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Although I have a few Adventist friends and I have wrestled myself with Adventist issues at the time of my conversion, I have rarely used Adventist sources in my blog posts. There is always a first time for everything. I have just received an interesting link from a Facebook contact, Mr. Ovidiu Radulescu, and I would like to share with you a few interesting quotes from it.

The author of this article , Phil Cooke, shares a few ideas on the present economic recession formulated by the marketing guru Seth Godin, that he finds relevant when applied to the situation of the contemporary church.Cooke summarises if the following manner Godin’s thoughts:

There’s no question that industries like movies and TV, music, publishing, banking, and even the automotive industry are going through a profound transformation. The old rules don’t exist anymore, and in the age of social media, how we connect with our audiences or our community is dramatically changing.

And he concludes:

But it doesn’t take much of a leap to realize that the same thing is happening to “industrial age” churches and ministries.

Here are some of the similarities that Cooke observes:

Historically, Christian leaders who made the greatest influence in their generation were also the most aware of the changes happening during their lifetimes. Whether it was the advent of the printing press, political revolution, global transportation, and more–responsive leaders make the most profound impact.

For instance, today, far too many organizations who experienced great success five, 10 or 20 years ago, don’t realize that the age is over. I’ve sat in leadership meetings where pastors are baffled at why they can’t re-create their success from 2005, 2000, 1995 or earlier. Hey, if it worked then, why won’t it work today? But they don’t realize that the era is over. Audiences change. Donors change. Congregations change. Cultures change. The world has changed.

This reminds me of the early nineties, when we, in Romania, we still crying after the glorious times of the church under persecution. My younger and (more lucid) friends kept reminding us that those times are gone for good and we have to learn to live in the new and ever changing reality. One thing we have realised since then is that transition may very well be a continuous state of the world of the future.

Today, too many Christian leaders are desperately trying to protect “the way it’s always been done” rather than realize the opportunity that real change can bring. Jesus chastised the religious leaders of his day because they couldn’t read the signs of the times. I’m here to shout the same message. The world is changing and yet far too many churches, ministries and non-profits keep on looking back, doing business as usual, and as a result, keep on failing.

Propping up the old method only keeps you from realizing real success. Stop reaching for yesterday. Stop being upset at your team because they can’t replicate past success. Look around you. Those days are over.

The ideas above make me thing about the outdated, anachronistic character of the ‘older’ Evangelical churches in Romania, who are making out of their immobility a title of glory. They take pride in their old wine skins and fail to realise that the old life they try ti keep unchanged is nothing less that  a new form of death.

In the mean time, the youth are leaving in the thousands these paralised institutions, in their search for ‘new life in new wine skins’. Unfortunately, what they find is indeed new wine skins (though they do not realise that ‘new’ is not necessarily ‘better’), but what is inside is often a slightly modified form o the same old life they knew of the (mostly) funeral monuments they have just left.

Sooner or later they will understand that the new solutions are no solutions at all. What will they then do? That is a question that, I think, every wise Christian leader in Romania should start asking.

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