Growth and Change: “Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” John 12:24

Let me start with the bad news, because I don’t want to end there. I want to move on quickly to the good news. The gospel is all about good news.

As Christians, we want to grow and mature as disciples of Jesus. We pray for growth, and we actively seek out those things that will help us to grow – the ‘good soil’ - while learning to recognise and avoid those things that are obstacles to growth – the hard, stony and thorny ‘soils’. There are questions I think we should revisit and ponder deeply on a regular basis as we seek to grow: what are the things that will be like rich fertile soil for us, individually and as a church? What are the obstacles? How can we clear the rocks and weeds and spend more time in fertile soil?

Even as we actively pray for and seek out growth, we need to know the reality of what it is we’re asking for. This is the so called ‘bad news’, and for some it will feel worse than others: Growth always involves change. You cannot grow and stay the same. Now, before I move on rapidly to the good news, let me dwell for one moment here … in the ‘change’, and let us try and understand what it is ‘here’ that unsettles us. I have used that word ‘unsettle’ very intentionally. I have basically asked and answered the question in one sentence. Change unsettles us.

We have all – and by all I really mean the whole world – spent most of this year dealing with major CHANGE (I think what we have faced deserves those big letters). In addition to the fear and anxiety surrounding the virus itself, we suddenly had to deal with the rug of ‘normal life’ being completely and utterly swept from beneath our feet, and we had to adjust very quickly to a whole raft of changes: social distancing, staying at home, people working from home or not being able to work at all, meetings on ‘Zoom’, some of us not being able to do our own shopping, months of isolation … I don’t have to keep going, we have all experienced this together (but apart).

All this has been a powerful reminder of how hard change can be. It unsettles us because it moves us out of what is often blithely referred to as our ‘comfort zone’. What that really means is that change almost always moves us into a new place, and as somebody who has recently moved to a new country, and will soon be facing another move, I can attest to the fact that every new place requires new learning. Things are done differently in different places. When we first arrive in a new ‘place’ on our journey of growth, we find ourselves poorly equipped at first – there is so much that is unfamiliar, and so many of the things we have learned to do and do well – so well in fact that we do them automatically and without thinking - don’t necessarily work anymore. It unsettles us. It disorients us. We can even feel lost. That’s why we don’t like change.

We are faced with a choice in those moments of change: we can either keep doing automatically the things we have learned in the past that used to work for us and brought good results – even though we can see they are no longer effective – or we can grow: learn first how to cope, and then how to cope well, and then hopefully, learn how to thrive in this new place. That is growth. And it’s a bit ‘chicken and egg’ – sometimes we experience change because we grow (and we cannot grow without changing) but often (as the world has just experienced) the change comes unexpectedly, and we are required, almost forced to grow in order to deal with the change. One last piece of bad news: not all people will grow, even though they cannot thrive in the ‘new normal’ by continuing as they were. The growth that is needed will only happen if we are willing and open to embrace the change, as hard as that might be.

HERE IS THE GOOD NEWS! I promised there would be good news and it is great news: In Christ, there is no death without a resurrection. For those who serve the God of all Life, the seed that dies produces a crop of many seeds.

In other words, no matter what the change, no matter how hard it is to adjust, no matter what has had to die in us (and believe me I know that sometimes we do feel like we are dying on the inside when we face major and catastrophic change): our Good Shepherd goes before us through the valley of the shadow of death and leads us through and out the other side into life. If we choose to grow, reject stagnation, then we choose life. From the death of Jesus, God worked the resurrection that birthed a world-wide community of faith – followers of the Way of Jesus. I wonder what will be born out of the ashes of your ‘old normal’?

In prayer: Bring to God those things that you fear in the midst of all that has changed, and what you fear about future change: in yourself… in the church. What unsettles you? Ask God for the grace to grow, not only so that you may cope with the change, but so that you may thrive and grow even more. Amen.Brenton Prigge