Near and Far Faith

I've seen it through all my ministry experience - from the student missions trips to leading a team of musicians - to work with people you must be flexible.

We are tattered selfish people - all of us - prone to selfishness. Whether in ministry or not, working with people requires you to be able to change and adapt to that selfishness within the world and fight running from discomfort. Those who cannot - well everyone can - those who will not will be disillusioned with society, leaders, even God himself. This is a world of continuous transitional change and we are the people living in it causing it to change. To think that what worked before will work now is dangerously cautious. To think that people will always do it this way is a cop out on relationship investing.

The cool thing is that once a culture is built to see the transition and change as the norm, from the big decisions to the little tweaks, they thrive within it. Alan J. Roxburgh wrote a book about this phenomenon of change and we as leaders leading through it that's been just beating with my heart - it's called "The Sky is Falling".

I watched a great example of the culture built to change this week with our worship team. We ended up, through some miscommunication, without a drummer at rehearsal. As we had only found out about our percussion-free team at rehearsal, we had to change quickly and still produce a quality project for our family service this weekend. The team transitioned smoothly and quickly into an "unplugged" format. We got out of practice on time and received a lot of positive feedback from the congregation about the music.

Change is not good. Change is normal. Change and transition is reality.