Pilgrim Soldier

We hold on to what is comfortable and familiar to us.

This was a comment that I read recently elsewhere and it suggested that this should be seen as a positive thing so that we would be unique whilst other denominations/congregations kept copying each other, with little success. I also heard something similar today!

Now I know that change is uncomfortable and that many people might actually like the idea, but I couldn’t help thinking about it in the context of Jesus’ disciples! What would have happened in the early church had held onto ‘what is comfortable and familiar’ to them?

If nothing new is ever considered, if nothing ever changes, then where will we be in 20, 30, 50 years time? If everything must stay the same then how are we ever going to reach out to a rapidly changing world?

Now I’m not naive enough to expect everything to change, but what is sacrosanct and what is up for grabs? I’m coming to the conclusion that very little of what we actually get upset about when things change is what really matters, because in fact a lot of that is cultural. It is though a way of protecting ourselves from change in other areas. But then what does that say about our reliance on God? Surely it is the never-changing God who really protects us, not the never-changing ‘Army’!

So what am I holding onto that needs to change? Probably more than I’d like to admit, but please Lord don’t let me hold onto it just because it offers me comfort. Instead I want to throw off everything that hinders for the sake of God’s Kingdom!

There’s a news article over at the website for the men’s magazine Sorted that says:

“Men who go to church regularly prefer “proper macho songs” and feel uncomfortable with hugging and sitting in circles discussing their feelings…”

The whole area of why men don’t go to church is one that I’m increasingly concerned about so I did a search to see what some of the other blog writers around are saying about it. I found only a handful of articles most of which seemed to fall into two categories: those who seemed to complain about women in ministry within the church, and those who got caught up on the ‘happy-clappy’ vs ‘traditional’ forms of worship, plus one who focussed on the fact that men do things other than blatant evangelism to bond! In each case it seems the same theme runs through many of the posts on those sites!

My question though is why people can’t see that men are in the minority in the majority of our congregations in the Western world? Why does it have to come down our personal agenda all the time when issues like this crop up instead of trying to work out what to really do about it? Maybe the solution is not necessarily in the things we value but in really change to something that isn’t necessarily comfortable for us!