Standing Still - A Side Note

So a colleague of mine sent me this YouTube video, I reminder of how important it is for us as a business to stay on the cutting edge of what is going on. Especially since the non-profit I work for caters to young people in middle and high school.

As I watched this video at work I got really stirred up. Anyone who knows me well has heard my rant about: How society is changing faster now that it ever has before an how the church is standing still.

Yes, people of older generations lived through big changes during their youth, automobiles, computers the size of a room, the internet, man walking on the moon. But young people today experience more changes. MUCH more. Today to be in the present means to be forward thinking.

So what does any of this have to do with church hunting? I'll tell you. I want a church that recognizes the changing world they are caught up in and desires to be leading the change instead of following it. I mean come on! As Christians we should be more creative, more driven and more inspired than anyone (Ex. 35:31-32). Why are we always copying the secular world and not the other way around?

I would like to mention that this doesn't mean I am pro-anything new and anti-anything old. I don't want to be part of a "seeker-friendly" church that is just doing what is new to be doing it, to add numbers. A church that is a mile wide and an inch deep. There has to be purpose and vision (Ps. 29:18). But I also refuse to be part of a local congregation that does what it has always done "because it has always been good enough before" (Mark 7:6-7). No, just because it worked in the past does not mean it will work in these ever shifting times. As mentioned before, this is a soapbox of mine... sorry if I seem to be going on about it.

The last statement in this video is, “So what does it all mean?” I think that is an excellent question the modern church of America should be asking. What does this mean for us? What does it mean for the saved and unsaved people we want to reach? After talking to my mother about this she asked, “So what should churches do?”

Well, the first step is recognizing the world we are in and reevaluating what we do and why we do it. Let us not do ANYTHING because we want to do it, that leads to a church built on performance (Col. 3:17). Let’s be realistic and realize that if we want the church to be applicable to this generation and generations to come, maybe we need to find a new way to teach old truths (Acts 17:16-34, Matt.10:16). I’m not saying changing the truth of the gospel, but finding a new way to present it. Above all else we have a creative, ingenuous God who we are to follow. Let’s start by not putting Him in a box of tradition or in the box of the shiny and new.

Okay, soapbox over. For now. :D