Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Change Can Be Scary and Rewarding

One night the Lord spoke to Paul in a vision: “Do not be afraid; keep on speaking, do not be silent. For I am with you, and no one is going to attack and harm you, because I Have many people in this city.” So Paul stayed for a year and a half, teaching them the word of God.

-- Acts 18:9-11

Change is hard for most people. We sometimes say we want it but we feel far more comfortable in our own little cocoon we call a routine. The problem with sticking to our routine is that we may miss all the wondrous blessings God has planned just for us.

Our church is in the planning stages of a new contemporary service. It should be simple. We already have one contemporary service and two traditional services. But as with anything, there is resistance from those who fear that adding another service will have a negative impact on the church.

It’s difficult for me to understand that view. We are reaching out and growing, spreading the Good News and drawing new people into our midst every week. I suspect that some of these same folks had those exact concerns when the first contemporary service began more than five years ago.

A committee member told a wonderful story that really illustrates this point. I don’t know if you like to fish. I don’t. But the story just rings so true.

One day two fishermen were out fishing on different sides of a lake. One man noticed that the other fisherman was catching some pretty large fish, then taking them off the hook and throwing them back in the water. Then the man would catch a smaller fish and keep it.

This went on for several hours. Toward the end of the day, the man walked around to where the other fisherman was and asked him why he’d thrown back the large fish and kept the smaller ones. The man explained that he only had a 10-inch frying pan so he was throwing back all the fish that wouldn’t fit in the pan.

Isn’t that how we are sometimes? We reject everything that might cause us to shift our way of doing things. We get upset if our routine might get disrupted. We refuse to try new things because we’re fearful they might have a negative impact -- when just the opposite could be true as well.

We’re so caught up in our ways, that we miss the blessings God has for us if we’d just walk a little ways out of our comfort zone. Because change never comes while we’re standing still. It comes when we’re moving forward and toward the voice of our Savior.

I don’t know how this new service will turn out. I suspect we’ll have a few kinks to work out, as is the way of most new ventures. But I also believe that God has blessed this new addition to our church and that we will see many new faces in the weeks and months to come. There’s a lost world out there searching desperately for a Savior to carry them home. Open the doors and let them in.