Welcome to Our World

Brace yourself for ecclesiastical carnage.
Programs have been dumped, traditional music trashed, preaching styles and topics revolutionized, symbols of reverence (appropriate clothing, crosses, communion tables, and pulpits come to mind) thrust aside.
The anger begins with a young pastor and his family, who have been appointed with a challenge from the small church's leadership to stir things up and inspire new vision. They were given a mandate to bring the people in, make the church grow, and most important, evangelize the youth of the surrounding neighborhoods to encourage them back into the church. Most of the church members (average age: 50+) had no idea what they were getting themselves into when all the growth talk began. Most thought that the new face in the pulpit would be a clone of the recently retired pastor, even though there was a significant age difference. They did not expect a reshuffling of the churches priorities, so the lost and broken people rather than the found and supposedly fixed people, became the primary target audience. Fighting tradition, unwritten rules, and change-resistant people.
In summary, virtually everything in the life of the church under this new leadership has become focused on reaching people that are not yet in the church. The older people in the congregation are left feeling as if the church they love has been hijacked by an intruder (one that they hired as an agent for change) and that no one understands that everything they are familiar and comfortable with has been done away with.
A disappointing fact: churches tend to hire a pastor and tell him that they are in the mood for change. They want more up-to-date equipment, they want more outreach-oriented programs, and they want to be more open to young people. Then, if any of that begins to happen, it's not unusual for some of those same people who hired the pastor to grow resistive as they feel things slipping out of their control and migrating into the hands of others, usually much younger, who may be more energetic and hungry for innovative ways of doing church.

On a more positive note: these common issues can be overcome with prayer and persistence, honesty, and love. It's not easy, but it can be done.

This has been our life for the past eight months. We're not giving up.