Church is all about change

“Whoa there, Pr. Matthew! What you mean that the church is all about change? Churches don’t change, don’t you know — or at least they don’t change fast. There are certain ways that we do things. There is an order to maintain. Where do you get off claiming that the church is all about change?”

Pretty simple. We claim life, death, resurrection. If that isn’t change, I don’t know what is. So often we think life, death, resurrection is something out of the ordinary, huge, and only happening at the end of time. But that’s only because the life, death, and resurrection that we encounter in our daily lives is so normal that we don’t even notice the life, death, and resurrection.

Here in Pennsylvania, we experience four seasons. And throughout the year, we see a cycle of life, death, and resurrection take place in nature. Yet how many of us dismiss that as not being about life, death, and resurrection?

We experience life, death, and resurrection when we begin and end relationships, when we start and end new training schedules, when we start and leave jobs, when we cook food, when we see children grow, when we go through an educational program, when we go through our normal weeks. They all have an ebb and flow of life, death, and resurrection.

And this all relates to the idea of transformation. The church’s message is about transformation. Transformation does not happen without change.

So here’s the question — why shouldn’t someone assume that the church isn’t all about…