When confronted with a new idea, do you:
• Consider the cost of switching before you consider the benefits?
• Highlight the pain to a few instead of the benefits for the many?
• Exaggerate how good things are now in order to reduce your fear of change?
• Undercut the credibility, authority or experience of people behind the change?
• Grab onto the rare thing that could go wrong instead of amplifying the likely thing that will go right?
• Focus on short-term costs instead of long-term benefits, because the short-term is more vivid for you?
• Fight to retain benefits and status earned only through tenure and longevity?
• Embrace an instinct to accept consistent ongoing costs instead of swallowing a one-time expense?
• Slow implementation and decision making down instead of speeding it up?
It seems that so many people are satisfied with the status quo, the way things have always been, or the way that we have been made to feel comfortable. God uses people, places, times, and even things to do a New Thing, why do we fight it so hard?
When the Bible was written almost everything in the culture of that time has changed. In fact it has changed many times and will continue to change as long as God allows this life to continue. New generations come along and like new things. New music styles change often, new clothing styles change almost daily, you name it and it changes. The only thing that never changes is the content of the message that God has given us.
If what is being taught from the pulpit or the church that you attend is against what God taught us in the Bible, you should challenge that teaching and they can either change or you can go some place where the truth is being taught.
However, if you are distraught over the style of clothing that your pastor wears, the style of music that is being used, the color of the carpet, the people who are using the church building, the medium that is being used to reach people for Christ, then you need to take that to the Cross and leave it there.
It is obvious that the church in many and most places today has lost its focus of telling the world about Jesus Christ and it has become focused on making the membership comfortable. We were never called to be comfortable, we were called to be World Changers.
Lets embrace New Ideas and New Ways of Doing Things that Bring People to Christ.
We have eternity to lose if we do not. (Eternity matters for everyone, not just us)
Just Sayin…
Ronnie