A few years ago I received a phone call from the track and field coach at my alma mater, Concordia University Wisconsin, informing me that the last school record I held had been broken. All in all, I had a pretty good track and field career in college. I was blessed to set a number of school records and earn all-conference honors a number of times. I’ve still got the plaques and some medals in my closet at home, but after 18 years, it was time for that last record to be broken and to move on.
While we know we can’t live in the past, sometimes it’s hard to get over things. Churches are notorious for this: we fondly remember the good old days of Pastor Soand-so, when everything seemed to be so vibrant and the church was growing and bursting at the seams. Many happy memories are made in churches: friendships, holidays, baptisms, and weddings, and so when changes happen in the church, they can feel like losses to us. We miss how things used to be, and how we remember them being. But times have changed. For better or for worse, those days of easy prosperity and growth are now a fading memory for nearly all churches.
I turned 43 this past month, and you may have noticed if you are watching the Olympics this summer that world-class athletes in their 40s are the exception and not the rule. Over the past decade, I’ve had to come to terms with what many of you have experienced in your lifetimes: My days as a record-setting athlete are behind me. My peak athletic performances were 20 years and about 50 pounds ago. But that doesn’t mean that I’m useless yet. It just means that as times change and as I change, God has got some different work for me to do now. I’m a lot better preacher and writer than I was back then, and I know a lot more about being a pastor now that I’ve got more than a decade and a half of experience under my belt.
This is also true for our church. It would be a mistake to try to repristinate (to restore to the first or original state or condition) what we’ve always done in the hopes that people will just find their way back. The programs and events that worked in the past aren’t going to have the same outcomes in the future, and many of the people who led them have moved on or passed on. Even the ways a church is governed and structured need to change to match the current size of the church, not what things were in the past or what we hope they will be sometime in the future.
One of the things I’ve noticed here at Bethlehem over the past few years is how many people we have who are chronologically in their sixties and seventies but who are doing new things and continuing to find joy in serving the Lord and His church in different ways. The saying goes that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but I keep on seeing in many of our members the daily renewal that comes from the Holy Spirit working in our lives. This renewal was put into motion when we were baptized into Christ, and through God’s Word, we continue to be renewed throughout all of our days.
I remember a story told to me by a pastoral counselor last year about a friend of his who claimed to be always learning. My counselor recently saw him again and asked him what he had been learning recently, and his friend, who had recently been widowed, answered, “I’m learning how to go to church without my wife.” The changes we face aren’t always welcome or joyful, but God works through them all to mold us and shape us to become more like Him so that we can reflect His love to others no matter what stage of life we find ourselves in or how things may change around us.
That said, we have a God who never changes, and our commission to make disciples remains the same throughout time and history. How do we do that? We honestly face the current reality of our situation, while remaining joyful and optimistic about our future, knowing that it is in the hands of the Lord who is the author and perfector of our faith. He is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. Thanks to Him, we know how the race ends: we will be victorious and receive the crown of life that will last forever. Until then, we continue persevering and striving, or as St. Paul puts it, “always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” (1 Cor. 15:58)