All Change?!

Danny Dorling, an Oxford professor says in his book: Slowdown: The End of the Great Acceleration that:

            It can take a couple of human generations, around fifty years or more, to fully adapt after it becomes obvious that we need to change.

That suggests that often we change quite slowly.  We gradually accept and embrace new ideas and make them our own.

Yet, isn’t it also true that change is sometimes thrust upon us and requires a quicker response.  Perhaps that’s been our experience over these last couple of months.  None of us probably expected the amount of change we have had to cope with since the Prime Minister’s announcement of Lock Down on Monday March 23^rd.

We regularly hear people now talk of the ‘new normal’; a phrase that somehow predicts a different sort of future to the one we were expecting.  Whether or not some of these predictions of changed behaviour stick around once ‘Start Up’ is with us is something we’ll just have to wait and see. 

Many ministers of my generation have seen one of their raison d’etre as being that of ‘change makers’ in Baptist churches.  I’m not sure I’m a paid up member of that group, but it’s certainly true that over the last thirty years, since my ordination, the worship life of Baptist Union congregations has changed almost beyond recognition (excepting AFC perhaps – Hallelujah for that, and thank God for the URC!).

Recently another, and I think more balanced, way of thinking has emerged and is called (because everything has to have a snappy name these days) ‘Ancient-Future Worship’.  I think this is, potentially, a much healthier way forward for The Church; one that values and recognises both traditional and contemporary worship styles rather than seeing them as mutually exclusive.  Indeed in 2018 the Bishops of the Church of England advocated this Ancient -Future approach and wrote: There is a role for both traditional forms in all dioceses and in most areas.

As I contemplate the future, after the Virus, I find myself wanting to return to life pretty much as it was before.  I think most of what we were about was authentic and valuable.  I’ve no doubt that we have discovered new ways of being and some of this can be included into our future.  But basically, I believe what we came from is something I would willingly return to.  Perhaps the point is that, in the meantime, I will have changed.  Living through Coronavirus will have changed us all and, pray God, reminded us again of the value of that which we have appreciated for a long time, and surprised us with the new treasures that could potentially enhance all our tomorrows.  We can all be Ancient-Future people!