Traditions

Monday night at our home church gathering I tried to begin digging into what or who we are and why we exist in this form of ministry. I did so because of the questions that we were asked at the board meeting at the Nazarene church. Questions like: "How do you plan to reach new people for Christ". (If you know how let us know). "Why can't you do the same thing within our church?" "Why do you need to start a new church?". "How will you be different?" etc. etc. etc.

As we had our discussion, I think we came to the conclusion that the traditions of that church stood in the way of allowing for new ones to be made. We have a hard time imagining our pastor standing up front and asking questions to the body and to just keep asking them until they are answered. We can't see the vast majority of the people being comfortable with sharing their lives in front of the group. To hope that the people would feel free to pray out loud for those around them is a waning desire. For us to be intimate in our conversations would be extremely difficult. It's not that all the things in that church are bad, mind you, it's just that because of the nature of people to be people of habit, it makes it hard to try new things. To turn the ship, so to speak, is much easier in our setting as a new ministry, than it is for the old ship.

We are at a place that we are beginning new traditions and hopefully, not being so attached to them that we cannot ditch them if we need to. We don't have the "old guard" saying "that's how it's done" or "how it's always been done", preventing us from exploring new methods, practices and systems.

I believe in traditions. I just believe that traditions are something that we must carefully examine to determine if they are traditions that are Biblically based or traditions for traditions sake. We've all heard the story of the woman who always cut off the end of the ham when she cooked it. Her daughter asked her why she did it and she said, I don't know, my mom always did that. So she asked her mom and she said the same. Finally the great grandma was asked and she said because her pan wasn't big enough. Trivial story, but so are some of the traditions that we hold so dearly in the church.

May God grant us wisdom as we seek to discover all that He has in store for us.