So, stop me if you’ve heard this one before

There is no growth without change

Change

Ugh

The word itself can send cold shivers down you back

But if we don’t change

The danger is that we can become like a recording on a cassette tape

That’s

Stuck on

Repeat   Repeat   Repeat

 

And

If what we’ve always done is successful

It makes us more resistant to change

To try new things

To discover a different approach

One of my favourite Scriptures is Isaiah 43:19

‘Behold, I will do a new thing, now it shall spring forth; shall you not know it?’

STOP ME IF YOU’VE HEARD THIS ONE BEFORE

My mum, God love her

Talks about the good ‘ol days of open air meetings

If your unfamiliar with this concept

Imagine having a Church service in the middle of a shopping centre

If you went back in time

You’d see me hiding behind someone as quickly as I could, just in case any of my friends from school saw me

I agree that yes, as cringe worthy as it was –  it somehow worked…

…In 1984

When nobody had a thing called

The Internet  =)

And while my mum is going down the well-worn path of ‘Nostalgia Avenue’

Out IT comes

The Tamborine

Now just picture me as, Mike Wazowski in Monsters Inc.

Shouting

‘Put that thing back where it came from, or so help me!’

Rigid thinking makes you stale and irrelevant

To the very people your trying to reach

And that’s not good

Ever wondered why

Jesus never performed a miracle the same way twice?

He didn’t want our thinking to become boxed in

Fear is a big part of why we don’t want to change something that has always worked before

Traditions that have become an unspoken set of rules

That should never be questioned

I know, I get it

Creating something new is scary

In my blog post last week, Build a better home, I didn’t know if the Christmas Production I written and directed was going to work.

We’d never done something like that as a Church

But if I’d have let all my fears of what could go wrong take over

People wouldn’t have experienced the childlike wonder of Christmas again

They wouldn’t have felt the magic of a snow canon popping over them

Or the excitement they felt when they found a ‘golden train ticket’ underneath their seats

 

I’m sure God has so much more for us to discover

But we have to be willing to forge new paths

I’m not talking about changing the Gospel

God is the same

Yesterday, today and forever

But

God gave us an imagination and creativity

And as a Church

We have a responsibly to use our gifts and talents

For his Glory

To show people what an awesome God we serve

And yes

We won’t always get it right

But if we don’t try

We’ll never know

 

Wendy xo