In the challenges of renewal and transformation, that are facing many churches, there is s sense of something new, and something very old. We should not present the changes that are happening as modernising the church.
This is both new-Church and not new. There is a sense that church needs to be re-formed in every generation. Times and people change and we need to present the gospel afresh in each generation. However, there is also something fundamental and ancient in the Gospel which is unchanging. Se we read:
“Thus says the Lord: “Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls. But they said, ‘We will not walk in it.’ “
Jeremiah 6:16 (ESV)
“Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness, you who seek the Lord: look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug.”
Isaiah 51:1 (ESV)
But we also read
“No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins—and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins.”
Mark 2:21–22 (ESV)
Perhaps Church can thought of as like an old house that has been built up, converted and changed until we can’t simple carry on renovating but must go down to the foundations to build anew. Or its walls have been papered and painted again and again, and we need to scrape back to the solid original.
Hope you continue with this blog