Embracing Change: The Growth Journey

Lesson Transcript

All right, how many of you love change? Next question. How many of you dislike change? We got one artist guy up here. If I were to guess, I think most of us dislike change. And I think it's something that we don't realize how much we like change. And so I want to talk about something that, um, it's an observation I've noticed, and, uh, it's not really in the Bible. I can't find any good verses to talk about it, but I'm going to talk about it because I think it affects us way more than we realize.

And it's this: growth changes things. And so I'm going to try to communicate this idea of growth. And I think there's growth, um, it's the growth complexity. So when I'm talking about growth, I believe growth affects us way more than we're aware. And what's interesting about growth is how many of us talk about we love growth. But when we're in the middle and experiencing growth, the changes that growth brings, we dislike those. And so there's this tension between growth and change.

As Cy Wadle says, uh, he likes to grow up, but he doesn't like to go adulting. And we've coined that in our household when somebody has to do a take on responsibility. I felt that way myself. I don't like to go adulting. And that's what growth does to us. It expands us. We have to change, and we have to go adulting. I think one of the fundamental metrics of growth is change, and I think it's something we don't connect the two.

We claim on one hand to want and love growth, but on the other we resist and complain about change. So what's interesting about growth in our lives? I think it's actually one of the metrics that we either break us or mature us. I think it's something in our life that, uh, that we run into. When we think about growth, think about life around you. Think about you as a person, family. Think about life. Growth is everywhere around us, exploding and multiplying. It's actually going faster than we can keep up.

So as we think about growth, um, one of the ways I want us to think about growth is I think we often think of growth as in terms of pros and cons or advantages or disadvantages. However, I want us to think about growth in a different way. Now, if I were to come to you and tell you that my three-year-old child stopped growing, would you tell me that's a blessing? No, there's a little alarm would go off in your head, like there's something wrong, right?

Like you don't call that good when somebody, a three-year-old, stops growing. So like growth or not growth shouldn't be necessarily pros and cons and advantages and disadvantages. It's like it's a way of, it's a way of life. Um, so I'm going to try to explain it, um, with another example. So let's think about family growth, and where I'm going with this is, is, is church growth. So when we think about family growth, it changes things. Church growth changes things, and ministry growth changes things.

And as we think about all those changes in our life, it's almost all directly from growth. So let's, let's think about family growth and how it changes. What is there not to love about a big family? How many people get married and they, I don't know, maybe some people say they only want, don't want children. I, I don't know. I was never one of them. I wanted a decent-sized family. Um, I was never sure if I wanted a big family. I don't know if I ended up with a big family or not. I'll let you decide that.

Um, so what's interesting when we think about growth, there's these weird things around growth. Some people look at big families and little families, and there's suspicion. People get suspicious around growth. They get suspicious around church growth, around family growth, around mission growth. Some people love it. Some people don't. But I want to try to communicate through the family the complexities that come with growth, okay?

So, you know, Jillian and I got married, and I thought about putting pictures up here of us being married and, you know, how nice that looks. Um, but when you, when you have a child, suddenly all the attention goes to this child. Like you thought you were busy before. Like it just goes to another level. And what happens is, is as you raise a, raise your family and you have whoever how many children you have, we have, we had eight, your energy's all in that growth. Like you're in the grind.

Like there's a lot of work and your head's in that. What you don't realize, and this is what happens in growth, parents actually get embittered about the work that happens inside of that growth. They get disappointed. They get frustrated. Mothers get frustrated. Fathers can't make enough money. I mean, there's all kinds of demons that come into that thing. And it's all because of growth. Like growth changes all these things.

Now, if you think that's bad, it gets even more exciting when they grow up, you know, 18, 19, then they get this thing and they start, you know, wanting to get married. And for some reason, you know, we've had two in our family that got married. We got another one thinking he's big enough to do it too. And so I want to, I want to communicate something really important about growth. Parents have this weird thing that happens when their children get married.

Either have fathers, either will, the father's bad side, they'll either get domineering or micromanaging, and mothers will either resort to manipulation. And I can't explain it all, but if it goes the wrong way, that's the, that's the wrong way. So learning to be okay when in-laws come into your family, there's a whole new family, a whole new background, a whole new way of thinking coming into your family. And the question is, are you able to handle that growth? That's a part of family.

That's a part of multiplication. If you can't handle that, and so what it does is growth constantly changes your maturity level. So when you have your children, you mature. When they become teenagers and want to marry, you mature. It constantly changes. The changes demand that you mature. If you don't, it's not going to go well. Now, I don't know if there's such a thing as a too big of a family or not. Like I don't know. Is there such a thing as too small of a family? I'm not going to try to answer that.

But no matter what the size of your family, you will have to understand those changes in life. Now, if you embrace growth as your family grows, it's a very beautiful thing. It's a very impactful thing. You start to impact the community. Your children go out and marry and they do whatever. You impact the community. You don't even know what they're doing per se. That's a beautiful thing, and we want every family to experience that. So let's talk about church growth. Changes things.

And this is where I think about a lot. And this is where I'm a little weird. Uh, I think I said this before. I took a, uh, I forget what you call them, personality test, and it came out, I came out a high strategy. So this is my weird side. This is what I sit and think about. And I've watched, okay, and what put me onto this thing is as I've gotten older, I've watched how growth is actually the thing that breaks more families and churches apart and ministries than any single thing.

There's a lot of people start out good: families, churches, and ministry. It's the growth under the weight of growth. And I think misunderstanding what growth does, they break. We break. And I'm going to argue it comes back to maturity, understanding what's happening in each of those steps. You know, what's there not to love about church growth? Dave is getting ready to go up here to church planters.

I mean, you go up there and you'll get to see, I've been going there several years, and you know, there's some young guys up there with big ideas. And I sit and kind of chuckle to myself and I wonder, hmm, I wonder if he knows what's coming. Because the maturity, understanding those changes and how to, how to work with them is everything. You know, we talk about church, you know, church growth.

We want church expansion, starting new churches in exciting cities, starting new churches in exotic countries, starting new churches in the countryside, you know, like wherever you choose. Growth will happen. Like if, and okay, so the other thing is, think about this. If growth isn't happening, are you okay with that? Is that what you want? If Jillian and I would get, got married and we actually couldn't have children for a couple of years, you know, is that good?

Sometimes we have to accept that, and that's not easy, but it's not normal. You start a new church and you stay the same three families for not, you know, 20 years. Is that healthy? Is that good? Think about this. What are one of the, one of the reasons the next generation wants to stay with us, with you as a family, with you as a church? What, what are one of the reasons the next generation will stay with us? The first reason that they leave is usually bad leadership at some point.

That's one of the first reasons that they normally leave. But what's the second reason that the next generation doesn't want to stay with us? They don't see a future. There isn't a future here. There's no one to marry. There's no one, like there's nothing bigger than just your family. Like if your church is no bigger than your family, the chances of you keeping your children are very, very slim. But with changes, with growth, changes come. And I don't think we understand how those changes impact, impact us.

And if we have to be okay with different families coming into the church, different backgrounds, and learning to look at that as an asset, not a liability. Like it's what God wants us to do. The in-laws that come into our family, I look at them as an asset, not liability. They're going to contribute to the greater cause. People want to be a part of a church that's growing. I've seldom bumped into people that they want to start, go to, you know, go with maybe to a new church where it starts.

There's a certain amount of people that'll do that. But after it's there a couple of years, and if there's zero, zero growth, people start to want to go somewhere else. So how does this change how you think about church growth? I don't know. It's something I wanted us as a church to really think about the metrics of growth and that we, we really need to start thinking about it. And when I'm done here, feel free to whatever, ask questions. I'm, I'm, I'm all on board with that.

So another thing that growth does is it exposes how we're truly getting along. If we're a small group and we're getting along, as we grow, that actually exposes those weaknesses and the strengths. It exposes both. And as I said before, growth allows the next generation to get on board with us. And if we don't have growth, if it's not the right kind of growth, you know, the next generation, they will get on a ship. Will it be the ship you want them to be on? That's the question.

Have you, are you a part of a ship that is worth, worthy of them to get on for their future, for whatever? Which ship will it be? I said the two main reasons that I see the next generation leave, I said it was leadership. I actually think people fighting or not getting along with one another is probably the number one reason that the next generation leaves. And the second is they don't see a future. You'll see young people move all over the map for a future. And I don't think we realize the power of that.

So what I find interesting is as people are mature in their stage of life, they're actually, they have purpose. They don't, they aren't restless. They actually can find purpose in that. And I think it's a very beautiful thing. So here's a quote, and I told this to you guys before. It says, "The person who is in love with their vision of community will destroy community.

But the person who loves the community around them will create community everywhere they go." And I see this in fathers, and I see this in church leaders. There's a temptation for fathers to take their family somewhere, and they have this idea in their head as to what family life means, what it means to them. And they usually, I don't know, they move, move all over the map. They do different things. They change. They chase a lot of ideas, but they have this idea of this vision of family.

And they will sacrifice their children for that vision. And it's very interesting to watch. They, they claim to love their family, but they don't. They love their vision of family, which ends up being itself-centered. And that's a little hard. I probably need time for me to communicate that. I see it over and over. I see church in church life, the very same thing happening. I see men fall in love with their vision of church, okay? And they do it at the expense of the people.

They, they, they don't love the people around them. And they wonder why people leave. It's because they're in love with their vision of community or church or family, but they don't love people around them. You watch someone that loves people, and they will create community. I think, I think I love this quote. I think it's very powerful. And I think it helps us as leaders of our family, churches, whatever you're doing, how to navigate.

If you watch one of these families or one of these churches that have this problem, there will be no growth. It's directly connected. It's very interesting for me to watch. Here's another one. Ministry growth changes things. So the two that, you know, some of us are involved in, I would say most of us at some level, maybe not all of us, is we got Sound Faith, our ministry, online. David and Deborah started Society of the Good Shepherd. Our family has been involved with that.

There's been some of you guys, you know, went down with that. And what's interesting, when the Stoic Faith, the online courses started, you know, David created all this work, and he's what, what are you, 74? Are you 74? 74. 74. And the other day we were asking him, oh, it's been a little while back, like, what, what's your goal for, for the Stoic Faith? Well, he's like, well, if there's no other preachers coming along and writers, and when I die, it dies, you know, it dies with me. That's what he doesn't want.

Well, that's the attitude and understanding to have about growth. Like, if we don't understand that, that growth is a part of bringing other people on board, everything will die with you. So it's just an interesting thing that I have really watched and thought about. And what's interesting to me is how growth will either break us or mature us. And, you know, how big should a church get? I honestly don't know. How little should a church be? I think the Bible is clear that churches start out small.

I don't think there's anything wrong with small. Do I like something great big? I'm not sure. If it's too big, I get scared. But we do need to be growing, and it's how we grow and expand. If you think of the family cycle, think of how a family works. So Jillian and I, you know, we're 50. We have eight children, you know, two married, third one soon. When, when all of our children get married, you know, it's this lovely thing where they all come home, this lovely thing.

But Jillian and I will die someday, and those families will go out. I don't know if that's a model to think about in church life. When you look at the, at the Anabaptist movement, one of the things that they did was each brotherhood was their own autonomy. And I think there's something very powerful about that concept. I'm not big into conferences, conferences and that kind of thing, or big groups, you know, fellowship movements. I think we need to keep, keep moving. I'm not saying that's the only way.

I'm not being critical one way or the other. I just think it's interesting how God has created models that actually work. Then when you do all this, community growth changes things. We will impact our community from families, from church life. So my final question is, do we resist growth or embrace growth? And I think it's a, it's important that we choose between the two and be aware when we are resisting growth, we need to embrace and understand how to go into the next, next generation.

My final thought is people love the vision, but most people dislike the growth journey because it changes things.