Change takes Time

Well friend it is time for a change, time for something new!

New Wineskins presents something radical. Something possitive and oddly enough something familiar.

For me the familiarity comes out of 10 years of training for and doing ministry in a particular church. I want to begin to turn the topic of this blog to talking about building healthy churches.

Am I an expert. No way. Has our congregation grown - you bet. At times it has grown dramatically in numbers, at other times it has grown dramatically in maturity, it's outreach has expanded.

One of the first steps of change is getting perspective. So Pastor, Elder, Deacon, or fired up member. Do you know your church? Is what you think you know accurate.

First step is to take time to study the history of the congregation - ours is 160 years old and I have read or at least skimmed all 160 years of session records, I have read the church history, I have listened to the stories. I am not the Lorax and I do not speak for the trees but I know the history of this church and I consider it part of my job to speak for it. It is an important tool in strengthening a dying church because somewhere in every church's history is a reason. A reason for existing.

Do you know yours? Is it to glorify God and Enjoy him forever? There is the official history and the unofficial history.

Is 1984 Too Crazy a Comparison?

Maybe I've finally gone nuts (some of my liberal critics sure think so). Or maybe like Kramer, "I'm so crazy I've gone totally sane." Now I realize there is no human agency (or at least I would like to think so) that is as far over the top as the "Big Brother" described in 1984 but none the less there are elements of the Institutional behavior that is scary.

The obvious comparisons are the totalitarian government, the total loss of individual freedom, the slogans "War is Peace", "Freedom is Slavery", and "Ignorance is Strength" all seem to ring incredibly true at times. One point that struck home is the idea that "Who controls the past, controls the present and who controls the present controls the past" (sorry about the lack of anotation but I am reading in my Amazon Kindle these days and it doesn't use page numbers!). Throughtout the debate is the ongoing power exercised by Louisville to reinterpret history and as they completely rewrite the Book of Order they are rewriting history. Expunging all record of things undesireable while, just like in 1984, doing so without anyone's knowledge or awareness. Major pieces of the constitution of the PCUSA will just go down the "Memory Hole".

But even all of that wasn't what struck me as the most diabolical thing that I could compare to life in the PCUSA it is this rather long qoute that I will type here and let speak for itself:

"The problem was how to keep the wheels of industry turning without increasing the real wealth of the world. Goods must be produced, but they must not be distributed. And in practice the only way of achieving this was by continuous warfare. The Essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. .... It is deliberate policy to keep even the favoured groups somewhere near the brink of hardship, because a general state of scarcity increases the importance of small privileges and thus magnifies the distinction between one group and another."

That passage just made me say hmmm..... War is Peace...? Peace, Unity and Purity Report...

So many of those who seem to be caught in the middle remind me of the horse in another of Orwell's great works "I'll work harder."

Think, Think, Think

Like good ol' Pooh Bear I need some time to think....

While you're waiting you may want to digest this:

Louisville, always up to something

PS - for those that have asked. Things are going well. Still sorting things out with the Presbytery but as for our congregation all is well.