I believe that most people tend to gravitate towards that which they are the most familiar and most comfortable with, and the Church is no stranger to this. Even for myself when I go to restaurants that I have been to before I naturally tend to stick with the two or three things that I know that I like on the menu. We get in routines with the route we take to church, what we do in the mornings, what we wear, and the list could go on. Now, routines are not bad things at all as there are routines we can have in our lives that are very healthy and beneficial for us such as drinking enough water, exercising, reading, praying, etc… Yet, there are also other times we have routines that keep us from being healthier or a better version of ourselves.

The Church can go down these same paths as well. Now, I want to specify before I say these next few things that “Older is not bad, and newer is not better”. Sometimes in the Church we can adopt the mentality that if something is new and it is drawing a crowd that means it is good and it is working but at times while it may be new and shiny it might take us further away from our goal of making disciples of Jesus for the transformation of the world.

I honestly cannot remember where I have heard this statement before but it has stuck with me for years but as the Church we need to hold tightly to our mission and loosely to our methods. This means we need to remember why the Church exists, what our purpose is and stay firm in that no matter what, but at the same time realize how we accomplish that purpose in 2021 may differ than how we did it in 2010, 2000, the 90’s, 80’s, 70’s, etc… Sometimes the Church does the exact opposite of this important advice. We too often cling tightly to our methods, the way we have done things because, “That’s the way we have always done it” or because it worked in the 1980’s so we just keep doing it over and over again hoping that it produces the same results. We also face the temptation now as the Church since we are now meeting again in person to go right back to what we were doing before even if it was not working.

While COVID has produced lots of difficulties and pains it also has offered the church a time to reflect and change paths. It has provided us a time to reflect on questions like these…

• Why do we exist?
• What are we trying to accomplish?
• Is what we are doing going to lead us to that goal?

If we don’t know why we exist as the Church, or what we are trying to accomplish then we will be guided by personal preferences, our own desires, and churches will be divided over who has the power to accomplish what they want (which we have seen many times). Yet, if we as the Church have a clear picture of who we are and what we are trying to accomplish then we can ask ourselves what can we do that will lead us down that path? So, my let us hold loosely to our methods and tightly to our mission as we seek to be the Church that God has made us to be.