‘Keep an eye on the staircases – they like to change!’
Recent years have seen much change in the world of missions, and for nearly all of us it feels like the change is relentless. Factors affecting this include the current financial situation, the changing relationship between agencies and churches, new paradigms of mission, technological innovation, the rise of Generation X and now Y, the decline of the West and the change of the centre of the global church’s gravity towards the south/east, and indeed many more. It feels stressful just to list these things!
Many of us don’t feel at home in this fast-paced and rapidly developing world. It shakes our security in the way we’ve got used to doing things, and it can be disturbing when the mission field becomes flooded with people who do things very differently. Some of the changes afoot at the moment threaten our own long-term futures in mission unless we are able to adapt, and even the survival of some well-established mission agencies may be in doubt if they cannot embrace the necessary change. This is, quite frankly, alarming.
It reminds me of the scene in the first Harry Potter movie (is it ok to reference Harry Potter in a Christian blog?) where the children discover the staircases can move by themselves. All of a sudden, they can’t get back to their rooms, and have to find a different way. They have to duck quickly as several tons of hardwood comes flying over their heads to a new destination. They have the challenge of working out how to get to their lessons by a new route.
For some of them it is a, well, magical experience, full of awe and wonder at this marvellous spectacle, but for others it must be bewildering and frightening, as they find their security challenged and their assumptions about life questioned. I wonder if you can sympathise with them as you see the change going on around you in the mission field.
Yet, when the staircases have settled down, it’s still possible to find your way to your destination. It may take a bit of time to explore, experiment, and come back from dead ends, but in fact many of us will already be experienced at doing that. For most of us, that’s part of life, and part of our calling.
The church, despite often being conservative, and preserving many practices and traditions handed down from its earliest days and even before the time of Christ, is no stranger to change, and the first generation of believers must have had the hardest time of all, adapting their worldview to believe first that Jesus was the Messiah they were waiting for even though he wasn’t what they were expecting, then having to cope with his suffering and death, followed by his resurrection and ascension. Then they had to face ejection from the synagogues and hostility from Rome. Just when they thought they had it figured out, and that he’d return within their lifetimes, he didn’t come to rescue them when the Temple was destroyed by the Romans.
So what might they have to say to us about change? Peter tells us that we are aliens and sojourners (1 Peter 2:11), not citizens or residents, but migrants who won’t be staying around. John warns us not to get attached to anything in this world (1 John 2:15) because it’s only temporary – and so are we. They were very much aware of the transient nature of our existence, and chose to focus instead on our eternal heritage. Peter reminds us that we are looking for a new heaven and a new earth (2 Peter 3:13). Paul tells us that our citizenship is in heaven (Philippians 3:20) and the Hebrew writer challenges us to emulate the saints of old who lived by faith, and walked away from all this world has, seeking a better country (Hebrews 11:16).
In the midst of their changeable, temporary, transient world, they looked to the One who is the sole source of stability, Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever (Hebrews 13:8), who will one day take us to a home of unchangeable glory. We cannot do better than to follow their example.
