Pastor’s Corner (8/5/2021)
“If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away, see, everything has become new.” (2 Cor. 5:17, NRSV)
As many of you know, I have begun a new venture with the John Maxwell Team. At the end of August, I will be attending a certification training event in Orlando, Florida to assist me in becoming a better and more intentional leader. I have already begun by doing some reading which I have shared in many of my previous Pastor’s Corners. As I have entered into this process, I have been pondering the difference between change and transformation. Recently, I came across an article in a periodical called Weavings by the author Flora Slosson Wuellner entitled “Transformation: Our Fear, Our Longing.” In it she says:
Change refers to adaptation, reaction, without necessarily involving any newness of being. Transformation involves much more than adaptation to outer manipulation. Transformation implies new being, a new creative energy flowing from the center which acts with creative power upon surrounding events.
Wuellner goes on to point out that when Jesus spoke about the reign of God “he used many symbols of transformation: growing plants, the action of the yeast within the dough, marriage, the act of birth, the action of fire, Light, and wind.” She comments that the Apostle Paul also spoke of transformation and she cites the above passage as one of many examples. She goes on to say:
This is what is offered by God through Christ: transformation, new creation rather than change, growing from our deep center, expanding our empowered freedom even in the midst of the power of outer events. When our inner selves waken, stretch, stand up, move out, make choices, our terror of change becomes the hunger, thirst, and ecstasy of growing.
Wuellner concludes by saying: “For some of us the great transformation from the inside out comes gradually. For some of us it coms swiftly. But for all of us it comes inevitably as we unite more closely to the One who brings the yeast, salt, wind, and fire of the new creation-the deep self we have always longed to be.”
While her reflections are intended to address our individual journeys of faith, I believe they equally apply to our journey as a faith community. How can we, here at FCC, be a community of transformation and not just one of change? As we continue to move through the COVID-19 crisis, we continue to be invited to consider this important question. I believe we begin by pondering how God has brought about, and is currently bringing about, transformation in our own lives and then considering how God is transforming us as a community. I believe this is the deeper calling of the Church, to be communities of true transformation. In the coming weeks I invite us all to consider how God has brought about transformation in our lives and church. How can God continue to enable us to be a place of transformation as we move into the future?
In peace and love,
Pastor Karen
Quotes From: Weavings: a Journal of the Christian Spiritual Life. Vol. VI, No. 2 March/April 1991.
