One of the joys of serving this parish is making the drive from Gettysburg to Agar to Onida and back again. It’s such a beautiful drive. One of the best things about it has been watching the crops grow and mature and, now, watching how the harvest is progressing. The scenery is never quite the same from one trip to the next.
Because of that, it seems to be that those of us who live in rural areas should have a special understanding of how change is a part of life. We see change every day around here. The crops go through various stages of development. So does the livestock. So do the pheasants and the deer and all the other game animals and birds. Everywhere we look, we see change.
The church is always changing, too. It may not happen every day, but over time, it does. If you could somehow walk into a church service from a hundred years ago, you’d see a lot of changes. For one thing, the men would all be wearing coats and ties and the women would all be wearing dresses. Not only would there be no overhead projection system, there’d be no sound system. There probably would not even be electric lights, at least not if the church service took place in this area. While some of the hymns might still be familiar, at least if you know traditional hymns, many would not be. I’ve only scratched the surface here; there have been a lot of other changes in the church over the years, too.
Things will continue to change, too, because that’s simply the way of the world. As I’ve said before, we’re always either moving forward or we’re moving backward, because we’re never allowed to stand still. There have been times in my life I’ve wished it wasn’t that way, times when I really liked how things were and wished they could just stay that way forever, but that’s just the way it is. If we’re going to make our way in the world, we have to be able to make changes. If we don’t, we’ll discover that changes are being made for us, and they won’t be changes we’ll like very much.
I don’t know exactly what that means for this parish. It’s not my decision to make, anyway. A pastor’s role is not to force change on a congregation against its will. That’s not even possible, not really. The pastor’s role is to help the congregation make the changes that it agrees need to be made in order to be better able to serve God and bring God’s love to its community. Those changes may not be the same in each church, nor do they have to be. Onida may see certain needs, Agar may see others, and Gettysburg may see still others. Each church needs to find the best way to serve God in its specific community.
The landscape of my drive within this parish is changing. Our parish itself is changing, too. That’s okay. In fact, it’s inevitable. Let’s not regret that or try to fight it. Instead, let’s meet it enthusiastically, so that we can be in control of the changes we make and make them in ways that will help us serve God as well as we can.
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