Tulips and the church

  Those are my tulips.  It's February 24.  While I have a hunch that my tulips are going to regret breaking forth in their splendor this early in the year, there isn't anything in the future that seems to indicate that cold weather will strike them down as punishment for their pre-emergence.

  The world is changing.  Perhaps it's just been a mild winter--I certainly have no objection to that.  I love the warm weather, but I also wonder if this isn't a harbinger of things to come.  I'm not about to say that one mild winter means that global warming is about to have cataclysmic results, but I wonder what is in store for us.  Whether or not you agree that humans have caused global warming, the science shows that the earth is warming.  Things are changing.

  Things are changing in the church, too.  The world is changing around us, and our ability to thrive in the midst of these changes depends on our ability to attend to the world around us.  (I don't doubt our ability to survive--let us not forget that we are Christ's church, and we will survive.  That doesn't mean we won't look very different, but I believe Christ will ensure that his Truth is proclaimed here on earth.)  If we simply carry on ignoring the world around us, the world will simply return the favor.

  What does it take for the church to thrive?  I'll not pretend to have all the answers, but I do believe that it relates directly to our ability to engage with the world, to be relevant in the lives of those around us who believe that they do not need the church.

  But first this means that those within the church need to ensure that we are engaging with our own faith.  We need to understand why it is that we need Christ in our lives, why it is that our faith matters day in day out.  We need to come to grips with the reality that the church has not always done a great job of living out the faith that it proclaims--we have invested too much time in caring for ourselves and not enough time caring for the world.  We have not encouraged engagement with the world, and as the world has changed around us, we have lost touch with our community.

  I think the changes in the world could be good for the church--I think it forces us to examine ourselves, our practices, and determine where we have drifted in our faithfulness.  It should make us question how our faith makes us different than those around us who are not Christian--how does our faith change us?  It forces us to examine our priorities and ensure that we are placing Christ first.  If we do such honest examination and can lead lives that demonstrate our hope is in Christ in everything we do, we can demonstrate a faith that is relevant, that is healing, that is hope in the darkest of valleys.  Then, as the community of believers engage with the world around them throughout the week, as the church scatters into the community each Sunday afternoon, we take with us something that has transformed us, something that we can offer to those in our workplaces, in our neighborhoods, something that offers relevant hope and security in a changing world.

  So how do we, the church, equip and encourage believers to be transformed by the power of the Spirit?  How do we invite people to hand over everything to the Holy Spirit, that something dramatic may happen in our lives?  How do we focus on the world around us, rather than caring for ourselves first?

  Fine questions.  I will be in prayer for the answers, for the leading of the Spirit, that New Hope may be a witness to the world, a light to the community, a place where people come to worship and go forth to let Christ change the world through them.  May our eyes look outward to the world, that we may be in tune with the changes taking place around us.