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Great Idea 15: Believe that You too can Change the Church

MALCOLM GRUNDY

Here I am, send me

Isaiah 6.8

Top Tip: With the blessing of God’s Spirit you too can be an instrument for change.

Business Perspective: Successful organizations understand that if their staff are emotionally attached to the organization they are more creative and productive.

Local churches are not what they used to be. They have learned to adapt and change with great skill. One reason for this is that God will not let them stand still. Churchgoing as a social convention has died. Most people go to church nowadays because they want to. Many congregations are made up of people who have come from a number of other denominations. This can bring riches of faith and ideas; it can also bring tensions about the ways change can be brought in.

There are many people who do wonder why they should still keep going to church. They leave worship more frustrated than inspired and equipped to face another week. Church life and worship can be stuck in the past. For many people faith is too precious to be trapped in this way. People of faith have more hope than despair.

The Holy Spirit brings new life and resurrection wherever there is openness to change. Churches are renewed by Spirit-filled and Spirit-disturbed people! God is also at work bringing change and new life outside the church all over the world. Many ideas from the rest of life can be put to good use inside the church. This is because the best ideas do not belong to any one race or nation: they are about love and forgiveness, reconciliation and justice.

Jesus was very disturbed by what he saw in the religion of his day. He challenged those in authority and overturned the tables of the moneychangers; a story told in each of the four gospels. He wanted God’s houses to be places of prayer. Today Jesus wants people with vision to change the church and renew everyday life. People full of prayerful ideas are God’s chosen people.

It is both comforting and distressing that we do not know what the church of the future will look like. It has changed, in every part of the world, more than we could ever have imagined over the past 50 years. Some changes have been on a large scale like the use of modern language in the liturgy and the renewal of church music. Many other changes have been begun by one person or one group having a good idea and wanting to try it out. Then the idea caught on and began something which snowballed into a big change.

With the blessing of God’s Spirit you too can be an instrument for change. If you are inspired or just cannot let go of an idea that has come to you, it is possible that you are being prompted from somewhere to become an agent for change and to make a difference wherever God has called you to be.

For reflection and discussion

1 In managerial terms, what do you understand by the term ‘change’?

2 What do you do to generate commitment to change in your church?

3 How do you see change as a principle of God’s interaction with the world?

4 What is the level of your own commitment to change in your church?