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Showing posts from December, 2013

Changing Church

“The only thing that is constant is change; nothing endures but change.” So wrote the Greek philosopher Heraclitus in the sixth-century B.C.E. Supposing him to be correct in this observation, I find it strange indeed that so much of our outlook and activity is premised on the permanence of things, as though the status quo of the present has always been the case and can be expected to endure indefinitely. If Heraclitus is right, it is odd indeed that we should expend remarkable energy in preserving what is. I thought of Heraclitus’s comment when I found myself seated among a group of friends one recent morning, engaged in delightful conversation on matters both trivial and profound. I listened carefully as the conversation turned to how difficult it is for the church to change. I must say, I was fully awake at that point, my attention focused and undivided. “Why is it so hard to get the church to change?” one of the interlocutors asked, expressing both a thinly veiled criti