Change can be one of the hardest words in the life of a church! We can hear it as a threat to what we love, a criticism of what has gone before, or an admission that somehow we have got things terribly wrong! Over the years of working with different churches, facilitating conversations concerning change and vision, I have often begun in a room where battle lines have been quietly drawn and the trenches dug! Fortunately, the trench deadlock of the first world war was replaced by manoeuvre warfare, a revelation that actually came from generals reading scripture! So when we read the Bible, we discover something rather beautiful when it comes to thinking about change; the story of Scripture is full of people whom God calls to leave what is familiar and journey into something new whilst retaining their identity.

I have found that there are a few unshakable pillars in any process of change, however minor. The first and most important is that the God who calls us into change is himself utterly faithful. “I am the Lord, and I do not change,” says Malachi 3:6. God does not abandon his character, his promises or his love; that is so important for us to remember. And yet it is precisely because God is faithful, he is able to continually call his people into new expressions of that faithfulness. Isaiah senses God saying, “See, I am doing a new thing!” (Isaiah 43:19). St Paul speaks of those who are in Christ as “a new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17), for if we are true disciples we will all be undergoing a constant process of personal change. And at the very end of Scripture, Revelation gives us the extraordinary promise: “I am making everything new” (Revelation 21:5). The vision in Revelation is not one of taking us back to the Garden of Eden, but for Christ to dwell again with us in a very new heaven and new earth; it is a vision of eternal progress.

Throughout the biblical story, God’s people area pilgrim people, rarely static for long, always being given the opportunity to journey towards where God is leading. Abraham leaves his homeland, Israel leaves Egypt and journeys through the wilderness and the prophets call God’s people to renewed faithfulness. Jesus calls fishermen away from their nets and into discipleship. The Holy Spirit then leads the early Church beyond the boundaries it had assumed were permanent, taking the Gospel to Gentiles, new cultures and new communities.

Change in the Bible is therefore not simply about becoming different. It is about becoming more faithfully what God is calling us now to be.

That distinction matters. We do not change because everything old is bad, nor do we refuse to change because everything familiar is sacred. We discern. We pray. We listen to Scripture. We pay attention to the Holy Spirit and to the changing context in which God has placed us. We ask where the life of Christ is already moving and how we might follow? Perhaps this changes the question from“What are we going to change?”, to  “What is God inviting us to become?”

That second question is both more challenging and more hopeful, as it reminds us that the Church does not belong to any particular generation. We have received something precious from those who came before us, and our responsibility is to hand on the faith in such a way that it can be received by those who come after us. If you like, instead of studying our own hands in which we hold the gift, we should be studying the hands of those that we hope will receive it.

This is where change and mission meet. A church that refuses to change may eventually become disconnected from the very people it is called to serve, however a church that changes without discernment can lose its centre. The answer is not binary (to preserve or to innovate), but more towards remain rooted in Christ while allowing the Spirit to lead us outward.

The image of the river in Ezekiel 47 is perhaps helpful here. The water flows from the temple, but it does not remain there, it moves outward, bringing life wherever it goes. Jesus takes up that same imagery when he speaks of the living water of the Spirit in John 7. The Church is rooted in worship, Scripture and sacrament, but the life we receive is intended to flow beyond us.

Perhaps, then, change is sometimes simply the movement required for the river to both keep flowing, but perhaps in unfamiliar channels, and to flow into new, or perhaps changed places. The challenge therefore for us is to have enough humility to recognise when something needs to change, enough courage to make that change, but enough wisdom to know what must never change: Christ, the Gospel, and our calling to love God and our neighbour.

The biblical story ends not with everything being preserved exactly as it was, but with God making all things new; perhaps that gives us permission to face change not primarily with fear, but with prayerful expectation..even excitement!.

The question is not whether the Church will change. The question is whether, through our changes, we are becoming more faithful to the calling of God in our moment in time, who is leading us into a future that he sees, even if it is hidden from us.