Some of you are ready to quit right now. You haven’t told anyone, but you’re thinking about it. The new year is right around the corner, and you’re thinking about a move.
Wouldn’t it be great to get to a new church where everybody worked together rather than against each other? Wouldn’t it be great to be in an organization where the senior leadership was as passionate about family as you are? Wouldn’t it be great to even start a brand new church where you didn’t struggle with the problems existing churches face?
New is an awesome idea. But new loses its luster faster than you think. In fact, sometimes new shines less brightly than old.
Some of you are actually probably called to start something new, but I wonder how many of us use new as an excuse to not work through the issues facing us?
Come on, you see it in other people so easily. His marriage broke up and now he’s on wife number two (or three, or four), but all he did was take all his baggage and dump it into a new relationship. The only thing that’s new is the players – the script is the same. Actually, it’s worse, because now he’s got two families to manage and a past that’s less than resolved or ideal.
Could the same be true of you? It’s so tempting to believe that new is going to resolve our problems. A new job, a new wife, a new staff, a new congregation, a new town … But is new really the answer?
When have you seen this? Do you see it in other teams? Do you feel that pull toward new? How do you know when it’s God and how do you know when it’s something else?
Come back tomorrow for the next in this series and we’ll talk about why same might actually be better than new.
