
moving into 2021 we have no shortage of change to deal with.
Yeah I wonder if to
some extent this is a low-hanging fruit if you think about things that have
happened in 2020 I think change probably comes to the front of all of our
imaginations pretty quickly and to some extent change is a conversation that’s
always with us it’s always a struggle whether that be I’m trying to change my
diet I’m trying to change my physical practices you know I’m trying to change
some of my bad routines we all know how hard it is to change what makes this
season so distinct and and maybe unique in our lifetimes is it is an event that
has forcibly required us to change in a kind of universal way now I’m not saying
that all of us changed or had to change in the exact same ways but there is a
kind of universality to the fact that this change happened at this moment for
everyone and that’s not I think always true and so in the midst of our own
personal struggles with change I think we can map that upon a much larger
social communal even global kind of tidal wave that happened and so you have
people struggling with change and then you have the collective union of those
people right churches communities states nations you know entire groups in
the world struggling with that socially at the same time and what that does I
think is it saps our willpower it saps our ability to really sustain that
change if you’ve ever tried a small change in your life I’m gonna you know
stop eating salt or so much salt and you tried to knock that out of your diet
you know how hard it is to read the labels to ask the waiter hey could you
hold out the salt on this it takes energy both thought energy and will
energy and I I wonder if we could see in this year Clint how that has required
the cost of us it has required that we expend some of that willpower to deal
with this onslaught of change around us I think there are two kinds of ways
that we experience change and they’re both hard but they’re different kinds of
difficult one is when we try to make changes say I’m going to lose the weight
or I’m going to stop smoking or eating the wrong food whatever it is and we
work toward that change and that’s hard because it demands that kind of
discipline and energy practiced over time but then there is a different kind
of change in which something is thrust upon us an illness or maybe a change of
status or lifestyle whatever it might be and that’s hard for different reasons
because then rather than trying to work toward the change over time that change
tends to happen quickly and it redefines the landscape it changes our patterns
our assumptions and I think probably both of those things were true for many
people in 2020 but certainly that second type of change in which in a
relatively short period of time we all lived in in a different reality than we
had been we had new rules we had new questions we had new practices we had
new limitations and that kind of change is difficult when it happens all at once
because now it doesn’t just demand discipline it demands trying to sort out
a whole new way forward and many of the things we’ve developed to deal with the
life we had are now less helpful than they were and it leaves us just sapped
it leaves us feeling like we constantly don’t really know what’s happening or
where we are or how to respond to it I think that’s exhausting for people I
think if we look under the hood there Clint the difference between those two
types of change the ones that we set ourselves towards and the change that
happens to us is that there’s a fundamental difference in agency in
other words in the one we feel like we’re driving the ship in the other it
feels like we’re simply trying to hold on while the ship is navigated and I
think especially for adults it is a struggle when we feel like change is
imposed by our circumstances of course but also by other people when we’re kids
and when we’re in school when we have parents that we’re living in their home
we’re used to the structure that happens when you have authority figures who say
this is what you need to do then this is what you need to do and there’s a habit
and practice of responding being flexible changing because you have no
other choice and I think I’ve seen that lived out it’s been fascinating I wonder
if you agree that in so many ways the changes that have been required of
elementary middle high school students
seems to have been easier for them to
make well hey listen if I’ve got to do this to go to school I’m all on board
and it has not been so easy for parents for adults for people struggling to try
to figure out how these changes fit in our lives I wonder if that does reflect
this sort of agency that we’re not used to agency being taken in this way and
that makes change even more unbearable yeah I do think there’s a personal aspect
in there somewhere Michael some people are just simply more adaptable to change
less dependent on patterns but certainly age could play a role in that the longer
that I’ve done something a certain way the harder it is to to change that to
navigate that and and for children who often don’t have that they may have
structure but they may not have set patterns it might be that’s an
interesting insight it’s probably easier for them to navigate some of that the
other fundamental difference in those types of change that I think we might see
is that when I aspire to a change I almost always inherently think of that
change as positive if I want to be in better shape or I almost always said a
positive goal that I’m working to the change that happens to us quickly and
forces us to adapt I think almost without exception initially we
experience that is negative that that feels like an unfortunate change in our
reality and I think that does give it a certain nuance a certain color and I
think you know it creates a scenario in which we have to have this new thing
that we didn’t ask for and there’s a temptation in that moment then to miss
simultaneous simultaneously while we’re trying to adapt to the new thing we’re
also grieving the old thing and it is difficult to do those two things at once
and it’s difficult to do them both well well when we’re reflecting on on what is
good and bad in our life or maybe said better what we appreciate in our life
and what we would wish to do away with in our life I think we often do turn to
the past to give us a a guide for for that experience in other words you know
how do you know that you like this kind of meat in your spaghetti or that you
like this kind of burger as opposed to this one or this kind of fry right it’s
ultimately you had a good burger or you had a great experience on that vacation
so in the future when you go do a thing we do measure what we’re doing now
against the things that lie in the rearview mirror and that is often
helpful what breaks down is when we find ourselves in radically new landscape
that that really can’t map on that anymore we’re not eating burgers right
now we’re eating some form of kale salad and it’s hard to measure those two
against each other and I do think there’s a sense in which these experience
of of radical change imposed becomes really tricky as we start sort of
referencing what used to be that our memories of what was because I’m not
entirely certain that things were as we remember them all the time I think that
sometimes our present experience shapes what actually happened there and our
memory of it is a little different than what actually happened and and that
transfer their clean I think is both really interesting but it’s substantial
when you begin to think well if I define this experience as good or bad by that
one if we’re not remembering that one rightly then I think there’s a sense in
which that does cause us to question are we truly you know really seeing what’s
happening around us right now accurately I think perhaps the most
tempting time to idealize or be over generous to the past is when things
aren’t going well in the present right I’ve heard countless people through the
years talk about missing the past but they don’t miss the past when the doctor
says we have a new treatment that’s been developed that will cure what would
have five years ago been devastating for you that’s not what we mean we don’t
say that when everything is great and we’re able to get on a plane and go you
know travel is easier and cooking is easier we that’s not what we mean we
mean that emotionally there’s something that unsettles us in the present and so
we look back emotionally to a time that we felt more grateful more stable more
happy that’s a tricky word but maybe one that many people would use and there
is this tendency in that moment to romanticize the past you know you you
think about 2019 probably no one at the time would have said 2019 is awesome
this is just such a great you know this is the best days of our life it’s funny
how good they look a year later when you’re locked in your basement hoping
there’s toilet paper that will you know not run out before the hoarders get to
it and this sense that just things kind of change and when they do we have a
tendency to look backward and and there’s a real blessing in that there is a it
provides I think a stability that we lose in the midst of change the downside
of that is that it can make it harder to navigate the new future you know it’s
very hard to move forward while you’re looking backward we have this
conversation in the church all the time it’s very hard in congregations at times
to incorporate new things because people are so vested in old things even when
they’re no longer as effective as they they might have once been and it’s a
difficult moment to move forward if we are spending too much time mourning what
we’ve lost or looking back to a time behind us you know it’s interesting
because I don’t think most of us when we look back for help in navigating our
present I don’t think we’re generally doing that for the trappings of the past
I mean to your point most of us don’t want to drive the car that we were
driving 30 years ago we like the auto-start feature in the middle of
January most of us don’t want to go back to some of the food that we’re
intentionally not eating anymore because I like this food better I think when we
do that we’re generally looking to the past because we have some anxiety some
real deep-seated maybe even not conscious fear that we’re gonna lose who
we are in and who we want to be into the future because in the past we by
nature of being human see things with more clarity that 2020 vision comes when
you look in the rearview mirror and there’s a sense in which we can look on
who we were and say you know I didn’t have it all right but I did care about
my family and I did try to navigate that well and that I had a success there and
I want that to be who I am and when we move into the future and we we have to
navigate in troubled difficult times we don’t have that same comfort we’re
making decisions that we don’t know the implications we’re trying our best just
like we were in the past but we don’t know how it’s going to pan out and I
think there’s something in human nature that wants to preserve who we want to be
and there’s this fear that change is going to not just change our
circumstances it’s going to change who we are and that could be good we know
that there’s places in our life that we would do well to change we got some
anger we need to let go of we need to change and forgive right we know that
there’s places that we want change but I think we also have some real anxiety
that that we’re going to change in a way that we don’t want to change and I
wonder if the past provides us sort of a glimmer a window and anchor that helps
us feel like we know who we are and and we’re a little safe from the change that
might happen I think that’s true I think looking backwards tends to insulate us
from the effort that it takes to navigate a new landscape you know there’s some
really interesting ideas that things like discipline and optimism and
resilience are kind of fixed qualities in each of us they can be built upon
kind of like being fit as you as you get in shape you can increase your capacity
for exercise but that at any given moment you have a somewhat limited
supply of those things and one of the things that routines do is they protect
us you don’t if you have the same routine every morning up at 630 do some
exercise get some coffee eat a piece of toast then then you’re putting almost no
thought into that you don’t have to use any of that decisive energy you’re not
using any any of that internal strength to make a decision it may be what kind
of cereal will I have but that’s not a real that’s not a stressful kind of
but when we lose those routines like we did in COVID where where everything
changes and now your morning routine looks like well I get up and then I have
to work from home and now I have to make ten decisions about what working from
home looks like because I’m not in the place where I had my routines I’m not in
my same space I’m not I’m not doing the same thing in the same way now all of
that demands that I use some of that decision-making energy something as
simple as do I go to the grocery store today right and is it time for my group
of people to be there is that safe should I wear the mask should I you know
disinfect the cart handle not now as I have to approach all of those things and
use some of that energy I think that’s part of what makes change so so tiring
for most of us and also I think what makes us want to avoid it where we can
so that we can save that that energy for things that we’d rather use it for and
it seems to me that part of what 2020 did is force all of us to bring energy
to bear that in places we hadn’t had to and I think that’s exhausting that’s a
really interesting insight and I’m reflecting on conversations I’ve had
with church members throughout the course of the year and one thing that’s
striking to me is that our patterns and habits and routines they’ve all been
changed at some point every one of us has had to figure out how to get
groceries and and how to handle that you know license renewal or whatever the
living life kind of stuff we’ve had to do is we’ve had to figure out ways to do
it so everyone’s pattern has changed but not everyone’s patterns have changed
equally some people work outside and quite frankly covid or not they’ve gone
to work and they’ve done the stuff outside they need to do and it’s not
impacted them in the same way that a clerk at the grocery stores life has
changed and and right so there’s also a kind of disparity in the change though
we’re universally required to change we’re all using those muscles at
different levels somewhat by nature of what we do and I do think that that
makes it difficult to have the kind of communal change that is happening
simultaneously because if I have no willpower left for change listen my job
yesterday is not the job I have today I think of a family member who’s a nurse
for the first three months of covid every day there was new training about
what your job was and and that requires so much of you for others it was hey why
are we so stressed out about this and I wonder if there’s not some sense that
there was different intensities of that kind of pattern routine change for
different people and that’s really interesting Michael because some of the
flashpoints looking back were seemed to me to have been at moments where some
word of guidance came out and then changed you know initially it was we
don’t think this is airborne you don’t need masks and then later well it is
airborne we think masks are a good idea and the pushback against you told us one
thing right right we can’t we can’t do this we can’t just wake up every morning
and get new guidelines because we just figured out how to how to do it this way
and now you’re and people were doing that personally they were doing that
relationally they were doing that professionally I would think even those
who were blessed to have a job that was largely unaffected almost all of us knew
how to do something mm-hmm that didn’t work the same way yeah in covid whether
that was getting groceries whether that was going to the restaurant whether you
know all of us lost something in that and we also it seems to me lost some of
the ways we cope with that we lost our coffee groups we lost our golf leagues
we lost you know Little League whatever it might be getting together with
friends going to a movie so you have this change that’s being experienced as
primarily negative for nearly everybody and I that certainly colors it and I
think early on that sense of just fatigue change fatigue was really
debilitating for people and then you know then as we kind of flat flattened
maybe we all began to find it but I think initially those first three four
months at least after it became clear that wasn’t a two-week or four-week thing
we were to some extent in a long haul situation I I remember sensing just a
heaviness that landed on people as they realize we don’t even we don’t even know
what the new patterns will look like it’s interesting that you say that
because I do think our relationship to change may be different depending upon
the moment in time that you look at in 2020 it is striking when we’ve had some
conversations for this Lenten series you’ve already mentioned these
interviews on Wednesday we hope that you join us for those because I think
there’s some real substance there one pattern that I believe I’ve seen in
those conversations is that almost universally people reflect back on the
very early days of the pandemic as the ones where good happened eating with
family around the table wiping out calendars sort of returning to things
that mattered there was good in that change but then month three month six
month nine that change became less hope-filled and and more drudgery more
painful more more of a struggle because I think what we see is in the beginning
change offers opportunity and and most of us especially if you naturally have
an optimistic outlook you can look at that and say hey there’s something good
here but then when you continue to be required to make changes and and those
changes are both internal you know families have had to make so many
adaptations for okay what are we gonna do with our kids child care and how are
we gonna help kids understand that they’re safe but they need to take
precautions right all of these changes that people are making over time become
far far more difficult to find the good in and I wonder if that’s a natural
progression of the kind of sustained change that 2020 has brought that’s
really interesting Michael I wonder if internally we have some measure of time
in which it’s hard to call temporary you know the idea that we were going to do
this for a brief window and and everybody just needed to kind of buckle
up and deal with but but when we’re talking about something temporary at the
six month and eight month mark it it doesn’t feel very temporary at that
point I think you and I have had that experience here you know the the third
and fourth time we were trying to come up with a fun children sermon idea there
was some there was some novelty in that there was even some challenge in it the
40th time you’re doing it you’re thinking oh good lord I when is this
over right and and it does have a kind of cumulative effect it chips away at
your resolve until you’re just tired and and I think you know it’s it’s amazing
how many people use the word tired in a time that not a lot of time I mean what
and what what we mean of course is emotionally tired spiritually tired may
be physically tired but generally I find that’s not what people they don’t mean
exhausted in the same way they meant my calendar had 72 things on it last week
and and I had to cancel through that’s a different kind of time this is an
emotional a drained kind of tired and and I think this last year has probably
put all of us there for at least some period of time and you mentioned this
but I want to just make sure that we see the connection because I think they are
connected is that in that moment where change has required a lot of us and not
just that sort of initial burst of energy but now we’re running the
marathon not now we’re a ways down the road and and we’re feeling the weight of
the change upon us relationally socially you know even maybe financially in some
concrete ways right in that moment we are not tempted to go do more heavy
lifting when I’m tired I don’t want to eat broccoli I want to eat Oreos and I
want to eat the whole bag of Oreos right when I’m tired I don’t want to go watch
a highbrow documentary about how this thing played out in history no I want to
watch a dumb TV show that helps me escape from the world a little bit I
think we have as a nation had conversations about social media and
communication all this kind of stuff I think we need to give ourselves a
little bit of a break I think we’ve just had a year where Oreos were tempting I
think we’ve we’ve sort of buckled under the strain the struggle of sustaining
the change that’s been required and it’s only natural that we compensated and a
lot of that compensation if we’re going to be honest and exercise a little bit
of humility has not been helpful we know that maybe even we feel some guilt for
that but change has a way of exposing the cracks that adding pressure in
difficult places and we shouldn’t be surprised I don’t think when we’ve tried
to cope with that in a variety of ways so check me check me if I’m wrong on my
history here Michael but I it would be very fascinating to get the calendar out
because as I remember it it may be very telling that the protests over masks and
distancing did not happen in the first month hmm these came later I would guess
at about the three-month mark the from what I remember is that sort of wave of
of discontent happened at about the time we were transitioning into a longer-term
reality than we expected it would be very interesting to get the calendar out
but I suspect I suspect the case can be made that much of that could have been
fueled by that sense of just I’ve we’ve had enough I’ve used up all the energy I
have for this and I just want to be done with it and I refuse to do it anymore I
think that that may have been a factor I hadn’t thought of it that way well and
we’ve had conversations with both local leaders we’ve had these conversations
numerous times if you approach the human capacity to meet change what we’ve sort
of called willpower but if you think about that quantitatively and think that
it’s a limited resource then you’ve got to sort of spin yourself into the
leaders seat and if you’re aware of that leaders across many platforms in our
community our state our nation right leaders are trying to figure what’s the
sustainable rate of change that we can expect as we’re all trying to make
progress forward here and the struggle with that is you know should have we
locked down when we did should we ask people to do this practice then should
have we waited what was it too soon these are sort of easy questions to ask
button possible the answer because fundamentally we as humans probably just
don’t have the capacity to change that quickly without something not working
without something breaking down and I do think there are implications as
communities of faith in that especially as we talk about the spirit of God
working in us what we can’t do for ourselves I think that that is framed as
a faith community which we’ll talk about more in this conversation but there’s a
sense in which I do think we may be underestimated how much that long-term
marathon type change would require of us and then we not only underestimated
the cost we really beat ourselves up both individually and societally when we
struggled to meet that pace and I wonder if some reflection with some grace would
help us see that we’ve been people trying to do a very difficult task in
landscape that we’re not comfortable with that that is new to us yeah there’s
there’s an interesting dichotomy in people in that historically humans are
remarkably adaptable they live in every kind of climate on the globe they figure
things out when there are natural disasters or problems tribes and
societies navigate those things and we have this incredible adaptability built
into what it means to be human on the other hand we are very once we find
something that works we tend to ride it to death we’re very committed to our
patterns we are very locked in to the way we do things and and both of those
things are true about people which makes us very interesting and and
entertaining and and maybe frustrating right that left to our own we will find
an avid a way to navigate change but once we do we’re going to want to keep
doing it that way even when it no longer is probably the best way to do things we
have this ability to commit to what has worked in the past and you know as we
come out of this season hopefully in in the coming weeks and months I think you
may see the tension of what what changes for people permanently this
temptation to think we want to go back to how it used to be is probably not in
most many areas of our life at least going to be realistic that this
experience of 2020 has probably fundamentally changed some things about
government of about business about some of our day-to-day lives for better and
worse and it will simply not be a case of well we got that over with now let’s
go back a year and a half to what we used to do and just don’t all keep doing
that again it’s likely we’re going to have to find some ways to integrate what
we’ve learned and done with a new normal a new way of moving forward which I
think will be an interesting challenge for all of us particularly at a time
that we may be a little tired I can’t think of any other sermon title that has
buried itself so deeply in my thinking as one that we had I believe in
September my event August the sermon title was coming back isn’t going back
and there’s something about that phrase that has really deeply embedded itself
in my imagination because there are a plenitude I have an entire list I could
probably show you that list of places I want to go back to I like travel I like
moving and so one of the things that I’ve experienced loss in the season is
not getting to go places I want to go back to there in many circumstances but
I have realized in deep and meaningful ways that that going places is not going
back to places that that these places will be changed in meaningful ways and
if you factor the fatigue if you recognize the challenge of change then I
think you’ve got to be gracious with yourself when you experience that
realization with some dread with some really and a real grief because I think
what we want is a feeling of things are put together structure and order that
makes sense and is comfortable places that that we have good memories and and
we want to go back to those places it’s not really the place probably it’s
probably the experience we had in that place we want that again but the reality
is we have been shaped in real and meaningful ways and as people of faith
we are going to have to grapple with both the good and the bad what are ways
that were called to be transformed as the people of Christ against some of the
negatives we’ve seen crop up in this season and likewise what are the goods
that need protected nourished cared for so that they grow so that we might as
people of faith continue to be faithful in our task and that’s going to look
like going forward as different people than the people that enter this season
but Clint I recognize how great of a weight that feels for most of us the
idea that we’re gonna have to navigate more waters even beyond this is a very
very hard thing to process I think when we experience a change as primarily
negative it makes it increasingly difficult to see that there may be some
upsides to it you know change is often neutral it just presents us with a new
set of realities a new set of challenges and forces us to navigate that and that’s
not all bad though I think you know probably a lot of this past year and the
changes that have gone with it have impacted people negatively and that’s
true that that’s absolutely true but because it’s true we might think that
it’s all bad and I think one of the things that may help us in that is to to
try and in our more optimistic moments to reflect on have there been some
upsides what have we learned something nothing is all bad that’s that’s what we
mean when we use the word grace there’s there’s nothing that is inherently of no
value and worth and so are there things that we have learned you know Michael and
and I think of it through this lens in the church in a in a period of literally
just a couple days we went from being a typical normal church to being a digital
church as did almost every church in the country and we didn’t get there through
a long thought-out plan it got dropped on us and and then we had to scramble to
try and figure out what does that mean how do we talk about community at a time
when people are locked in their homes how do we talk about togetherness in a
moment where we’re not getting together and those are hard questions but the
upside in our circle is that it forced us to ask some new questions to develop
some new skills to come up with some new techniques and some new technologies to
incorporate some new ways to do things and and in some ways it erased a lot of
our old questions you know I think back when we talk about our first service and
second service as having different styles that conversation became
immediately meaningless when we’re just trying to fill 60 minutes of video so
that we can get something to people that we hope will help them the idea of what
style the music is becomes almost almost trivial instantly and I think COVID in
in some way is probably done something like that for all of us it has pushed us
in a new direction and maybe it wasn’t welcome but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t
positive I think that one temptation as we look at church in this season is to
oversimplify what happens in other words we might be tempted to say you’re only a
church if you’re in your sanctuary and and you’re not faithful if you’re not
the other temptation is to say is no that you can’t possibly be in your
sanctuary and it’s only digital and you got to figure out what it means to be an
online community whenever we find ourselves making these kind of binary
statements I have a little internal dashboard that starts flashing that
there’s there’s more nuance there and I think that that has shown itself to be
true even the people who we’ve had sustained conversations about how
important the sanctuary is to their worshiping experience what has happened
in this season is it’s created the necessity for more more robust robust
excuse me vocabularies in other words okay so the sanctuary is an important
part of your worshiping experience now let’s talk about why what about the
sanctuary is it is it the space is it the people is it the way that we are
spaced in the sanctuary it has required us even in these sort of what we
unfortunately make binary in or out kind of conversations it’s required us
to think more robustly about no this is the particular thing that’s meaningful
in this thing and then we work from that to figure out okay well how can we
adapt to meet that kind of worshiping need and and it gives us new tools as we
seek to be church together but my point is this Glenn we I think as we look at
being church far too simplistically that the questions that COVID has forced us
to ask will have implications for the stuff that we do that seems normal again
someday because it’s enabled us to talk about and see things in that normal we
couldn’t have possibly seen before this experience yeah and I think that’s the
gift of a moment in which a reset button gets pushed is that in the course
of our normal patterns it’s very difficult to just put a hold on
everything and go back to the fundamental questions and that there is
that sense of maintenance and maintenance goes out the window when it’s
time to create something new and so I think what that does is you know for
instance in the church I think we will never conceive of community quite the
same way you know we tend to think of the people who come to church and
there’s always on the outside a few who aren’t able but I think we have learned
that we can connect in ways that we didn’t know and and I think it will
change the conversation in some ways about what it means to reach out to
people what it means to provide opportunities to worship to study
together and we have I think developed some new tools which we had available to
us pre-covid but it never occurred to us that that kind of need might be out
there and I think that that is one of the blessings for each of us again I’m
not trying to suggest there hasn’t been difficulty I think one of the things
that will happen as we you know as vaccinations come and as people come
back above board and we get together again we’re going to have to spend a
lot of time hearing people’s stories there the pain the struggles the I think
we’re going to have a period of kind of grieving together what we’ve lost but
but also concurrently with that we’re going to be saying okay that’s all real
and it’s all important but where do we go now and how do we go there and I
think we answered those questions differently than we did a year ago and I
don’t think in the long run that will be while there’s heaviness and difficulty
in it I don’t think it’s all bad you know one of I think each of us has areas
of the the Christian discipleship journey that our weaknesses for us and
mine personally at least one of them is is simply faith which is fundamental to
our to our belief in Jesus Christ but let me explain what I mean I my personal
temptation is God I’ll handle this for you you can you can sit on the side and
I’ve got this for you God and so trusting that God is with me on the
journey is the place I continually find myself being recentered to I’m a
beloved child and I trust that God is with me in the midst of this journey and
it seems to me that as a church family we continue to navigate these waters
together we will continue to navigate these waters we are we are constantly
going to be presented with I think a temptation and an opportunity the
temptation is the easy button the idea let’s push this thing and go back and
everything will be as it was we just do it like we did it what’s unfortunate is
that temptation is we believe in that that going back to what was simple and
easy it it leaves behind all of the experiences and people who have been
with us on this journey we have added to our number and not just people in
worship people who have found our community a place of welcome and respite
and sanctuary thanks be to God the only way to navigate with all of those people
is the far more difficult task of saying Lord God we believe that you’re
with us we have faith we trust you that you will help us navigate these future
waters and God we’re open to what that will be and that is a more costly
understanding of the Christian witness not that we can just sort of return to
earlier practices writ large but rather that we need to allow the Spirit of God
to transform us moving forward and and what that requires is the humility and
even the energy it will take to have a sustained conversation about things that
we took for granted that maybe we shouldn’t anymore I think that both from
a personal standpoint and a corporate or congregational standpoint one of the
things that this experience has offered us is the chance to see that while the
patterns beloved and useful and important have been tremendously
meaningful to us we should not confuse them with what the patterns try to point
us toward and deliver us to the church is not God coming together and having a
bulletin and three hymns and a prayer and a sermon is not our faith these are
things that we do in in pursuit of our faith but we should never substitute
them for the faith itself and and I think one of the opportunities we’ve had
in this past year is to kind of lean into that lesson a little bit as the
patterns have been shifted in some ways removed from us we’ve had to say okay I
miss the patterns but what I’ve learned is that the pattern was just pointing me
to the ultimate reality that is still true that God is God and that I am a
beloved child of Jesus Christ connected in faith to those who follow him and
responsible in his name for reaching out into the needs of the world that that’s
always been true and and the patterns we use to try and help us learn that can
also be the very things that sometimes insulate us from it and I think it has
been in some ways a helpful challenge to say what does it look like to be
Christian with new patterns with at least temporary patterns and I look
forward to that conversation and seeing where it will push the church I think
this period of change as difficult as it has been may in some ways fundamentally
shift some of what we understand about ourselves as a community of Jesus Christ
and I think that is that that has some real potential this is sort of where I
land in this conversation is the ultimate challenge of navigating change
together is I think ultimately trusting God because I think our fear is that we
will have changed that we as the people of God will have changed in ways that we
don’t want to have changed and what we have to know is that God walks alongside
us in the story in fact not just beside us God leads us in this journey and
there are many practices routines habits that we will indeed return to
this isn’t about change for changes sake it’s not about just always be
optimistic in the face of overwhelming circumstances absolutely not when when
you evaluate your circumstance in the light of Christ there are going to be
many markers in the past that will be anchors for us and who we are into the
but let us not forget the deep challenge of remaining convicted by and connected
to in faith though the one who calls us forward as the people of God and that
will require the willingness to recognize that we will be shaped in new
patterns and practices but we will remain and will not have changed in any
sense as beloved children of God our relationship to God the Father and our
salvation in Jesus Christ is a fundamental truth that does not change
and and so it is therefore upon that foundation that we see these other
changes as opportunities to engage to be faithful to grow and and that doesn’t
make it easy Clint but it gives it meaning and I think that’s what we find
it in the life of faith is that God goes with us in a way that provides meaning
even if it doesn’t make it simple or easy absolutely and we realize that we
could never in a brief podcast begin to scratch the surface on what change has
required and meant for
even ourselves let alone a congregation or a community
and so we do want to continue this conversation in in about 10 minutes or
so we’re going to have a live zoom call you’ll see the link in the description
of this video we’ll also have been publishing it and so we if this is
something you’d like to continue to think out loud about it’ll give us an
opportunity to try and incorporate a sense of togetherness we will be able to
at least see and hear one another and we know that change is hard and yet we
trust in the one who is unchanging in his love and his disposition towards us
and we face all difficult moments in the knowledge that we are always beloved
and that we are always secure in Christ even when life is difficult and the
waters are changing so we’re thankful that you’ve been with us on in this
conversation we look forward to hearing more from you