People are reactionary.
Human beings very seldom take drastic action apart from some action or initiating force that they respond to. This fact is present in most areas of life. We get angry because something happens to us that causes a negative reaction. We take action in defense of life in reaction to abortion. We go to war against terrorism when our country is attacked. We come to the altar when we hear a truth that convicts us. We take drastic religious action, positive or negative, because we are reacting to the message we hear, see, and experience.
People are reactionary.
The giant issue with reactionary thinking is that reaction is almost instant, generally poorly thought out, and directly related to whatever we are reacting to. For instance, someone bumps into me on purpose and doesn't apologize, I instantly get offended and ask for an apology which they do not give. When I do not receive an apology I feel attacked push them back without thinking about what would be best for everyone involved, in the end I wind up getting put in the hospital because I pushed a martial artist simply because he bumped me and didn't apologize. My reaction started instantly with being offended which led me to act offensively without thinking the entire situation through, and my action was solely based on the initiating action of the "bumper."
This is a hypothetical situation but I believe it embodies many of the interactions we have on a regular basis and more importantly I think it embodies the way people throughout history, and in the church specifically have interacted.
If we look throughout the history of the church generally what we will see is a reactionary pendulum that is swinging back and forth with every great change that has taken place in the church. The most obvious example of this pendulum is the reformation. During this time in church history change needed to take place. Change was necessary. But what we see in the history books is that instead of taking slow calculated action to bring about constructive change we reacted to the wrong we saw and tore the whole building down instead of filtering through the structure to find what was sound.
In more recent history we can see reactions from Boomers to millennials in the church, from modernists to post-modernists, from traditional to contemporary to whatever we would call the current popular church genre. Each new generation looks back before us at something that was done wrong and we react to it. In this drastic reaction we instantly act, without thinking it through well, and we act based solely on the item causing the reaction. And when we react instead of act we always swing to the other side on our pendulum and set the next generation up to do the same thing to us.
These are my questions in all of this: Where are we swinging to? What are we reacting to instead of acting on? What are we setting up the next generation to react to? and How can we lead in a way that allows the next generation to build on what we have done instead of tear down what we created?
Whenever God interacted with the Israelites in the Old Testament He was proactive and not reactive. When His people would sin against Him and forget all that he had done he acted based on His prior covenants that told clearly of the punishment for such actions, He acted based on His character and for His glory, and He acted on behalf of the generations to come. God never wiped out Israel, He brought punishment and necessary change so that the next generation could have a foundation to build on and return to Him. He was acting now based on the past for the future.
As leaders we must be forward thinking. When we loose sight of where we are going we become stagnant, but we must also look back. When we bring about change we must look back and ask if we are reacting to something we didn't like or acting to build on a foundation. Are we throwing out years of truth because of one severe wrong that we see? When we create models, lead people, build structures, and whatever else we do we must do so knowing that change will come. We must lay a foundation that the next generation can work with instead of building a structure they will just have to tear down.
Finally, we must act now. The beautiful thing about church history is that no mistake anyone has ever made has messed up God's plan or blessing on the church. He still uses us even when we don't get it right. For all the times we have had to tear down and rebuild God still has His hand on us and He still chooses us. The worst thing we can do is nothing.
Human beings very seldom take drastic action apart from some action or initiating force that they respond to. This fact is present in most areas of life. We get angry because something happens to us that causes a negative reaction. We take action in defense of life in reaction to abortion. We go to war against terrorism when our country is attacked. We come to the altar when we hear a truth that convicts us. We take drastic religious action, positive or negative, because we are reacting to the message we hear, see, and experience.
People are reactionary.
The giant issue with reactionary thinking is that reaction is almost instant, generally poorly thought out, and directly related to whatever we are reacting to. For instance, someone bumps into me on purpose and doesn't apologize, I instantly get offended and ask for an apology which they do not give. When I do not receive an apology I feel attacked push them back without thinking about what would be best for everyone involved, in the end I wind up getting put in the hospital because I pushed a martial artist simply because he bumped me and didn't apologize. My reaction started instantly with being offended which led me to act offensively without thinking the entire situation through, and my action was solely based on the initiating action of the "bumper."
This is a hypothetical situation but I believe it embodies many of the interactions we have on a regular basis and more importantly I think it embodies the way people throughout history, and in the church specifically have interacted.
If we look throughout the history of the church generally what we will see is a reactionary pendulum that is swinging back and forth with every great change that has taken place in the church. The most obvious example of this pendulum is the reformation. During this time in church history change needed to take place. Change was necessary. But what we see in the history books is that instead of taking slow calculated action to bring about constructive change we reacted to the wrong we saw and tore the whole building down instead of filtering through the structure to find what was sound.
In more recent history we can see reactions from Boomers to millennials in the church, from modernists to post-modernists, from traditional to contemporary to whatever we would call the current popular church genre. Each new generation looks back before us at something that was done wrong and we react to it. In this drastic reaction we instantly act, without thinking it through well, and we act based solely on the item causing the reaction. And when we react instead of act we always swing to the other side on our pendulum and set the next generation up to do the same thing to us.
These are my questions in all of this: Where are we swinging to? What are we reacting to instead of acting on? What are we setting up the next generation to react to? and How can we lead in a way that allows the next generation to build on what we have done instead of tear down what we created?
Whenever God interacted with the Israelites in the Old Testament He was proactive and not reactive. When His people would sin against Him and forget all that he had done he acted based on His prior covenants that told clearly of the punishment for such actions, He acted based on His character and for His glory, and He acted on behalf of the generations to come. God never wiped out Israel, He brought punishment and necessary change so that the next generation could have a foundation to build on and return to Him. He was acting now based on the past for the future.
As leaders we must be forward thinking. When we loose sight of where we are going we become stagnant, but we must also look back. When we bring about change we must look back and ask if we are reacting to something we didn't like or acting to build on a foundation. Are we throwing out years of truth because of one severe wrong that we see? When we create models, lead people, build structures, and whatever else we do we must do so knowing that change will come. We must lay a foundation that the next generation can work with instead of building a structure they will just have to tear down.
Finally, we must act now. The beautiful thing about church history is that no mistake anyone has ever made has messed up God's plan or blessing on the church. He still uses us even when we don't get it right. For all the times we have had to tear down and rebuild God still has His hand on us and He still chooses us. The worst thing we can do is nothing.
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