We've Been Workin' On The Railroad.

Signs of Emergence...

If Christianity is to remain "vital", then it is, in the truest sense, "vital" that we understand change: for an organism to show signs of life, it must show it can respond to its environment, and for the church to retain a vibrancy about its faith it must "adapt and survive".

Even if there is little evidence of change visible to the external observer, the process of the church thinking is a healthy sign that we know that things cannot stay as they are.

I am in agreement and feel the above statement is indicative of where the church is today. A conversation is underway and the church is thinking again. But we must not confuse our talk and thought and theory will real change, with action.

From biology to economics science concurs: to stop changing is to die.

It has perhaps been our reluctance to think, and thus our slowness to change and respond to a civilization that since the Industrial Revolution has phenomenally accelerated (increased its rate of change), that has put us in this near death situation.

The question, then, is not shall we change, but how to do so.

If the people who built the railroads in the US were actually interested in transporting people, they would now own the airlines. But they don't. The industrial historians tell us that the reason for this is that once the railroad companies had completed the huge task of driving the lines across the US, they lost their focus. Instead of continuing to pioneer ways of allowing free movement of people, they lost sight of the key end and focused internally on the one means to that end that they had made.

How have we Christians lost our focus and begun to focus internally?

For a century or so, this was no problem because the railroad was still the best way to get around, but with the advent of the airlines the railroad companies were overtaken by a mode of transport that was massively better.

Perhaps our "century" has come to an end?

What the railroad owners failed to appreciate is that if you are to "keep the main thing the main thing," as the management speak goes, it is highly likely that at some point you are going to have to fundamentally change the way you operate, and this will probably involve having to deconstruct the very modus operandi that you are currently using.

What is the main thing for Christians and the church?

The route to change must not be through the exercise of power but through an exercise in empowerment.

To me this means that change will come by and through the people, not the paid ministry professionals.

Can we as the church buck our own trends by working to change alongside other institutions, rather than twenty years behind them? I believe we can. I believe we have a unique opportunity to show how an institution that is widely acknowledged to be out of touch, is largely ignored by those it seeks to serve, and is completely detached from the blossoming interest in things spiritual, can face its fears, stop tinkering with the railroad, step down into the dark alleys, and explore completely new ways of being.