Grow or Die
There is an old saying, if you’re not growing, you’re dying.
Growth can come in many forms and sometimes you don’t even realize it’s happening. Typically, people associate growth with getting bigger, but it is sometimes about getting better, smarter, or stronger.
Many corporations grow through adding new products, services, or locations. Others grow by becoming more efficient, resourceful, or cost effective. In whatever way that growth manifests itself the main component is change, without change, there is no growth. Something cannot grow without changing.
Warren Buffett once said, “the investor of today does not profit from yesterday’s growth.”
What Mr. Buffett is talking about is not resting on your laurels and becoming complacent.
The Draw of Nostalgia
Say not, “Why were the former days better than these?”
For it is not from wisdom that you ask this.
Ecclesiastes 7:10
Everyone knows someone who you might say peaked in High School. They might have been the football team’s star player or maybe the most popular kid in school. This is someone who you run into 10, 15, maybe 20 years after graduation who is still trying to relive their glory days and can only speak about High School, because they never grew past those experiences.
They were happy with the way things were and continue to try to relive those happy times, which, you really cannot do except through memory. Unfortunately, they never progress past what they were.
Those mired in nostalgia spend perpetuity reveling in the splendor of their own minds.
It is not uncommon for people to sit with old friends and reminisce about old times. The nostalgia of those moments is comforting and knowing that we had good times with people we enjoy can give us warm feelings. Despite these moments being pleasing, they rarely lead to growth.
When I was a kid we went on a family vacation with a family my parents knew. This was a vacation that the other family took every year. We went to the same restaurants they went to the year before, we went to the same sites they went to the year before, and we went to the same shows they went to the year before all in the same order and at roughly the same time as the years before. They went to those same restaurants, sites, and shows the next year, and the year after that, and the year after that too.
Luckily for me, my family did not conform to this pattern. Of course, we had our go to places, but it wasn’t a given that we would go to those places every vacation and because of that I was able to see much of the United States, I have seen Europe and parts of the Caribbean and Central America and I experienced all that these places have to offer. The other family went to the same restaurants, the same sites, and the same shows they went to years before and likely had virtually the same experience while I experienced new types of food, new languages, and new places, unlike anything I had ever seen.
Now, I can be nostalgic about these new experiences and hope for more new experiences to one day reminisce about, but most importantly, I grew because there was change. The other family didn’t learn new things about the place they went every year. There were no new cultural experiences, new languages, or new topography…it was always the same.
Growth always comes from new experiences regardless of whether those experiences are good or bad but because they are new, we grow.
There is nothing wrong with repeating something that we find enjoyable, or maybe comforting, but if at some point we don’t break up the pattern we become complacent because it’s simply the same and there is nothing to get all that excited about.
Growing the Church
The great commission is a very well-known account from the Bible, and it is all about growth and therefore, change.
In Matthew 28:19-20 Jesus told the disciples, 19 “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
If Jesus’ goal was not growth He would have instructed His disciples to go back to their old lives and just comfort each other rather than instructing them to go out and make disciples of all nations.
This wasn’t the only time Jesus told the disciples this, it was also His last words to them before He ascended into heaven. In Acts 1:7-8, He said, “It is not for you to know times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
The disciples probably would have liked to have taken a nostalgic approach and gone back to what was comfortable, to the way things were before and sit around a table together every Sunday morning and talk about all the miracles they saw Jesus do, and how Peter walked on water until he didn’t, or how great it was to see Jesus alive again after he had died…but they didn’t.
They did what was most likely for all of them, uncomfortable, and anything but nostalgic. They traveled from place to place, preached the gospel, brought people to Christ, and endured persecution from a society trying to eliminate Christians. All but one of them were imprisoned and later executed in horribly painful ways, which certainly wasn’t comfortable or nostalgic.
But they went.
Go Forth and Bring Coffee and Donuts
The church today, especially in the US, does not resemble the church of the disciples in Acts in many ways. Through repressive nostalgia and refusing to grow, in not only a spiritual way, but very often corporately, we have allowed ourselves to become complacent with the way things are. Most of us want church to look, feel, smell, and sound a certain way, and if it doesn’t, you better believe somebody is going to hear about it.
We just don’t want it to change, it’s comfortable the way it is.
We want to have Sunday school at 9:15 where we have some coffee and donuts and then have someone tell us a Bible story. Then head over to the sanctuary, say good morning to a few people, find our assigned seats and if someone is already seated there, they better be visitors. Then we want to hear the same hymns played like we remember them from our youth, the way they are supposed to be played, take the collection at the proper time, communion when it is properly scheduled and hear a palatable sermon that doesn’t ask too much of us. And the pastor better not take too much time to finish whatever it is he has to say because we have to get to Cracker Barrell, so we can beat the rush. We do all of this EVERY Sunday, because, well, that’s what the Bible says we are supposed to do.
At least I think that’s what it says. I could check, but I know I’m right and wouldn’t want to dig too deep into God’s word. It doesn’t really matter because that’s the way we have always done it anyway, why would we change now. That wouldn’t be comfortable.
You Were Promised Comfort, Not to Be Comfortable
Many people come to Christianity, not necessarily Christ, but Christianity, for comfort, and they can get it, but it might not look the way they think or want it to look.
It is no secret that when people are going through tough times they very often look to Christ, and they should. We are called to lean on God when times are tough (Romans 15:13), but that doesn’t mean He is going to take away whatever the problem might be. Just maybe you are supposed to go through whatever trial you are dealing with, so you might not be comfortable, but you won’t be alone, God will be there to comfort you.
And that is where we often find the church, looking to avoid the uncomfortable, which very often comes in the form of change.
The pastor at my church recently said, “if you have been sitting in the same Sunday school class for thirty years and nobody new has come into the class and nobody has come to Christ, then that class is a failure.”
This is the case in so many churches across the US. We go to the same Sunday school class with the same people, every week, because it is comfortable, and after a while, it feels like it has always been that way. It becomes nostalgic, but it hasn’t grown, and it hasn’t accomplished the great commission. It simply has existed, and when those people are gone, it will be forgotten.
If that same class, had gotten out of their comfort zones, gone out into the world, adjusted to the ever-changing landscape that is the world, and done everything they could possible to fulfill Jesus’ last words, then they would be worthy of remembering. But in so many cases, they are forgettable.
When people come to Christ for comfort they very often believe that it is supposed to make things easy, but once again, a little biblical exegesis shows how wrong it is to make that assumption.
Jesus promised that His followers would be uncomfortable.
In Matthew 5:11 Jesus said, 11 “You are blessed when they insult you and persecute you and falsely say every kind of evil against you because of me. 12 Be glad and rejoice, because your reward is great in heaven. For that is how they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
He promised we would not be comfortable, of course, unless we were not actually following Him. But He also promised eternal reward in heaven.
Lead, Follow, or Get Out of the Way
The paraphrased quote of General George S. Patton, lead, follow, or get out of the way is a phrase that has been used effectively over the years. It cuts to the chase and gets its point across. It has been used in movies and in sports metaphors to great effect.
We would never think of Jesus saying something so cutting, but He was painfully clear when it came to following Him.
In Luke 9:57-62 Jesus makes it clear that He only wants committed followers. He said,
57 As they were traveling on the road someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.”
58 Jesus told him, “Foxes have dens, and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” 59 Then he said to another, “Follow me.”
“Lord,” he said, “first let me go bury my father.”
60 But he told him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and spread the news of the kingdom of God.”
61 Another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but first let me go and say good-bye to those at my house.”
62 But Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”
He might come across as cold in these verses, but the point He was making is that no follower should put anything ahead of complete dedication to following the one true lord and savior, Jesus Christ. He was telling them not to make excuses, not to expect comfort, and not to be nostalgic.