We all have experiences in life which can be super helpful for ourselves, and the people we come into contact with.
One assembly I remember vividly contained this question – would you rather see an older doctor who was covered in blood and muck, but who was very experienced. Or a young doctor, fresh out of college, who was wall presented.
I can’t speak for my peers, but give me the doctor who has been doing it for a while!
Experience counts in so many places. But, as Christians, wisdom that comes from God trumps experience EVERY SINGLE TIME.
The thing is, we can easily become complacent and end up just going through the motions of ‘what we know’, rather than trying something new and ‘trusting God’ – this is a large reason why the established church is shrinking all round the world, because those who have the power and control over a church all too often settle for what they knew, rather than what God is saying.
It’s even got a name – the Kodak effect.
Kodak was a market leader. Their name was THE name for film! We see it in the credits of uncountable movies.
However, when digital media started to surface as a ‘thing’ they made a cataclysmic decision for their business, and ignored digital media, sticking with the traditional strips of film they’d made their business out of.
We all know what happened to Kodak. Their gamble was that the better quality produced by strips of film, would always win…it didn’t! Digital media didn’t go away - Kodak did!
We see this mirrored in churches stuck in the 1980s syndrome. I’ve read countless articles on this specific phenomenon.
So why are they stuck in the 1980s? Well, simply because the people running those churches grew up in the 1980s, and prefer the music and styles of worship and so on from that decade.
Twas ever thus! But here is hope – the Bride of Christ is always growing, and exponentially where we see persecution of Christians.
But as believers in Jesus Christ, we need to ‘throw off everything that hinders’. And that includes a lot of what we think of as ‘church’ which simply is not.
Andy B
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