Strategy and change
I’ve decided that the older I get, the more a creature of habit I become. I like tea in the morning, coffee in the afternoon, and anything made with grapes at night. I’ve developed habits that make frequent flying, preaching, writing, and much of the rest of my life a little easier. Good habits can be helpful.
But I take some of my habits to ridiculous extremes. I used to wear contact lenses - I’ve given them up now due to my reluctance to poke myself in the eye daily. Back then I developed a nice little routine for their insertion. I’d always put the left lens in first, and then the right. Left. Right. No deviation. One morning, I mistakenly placed the right lens into my right eye first. There was no sin in this, nor health risk: the universe was not about to explode simply because I had altered my little ritual. But it all seemed so very wrong. I am sad to say that I removed the right lens, replaced it in the contact lens holder, placed the left lens in my left eye, and then placed the right lens in my right eye once again for the second time that morning. I surely need therapy. This was routine madness.
My addiction to ritual was seriously messed up last week when we moved house. If you are considering this, I have instruction for you: don’t do it. They say that moving is stressful: our marriage did fairly well as our lives were stuffed into boxes. Besides which, being Christians, we don’t argue. We just share intensely.
But the move showed me how much I like what once has been. I struggled to part with some items which I’ve never used and never will have a use for. We have souvenirs from long gone holidays that will only clutter up our kitchen drawers. Occasionally we will view them with mildly depressed nostalgia.
I’m not alone in my love of sameness. Most churches don’t do well with change. I’m not declaring war on tradition here, which has great value. It’s quite traditional to wash. Be old fashioned. Your friends will thank you for it. But traditionalism can be a curse that chokes all possibility of life and change out of the church. Some people think that rearranging the chairs or pews in the church building is a heinous crime slightly more dodgy than denying the doctrine of justification by faith. A church in America is having a three way split over the location of a piano stool. And changing the times for Sunday morning services may start something akin to World War Three.
But perhaps the most bizarre example of the struggle to change comes from a member of the Salvation Army who recently wrote to me. At a time when the Army is asking questions of itself about being more effective and relevant in today’s world, not everyone finds change easy, however incidental it is. The specific issue is over a waste bin in the corps toilets (ladies). There are now two bins for used towels. One is the small pedal type which has been of good service for some time, and the other is a new larger "flip top" bin. Someone asked why there were two bins in the ladies bathroom. The answer shows thoughtful leadership strategy – and the snail like ability that we Christians sometimes have. "We are changing to the big bin but we wanted to give people time to get used to it before removing the old one".
I’m certainly not picking on our friends from the Salvation Army - I love their work and have been privileged to speak at their gatherings around the world. The truth is that change comes hard, even when it is for the better, whatever our denominational background. And we often complicate the process more because we insist that our preferences are God’s preferences. Now it’s not just that we are offended by change. According to us, God is.
Let it be known, concerning the layout of pews, the bins in the bathroom, the order of insertion of contact lenses, the position of the church piano, the time we meet on Sundays, and a host of other minutiae: God isn’t nervous, or worried. Let’s change, for God’s sake. Literally.