Change is Changing

Last week I posted on how technology and information have brought about endless change. I also noted how fast change has been occurring. One of you posted an obvious reason for some of that- there are a lot more people today than there ever have been. That's why iPod and Facebook exploded. There were more people available to get hooked.

At any rate, the idea of such rapid change is still incredible. Its impact on how we live and work and play has been nothing short of amazing. I hinted that I hadn't even thought about the church in the midst of all that.

That wasn't quite true. I have thought about it many times in the past decade or so since I first heard of the doubling of information and technology rate. I also thought about it in other ways even longer ago that that.

I remember when we went to Disney World with our daughter in 1991. We did the ride inside that big geodesic globe which was essentially about the history of technology and communications, etc. The ride, as I best remember it today, made the point that the "old" spoken word and story telling by oral transmission was, naturally an early way of communicating. Now we have all these electronic marvels. (Even in 1991 the marvels were there.)

As the ride came to an end I remember that my wife (and co-pastor) turned to me and simply said:

We are dinosaurs.

Which I agreed with. Sort of. The idea of standing in a pulpit Sunday after Sunday, year in and year out, expounding in some form or another on an ancient text in a purely oral format did sound like antiquity. It was little changed in basic form since, well, since the church started.

Over the past 18 years a lot has changed- and preaching continues. We may use Powerpoint or video projectors but most of the time "the message" is still presented much like it always has been. We have moved into a "new" era, what has been called a "post-modern" era, moving beyond the supposed certainties and style of modernity. Things aren't supposed to be as "black and white" or "either-or" like they used to be. "Permanent" truths have been challenged.

But the oral tradition has remained the same- and even grown. Thanks to TV and movies the post-moderns are a story-telling generation. They can retell the most complex movie plot or throw movie quotes back and forth. Good storytellers- whether preachers, screenwriters or movie directors- are still doing what we have always done.

So why does the church membership remain overall stagnant? Why have the mainline, historic denominations which offer a sense of "roots" declined? Why has most of the "growth" in Western Christianity been transfer growth?

Oh I wish I knew.

Ten years ago I had all the answers. The answers were right.

But I wasn't.

At least it doesn't look like it. The changes in the church are among the most difficult to see, predict, or even analyze. I wish I had some of my own notes about the church from 25 years ago and what the experts were saying at that time. As I think back on it, one of the most insightful was Lyle Schaller. Schaller was The Leadership Guru of the church. He had a way of observing and naming trends he was seeing. Yet I do not remember Schaller being a "futurist" in saying that this, that, or the other thing was going to be the way of the future. As I think more about it today his was a fluid vision of the church. I think he knew better than most that to predict the ways of the church was to be on the same page as weather forecasting. Anything beyond the proverbial 36-hour forecast would be worthless.

Church change- lasting change- also takes place at a snail's pace, even in this day and age. There is a natural "conservative" tendency in such a large and diverse system as the church. There is a constant tension of the new and the old, a give and take between generations, the natural rhythms that life and death bring.

All of which is to say that change in the church is unpredictable. But then the whole premise of the book The Black Swan is that Big Change is almost always the result of unpredictable occurrences. The socio-cultural changes that will come from the current economic situation are beyond what we can even guess today. We can only think the way we have always thought- even when those ways don't work or got us into the situation in the first place.

So it goes in the church. But the important part is to be open to the possibility of change. God is at work. There is no doubt about that. But I for one don't have clue 1 anymore what that means in my day to day life, let alone the future of the church. Sure I have my opinions, but so do we all.

In the end my guess is we will all be surprised at what really happens.