There’s a little voice inside your head that’s working hard to convince you not to change.

It uses vocabulary like ‘safety’ ‘comfort’ ‘protection’ and ‘calm.’  It will raise all kinds of objections at the prospect of an alternative route. Red flags will pop up whenever variation or amendment appear.

Certainly blanket acceptance of everything new is as unwise as close mindedness – the latter being much more common. This leaves the more appealing posture of reasoned consideration – how else do we filter change from necessary change? Unfortunately, this is rarely the first voice we hear nor the one we always heed.

A teacher named Ed Friedman warns us to listen very selectively to this voice. He argues that the biggest obstacle to societal progress is our unwillingness to define then to make necessary change. He has diagnosed a condition called ‘failure of nerve.’ It’s our repeated reluctance to make necessary changes. Instead we take the easy route, maintain the status quo, and avoid doing the difficult work of championing what’s right through uncomfortable consequences.

So - what’s the little voice inside your head saying?

What is the necessary change we are facing? In what ways might we be trying to resist, oppose, defy, or stand against it today? Have we thought through why this is happening? How might God be in it?

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Reading

Slow Church – Smith and Pattison

From Here to Maturity – Bergler

Called - Labberton