Children and Churches and Change

Parenthood is about letting go.  From the time a child learns to crawl, they are leaving their parents behind.  When they start walking, initially they walk toward you with open arms; soon they are walking away from you to some new experience.  I remember the first time I dropped Luke and then Ben off at school and they forget to give me a hug goodbye; their world was expanding.  Then there were their first overnight school trips in Belgium.  It seemed the next month they were driving away in a car as new drivers.  Leaving them at collage as freshmen was another letting go.  There is a sense of loss at each juncture but also a sense of satisfaction.  In letting them go, I was really letting them grow.  At each threshold they returned to me richer more fascinating people.

Our faith is grounded in the idea of letting go to make room for growth.  Warren Schutz observes (Temporary Shepherds-A Congregational Handbook for Ministry, p. 121) that the Christian faith is built upon the following pattern:

• Change: The inevitable movement of life’s forces
• Transition: The process by which we must deal with the inevitable changes of life
• Transformation: The new shape that occurs after transition, toward which change is aimed.

Schultz writes that God sought to change the consequences of sin into forgiveness.  The process of transition was the death and resurrection of Jesus.  Transformation is what happens in our lives as a result of that process.  The Gospel is all about leaving things behind to embrace new and deeper things. It is a mystery of our faith that in losing we find.  “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will find it [Mark 8:35].”

Our congregations are sometimes resistant to change and leaving behind familiar things.  Yet the core story of our faith is about life, then death, then new life through resurrection.  The arc of this narrative is the foundation of our faith.

To deny change and reject transition is to close the door on transformation.  Followers of the living, dying, rising Christ—of all people—are well equipped to move through this cycle with hope and anticipation about the next new thing God will do.  We believe that God is in the change.
     See, I am doing a new thing!
        Now it springs up; do you
          not perceive it?
        I am making a way in the
            desert
          and steams in the
             wasteland. (Isaiah 43:19)
We are all about the new stuff God is doing.  Inevitably that means leaving some of the old stuff behind:  letting go to letting grow.

Jim Kelsey-Executive Minister of the American Baptist Churches of New York State