Not everything must change
I like change, but if EVERYTHING changed I’d end up sucking my thumb and rocking in the corner. If everything changed, I would lose my frame of reference. I would be lost.
A person with extraordinary capacity for change might be able to handle a change of nearly everything, but they wouldn’t be able to bring anyone along with them into their new world. One significant change that people can handle is better. After you make one change, you can do another.
When we started i61, (our church) we didn’t change everything. We didn’t even change most things. What we believe is unremarkably evangelical. In our meetings we sing songs at the beginning of the meeting, have notices in the middle, then a message (sermon) from a pastor or guest speaker, and a song to close. Just like lots of other churches the children go to their own time during the message. Just like lots of other churches we having smaller meetings during the week that cater to people of various ages and interests. On one level i61 is just like any other church in Britain.
We did change some things though. We decided to build a church that would be inviting to people who aren’t steeped in church culture. We rejected a traditional church meeting place in favour of a pub. We replaced Christian lingo that only a few people could understand with everyday language that most everyone can understand. We focus on talking about what the bible has to say about subjects that have to do with everyday life rather than what we have to say about our theological interests. We are relentless in our drive to make i61 a place where anyone can be supported in their own faith journey, even if they don’t yet have any faith in God.
We (and here I must give most of the credit for our foundational values to Steve and Gill and Lee and Sarah Houghton) didn’t change everything. We only changed some of the things that were keeping people away from church. The result is a church-in-a-pub that is stuffed to capacity with people who are excited about God or are open to the idea of being excited about God.
You don’t have to change everything RIGHT NOW.
You don’t even have to change the most important thing right now. The other day I was listening to a head teacher who turned around a badly failing school talk about what he did first. He sorted out school’s problem with bus, car and pedestrian traffic flow. That wasn’t the most important thing to change, but it needed to be changed. And that was what the head teacher chose.
Choose one thing. Change it effectively. Bring the people you lead along with you. Repeat.
25 October 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: change,
humans,
i61
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