The Village ILWIDIot
Walt Wiltschek
“I do this one thing: I forget about the things behind me and reach out for the things ahead of me.” —Phil. 3:13b, CEB
One of my friends for Christmas gave me a desk calendar filled with a series of delightfully horrible puns, one for each day. Most don’t lend themselves to theological pondering, but recently one caught my eye: “Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be,” it said.
Nostalgia literally means “homesickness”—a desire to return home, to what is familiar. It’s full of wistfulness and longing. And it seems to be present in abundance recently, whether in relation to our country, our communities, or our church. Moving forward can be hard. But, of course, it’s the only way to go. Like most sharks, if you don’t move forward, you sink.
Greg Davidson Laszakovits, a Brethren coach/consultant who spent several days with us in April (see below), reminded us of the challenge as he shared first with many of our district pastors and then with a wider group at our Potluck Experience event. His keynote presentation focused on that very theme: “Honoring the Past, Re-Imagining the Future.”
I’ve been watching some of Greg’s work over the past year or so, and I continually have felt that he’s asking the right questions. He won’t claim to have all the answers, but he has framed the issues in helpful ways and is providing some tools and resources to help congregations find a path into the unknown that lies before us.
Churches are, in most places, no longer the center of their communities. We can’t take it for granted that most people will want to be in a sanctuary on Sunday mornings. Technology has shifted the ways that people engage and participate. Numbers are down almost across the board—the Southern Baptist Convention announced recently that it had lost half a million members in the past year, for example—and fewer Americans identify as Christian.
Yet we are still the church. And our central call remains the same: Go into all the world, share the cup of cold water, love your neighbor, do justice and love mercy. We take the best of who we’ve been, and we find fresh ways to bear the light of Christ into our communities and our world. It’s often in adversity—as our brothers and sisters in Nigeria have shown—that the church most remarkably rises to the occasion.
I’ve seen glimpses of that in this district, with congregations responding to need in creative ways—some with seemingly small initiatives, some with incredible outreaches in exponential relationship to the congregation’s size, but all faithful to who they are and can be.
So, no, perhaps nostalgia isn’t what it used to be. But the call of continue the work of Jesus still is. And thus we “engage the change,” as Greg put it, and we keep on swimming.
“I do this one thing: I forget about the things behind me and reach out for the things ahead of me.” —Phil. 3:13b, CEB
One of my friends for Christmas gave me a desk calendar filled with a series of delightfully horrible puns, one for each day. Most don’t lend themselves to theological pondering, but recently one caught my eye: “Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be,” it said.
Nostalgia literally means “homesickness”—a desire to return home, to what is familiar. It’s full of wistfulness and longing. And it seems to be present in abundance recently, whether in relation to our country, our communities, or our church. Moving forward can be hard. But, of course, it’s the only way to go. Like most sharks, if you don’t move forward, you sink.
Greg Davidson Laszakovits, a Brethren coach/consultant who spent several days with us in April (see below), reminded us of the challenge as he shared first with many of our district pastors and then with a wider group at our Potluck Experience event. His keynote presentation focused on that very theme: “Honoring the Past, Re-Imagining the Future.”
I’ve been watching some of Greg’s work over the past year or so, and I continually have felt that he’s asking the right questions. He won’t claim to have all the answers, but he has framed the issues in helpful ways and is providing some tools and resources to help congregations find a path into the unknown that lies before us.
Churches are, in most places, no longer the center of their communities. We can’t take it for granted that most people will want to be in a sanctuary on Sunday mornings. Technology has shifted the ways that people engage and participate. Numbers are down almost across the board—the Southern Baptist Convention announced recently that it had lost half a million members in the past year, for example—and fewer Americans identify as Christian.
Yet we are still the church. And our central call remains the same: Go into all the world, share the cup of cold water, love your neighbor, do justice and love mercy. We take the best of who we’ve been, and we find fresh ways to bear the light of Christ into our communities and our world. It’s often in adversity—as our brothers and sisters in Nigeria have shown—that the church most remarkably rises to the occasion.
I’ve seen glimpses of that in this district, with congregations responding to need in creative ways—some with seemingly small initiatives, some with incredible outreaches in exponential relationship to the congregation’s size, but all faithful to who they are and can be.
So, no, perhaps nostalgia isn’t what it used to be. But the call of continue the work of Jesus still is. And thus we “engage the change,” as Greg put it, and we keep on swimming.
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