Gethsemane Baptist Church, Washington, DC, Nov. 24, 1996
Some folks are allergic to change. They want everything to be just as it always was. They get used to things and they want everything to stay put. Some folks just won’t deal with change.
A few weeks ago the electricity went out at our house. Some transformer blew, and for several hours we had no power, which meant no light, no stove, precious little hot water, and, for me, oh, what torture: no computer! Couldn’t play games and pretend to be working! But I noticed something very strange; I noticed how much a creature of habit I’ve become. The lights are out, right? So you need to find a candle. How do you find a candle? Well, you go to the room where there’s a chest of drawers in which we keep candles, and, let’s find them, flip the light switch. Oops! That’s right, won’t work. But the habit was, flip the switch.
Well, then, I found the candles and lit a few. Now we can see our way around. I wonder what’s going on out there? Wonder what’s caused all this? Let’s turn on the radio and find out. Oops! Caught again! I found I was such a creature of habit that even though I knew that the circumstances were changed, I couldn’t change. I couldn’t adjust to fit the situation. Some of us are allergic to change.
And when it comes to church, we are especially allergic to change. We want church to be what church has always been. We want tradition and familiar things. We want to tell the old, old story and sing the old, old songs. We want to hear it one more time and we want somebody to tell us we are safe and secure from all alarms. Many of us want church to remain unchanged. We are allergic to changing churches.
But, guess what? Change comes anyway. Things do change, and we can’t always stop them. The times change, and, as the poet put it, new occasions teach new duties. Churches do change. And that’s what my assignment is this afternoon: to think with you about the church in transition. The church in transition.
One image comes to my mind as we begin. My wife and I spent a couple of weeks in September touring parts of Germany and England. It was a fascinating time, especially Germany, where we had never been before. And most especially Eastern Germany, where Americans could not go until the Berlin wall came down.
Touring Eastern Germany was rather like touring a construction site. Everywhere you look, construction cranes and concrete mixers, trying to make up for the devastation of war and forty years of Communist rule. So many of the buildings were brand new, modern to the last degree, bright, sparkling, clean. Oh, I have to tell you about one building that really sparkled, by the way. In Berlin there is a congress hall, and it has a curved roof-line, supported by a long row of white pillars, set close to each other. The Berliners call that building, “Jimmy Carter’s smile”. Don’t you like that!?
Well, all these bright, clean, new buildings. Stores, offices, hotels, apartments. But usually, in the middle of it all, you would see an old, old building, with dirty-looking stones and hazy windows; with worn steps and a slightly shaky roof. Guess what? The church. The churches were old in a city of the new. The churches were the unchanging, in surroundings of tremendous change. Some like it that way; it’s good to hang on to traditions. But doesn’t it say something rather frightening, that the whole society can be changing, and the church does not respond? The church does not change? The church does not open up?
There is going to be change. There is going to be transition. Will the church of the Lord Jesus Christ respond, or will she crawl back into the sand and hide? What does the Scripture teach us? How does the Bible address us on the church in transition?
I searched in the Bible, and just about selected one passage, because it does tell us about change. This one passage I found posted at the door of a church nursery. This Scripture got it right. Outside the room where they take care of all the babies, the sign said, I Corinthians 15:51, which reads, “We shall not all sleep; but we shall all be changed.”
Well, I thought better of that, and selected another Scripture that suits our needs. The author of Hebrews is trying to interpret to the people of his day how God is doing a new thing. After all, Jesus was something new. Jesus meant change, lots of change; transition, in the way they understood God. And so they had to come to grips with this change that God was working. The writer of Hebrews is trying to help them.
Hebrews 13:7-9b, 12-16
My theme is “The Changing Church and the Changeless Christ”. In the midst of transition, hold on to this: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”
I
One thing that will help us go through transition is to remember who got us here and how and why. One thing that will guide us as we figure out what to do with change is to pay attention to the leaders we’ve had and the folks whose vision brought us along the way.
Hebrews says, “Remember your leaders, those who spoke the word of God to you; consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith.” We’ll go through transition much better if we will understand and keep the things we’ve received from visionary leaders.
Now in my experience leadership is a hard thing to get hold of. It feels as though some folks have it and some folks don’t. I know that if you are in the military they may send you to leadership school. They may teach you various theories and principles of leadership. And that’s good. That’s fine. But it still feels as though some folks have it and some folks don’t.
Up the road at my place, there was a pastor a number of years ago who just had the right stuff for leadership. He was bright, he worked hard, and he was a spiritual person. But other folks are bright and hard workers and spiritual people, and they don’t get the attention he got. To this day, there are folks at my church who just get a warm glow when this pastor’s name is mentioned. They will still tell me, “Wasn’t done that way when Rev. whatever was here.” That’s fine. I have no problem with that.
But I used to be a member of a church in Silver Spring, where that pastor had one theme that he managed to get out every Sunday. Week in and week out, sermon after sermon, point after point, his big deal was to remind us that our church was related to both American Baptists and Southern Baptists. Now that may not sound like much to you, but it was to him. Every message got that in, somehow. Didn’t matter what Scripture he used, he could always make it say that we were tied to both groups, American Baptists and Southern Baptists. Terribly important. Nineteen years he worked on that. But, do you know, the Sunday after he left nobody mentioned it. And nobody ever has mentioned it again! It just didn’t stick!
Some folks lead easily and some struggle with it. Some folks get their points across solidly and others seem to have very little impact. But the Bible says that we should remember and keep and value whatever there is of good that our leaders gave us. No single leader makes the whole church, and no single leader destroys the whole church. You and I must see through the failings of the worst of our leaders and find their truth and keep it. And we must learn to see through the strengths of the best of our leaders and know that they too are human, they too are frail, they too make mistakes.
“Remember your leaders, those who spoke the word of God you; consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith.” The leader to remember, the leader to imitate, is the one who has a faith vision. The one who lives in faith and can see something others may not see. This thing of vision is tough. Some leaders have it and some leaders don’t.
I read the other day about some folks who just didn’t have that vision. Suppose you had followed these leaders, with their lack of vision:
Somebody wrote a memo in the management of the Western Union telegraph company in 1876: “The telephone has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. [It] is of no value to us.” There goes your AT&T stock!
In 1895 the British scientist Lord Kelvin told the Royal Society of Science, “Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.”. Makes sense to me. I’d have been right there with Rev. Wright saying to his two sons that if God had meant people to fly he would have given them wings? By the way, Rev. Wright’s two sons were named Orville and Wilbur!
Here’s another. one of the Warners of Warner Brothers movie studios, in the days of silent movies, said in 1927, “Who in the world wants to hear actors talk?”
And the chairman of IBM said in 1943 that he could not see a market for more than five computers in the whole world.
And an executive at Decca Records in 1962 rejected a singing group because, as he put it, “We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.” Tell that to John and George and Paul and Ringo, which history knows as the Beatles.
Leaders have to have vision. Church leaders worth following are those who live in faith, whose faith is visionary. Church leaders who can get us through transition will have their eyes on the future but their minds and their hearts rooted in Jesus Christ, who does remain, the same yesterday, today, and forever.
II
But now that doesn’t mean that we are going to jump on every bandwagon that comes along. That doesn’t mean we have to try out every fad and fashion that comes down the pike, just because it’s new, or just because it works at somebody else’s church. Hebrews says to us, if you are going to be the changing church, holding on at the same time to the changeless Christ, watch out, and “do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings; for it is well for the heart to be strengthened by grace.”
That’s heavy stuff. “Do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings, for it is well for the heart to be strengthened by grace.” I think what that really means is, “don’t panic.” Don’t panic. Don’t panic into thinking you have to do something crazy in order to stay alive. Don’t be fooled into believing that you have to make sweeping changes, just because. Don’t get carried away and lose good sense, for it is well for the heart to be strengthened by grace. Read it this way: don’t pull the plug on things that feel right, things that really bless you, just because you are a little scared. Because, remember, Jesus Christ is the Lord of the church, and He is the same, He is dependable, yesterday, today, and forever.
I feel as though I’ve had a few lessons just this past week about not getting carried away. I feel as though I’ve learned a little about not panicking. It’s been quite a week.
First, on Monday, my computer lost most of my “work list”. Now the folks at Takoma know that I am an incurable list-maker. I plan my days according to the priorities on that list of things to do. I don’t just wake up in the morning and stretch and say, “Well, what shall I do with the next eight hours?” No, no, no, I have it all mapped out on my computer. Well, kids used to say, “The dog ate my homework”? Today we say, “The computer ate my work list”. But you know what? I found out that I could just go right on, and I can believe that whatever I remember to do, that just may be what the Lord wanted me to do anyway. I learned a little about not getting carried away when something goes wrong. That’s Monday.
On Tuesday, I was in charge of a panel discussion during one of the sessions of the D. C. Baptist Convention meeting. I had invited seven pastors to participate in that panel, and when I got to the platform, only two actually showed up. Time to panic, right? Time to learn a lesson, right? Well, the first lesson is, “Don’t ask a pastor to come to anything unless it is to preach.” Some of us will miss our own funerals because we weren’t ask to preach. And the second lesson is, “Go right ahead with what you have.” Play the hand you’re dealt. And I did. My panel discussion was just me and these two other pastors, and it went right along, and probably was even better than if we had had all those other guys grabbing for the microphone. Don’t get carried away. Don’t panic. Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today, and forever, will guide His church. Don’t be anxious.
Came Wednesday, and I knew that would be a tough one. Business meeting night. Time to act on our church’s budget for 1997. Our Stewardship Committee had already acted on faith and had proposed a budget that would call for about 15% more in tithes and offerings next year than we planned for this year. That’s enough to get your juices flowing. But I also knew that at least one of our committees wasn’t satisfied, and that they would come and try to amend the budget. And they did. And so did another committee. And so did another committee. And when Wednesday night was all over, we had adopted a budget that calls for 17% more than this year. Yes, and at the end of the meeting someone said, “Now just who is going to raise all this money?” And our Stewardship Chairman just smiled and said, “Why, Dr. Smith will, of course.” Yeah, right. But do you know what? I don’t feel any anxiety! I don’t feel any panic! It will be work, but I do not feel fear, and why? Because I feel my heart strengthened by grace, because I can feel the value of the church’s ministries, because God’s people have freely taken this on themselves, and because I know the church is in the hands of the one who owns the cattle on a thousand hills, the one who is the same, yesterday, today, and forever.
Don’t get carried away, don’t panic, don’t pull the plug, for the heart must be strengthened by grace. Feel what is real, sense what matters, and do not be anxious.
Then came Thursday, and we had planned a big Thanksgiving dinner for the participants in five of our community ministries. We were told to expect more than 200 people, and all this work had gone into preparing food and setting up tables and organizing. Came 6:00 p.m., the starting time, and only maybe 30 people were there, most of them the serving team. I felt just a little twinge of anxiety. I felt a little like getting carried away into panic. But we prayed, we started the meal, and the next thing I knew, the room was full, happy chatter everywhere, people getting to know each other, scores of people, a complete success! Don’t get carried away by strange teachings, by anxiety attacks, by anything. Know that the Lord will protect and guide His church whenever something is done that is intended to honor Him. Know that the Lord has not forgotten and there is no need to panic, for He is the same. He is the changeless Christ. On Him you can depend. Jesus Christ, the same, yesterday, today, and forever.
III
And so, brothers and sisters, one final thought to leave with you. One bottom line to share with you. You live in a changing church, but you are held by a changeless Christ. And you are held to one and only one standard, in the last analysis. The bottom line question is, “Did you help anybody?’ Did you redeem anybody? Did you become the instrument of salvation for anybody?”
With what penetrating power the writer of Hebrews puts it! What an unforgettable image to tell us what we have to do! “Jesus ... suffered outside the city gate in order to sanctify the people by his own blood. Let us then go to him outside the camp and bear the abuse he endured.... let us continually offer a sacrifice of praise to God ... Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.”
Friends, the bottom line is that we are called to do good and to share what we have, we are called to sacrifice for the sake of others. Nothing else justifies the existence of the church. We are here for others. We are here to be redemptive. I don’t care how much transition you are experiencing; don’t fail to do something for others. I don’t care how much stress and change you have; hang on to your mission, hold fast to your calling. “Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.”
I invest a good deal of my study time in reading about church growth and evangelism. I try to find out all I can about how to help our church go and grow for Christ. One thing I have discovered: that the churches which serve the real needs of people are the ones which grow. Churches which focus on themselves, they wither and die. But churches which focus on others, “outside the camp”, these are the churches which grow. If you go to some of the mega-churches around the country, churches which have thousands of people turning up Sunday after Sunday, you will find that they don’t come because of the preaching or the music or the beautiful building or whatever, but they come when they are given real help. Willow Creek church, near Chicago, for example. A huge church. More than 20,000 people show up every Sunday. Their Sunday School is made up of classes to help people deal with real life issues. They have classes on marriage, on raising children, on dealing with grief, on finding a job, on overcoming drug abuse, on surviving divorce, you name it, they’ve got it.
And some of the rest of us have Bible classes where we argue about what the Hittites were doing 3000 years ago! Small wonder the people go where they care about your life! No, brothers and sisters, if the church is to be in transition, let it change in order to go outside the camp, sacrifice its irrelevance, and redeem somebody. If the church is to be in transition, if the church is to change, let it suffer outside the city gate in order to sanctify the people. Let the church change, yes; but let it change its self-centeredness and do good for others, let it lose its selfishness and share what it has. “Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.”
It’s not about avoiding change. It’s not about being comfortable. It’s not about preserving the past. It’s not about building Gethsemane church or growing Takoma Park church. It’s not even about surviving. It’s about redeeming people for the Kingdom. That’s what Jesus Christ is about, that’s what He’s always been about, that’s what He will bless yesterday, today, and forever.
