Most of the time, when you listen to the arguments for change in the church, they usually boil down to this: the world is doing a new thing and we need to catch up with it. There are two unexamined assumptions here. The first is that giving the world what they want and expect is the best way to do the work of the church; the second is that the work of the church is our work, to be done with our tools. Both of these are false. The work of the church is God’s work; the ministry of the church is the ministry of Christ. Only Christ’s ministry is redemptive; only his power can change lives; only his work will bear fruit; only what he is doing will prosper. It’s not our job, it’s never our job, to figure out what people have already decided they want and give it to them; we’re not here to study what the world is doing this week and copy it. Rather, our job is to figure out what Jesus is doing, where his Spirit is moving, and get in on that. This isn’t our church, nor is it our ministry, that we might do as we please; it’s God’s church, and Jesus’ ministry, and we need to do as he pleases. Our focus needs to be not on what we want to do, but on what he wants us to do.This means two things. First, we need to remember that this isn’t politics, and we shouldn’t be trying to match our ministry to the polls; it’s not our place to cater to our own preferences, or anyone else’s, either. We need to seek God, not the approval of others; our concern needs to be that we’re doing what he’s doing, and what he wants us to do. Second, we need to remember what God has led us to understand along the way, what we’ve already figured out, and to make future decisions in light of that. This is where tradition comes into play, as we remember that the church’s we is God’s royal “we,” in the sense that it’s the whole body of Christ—every nation, every era, and every theological and ecclesiological stream of thought and practice—not just the people we know or those who think like us. We cannot lightly assume our superiority to the church of times past, or in other parts of the world—indeed, we cannot assume it at all.Does this mean the church shouldn’t change? Certainly not; we should indeed be ecclesia reformata semper reformanda, secundum verbum Dei, the church reformed and always reforming according to the Word of God. Change in non-essentials is important in that non-essential things (such as style) should always be secondary to preaching the gospel message; if those non-essentials get in the way of people hearing that message, or distort it, they should be changed promptly and with as little fuss as possible. But change should always and only be at the service of the unchanging, and never designed merely to please or soothe the culture. After all, as C. S. Lewis rightly observed, those who change with the times inevitably go where all times go.
