I just bought some books today and one of them was “Organic Community” by Joseph Myers (author of The Search to Belong). I have a feeling that this book will help the development of the Veritas community (www.veritaspa.org) as we are striving to be an organic community formed and grown more by relationships than programs and grown by those relationships and not so much by advertising (though we are still doing some of that). The first Foreward is by Randy Frazee and I was struck by two quotes he uses. The first one being, “He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils” (Francis Bacon) and the second is “There is nothing more perilous than change” (Machiavelli). I am struck by these two statements. We in the church seem to be stuck in the middle of these statments. Some don’t want to change but by not changing they bring, what Bacon calls, “new evils” and others want to change but don’t always see the effects of said change. Frazee goes onto say, “Because change is so difficult, we often delay moving in the new direction due to the mistaken notion that while things may not get better, they certainly won’t get any worse. Now, instead of making the necessary changes, we also must deal with the negative effects of postponing that change.”

That I believe in a nutshell is where I am right now. (see my previous post) Somewhere between risk, change, and the status quo.

But aren’t we all?

Ryan