Just a few more Catalyst blogs to be posted. This one combines my thoughts on Malcolm Gladwell and Matt Chandler – perhaps an odd combination, but one that worked for me.
Malcolm Gladwell talked about the common mistakes that leaders make. A lot of times mistakes aren’t because we had a lack of information, but are instead because we have too much knowledge. When we know a lot and we think of ourselves as experts – or close to experts – we tend to become over-confident. This overconfidence enslaves us. We forget to look outside of ourselves because we think we have all the answers inside our head already. We become prisoners to our overconfidence, and when that happens we don’t even notice that the world is changing all around us!
As Gladwell talked about this, I began to connect it with the modern day denominational church. The world has been changing all around us but we have become so confident that we are following God’s will for us that we have forgotten to look outside of ourselves to see that we’re becoming irrelevant! As one who has been pushing for change within the Lutheran church for what seems like more years that I’d like to admit, I’m terrified by the lack of any sense of urgency to become more relevant in the world in which we live. It seems like our theology gives us the freedom to be quick to change yet we tend to cling to the traditions that we hold so dear. I’m not saying tradition is bad – I love a good tradition. Traditions help us stay connected to all those who have come before us. But tradition does become bad when the tradition becomes more important than the meaning of the tradition. Tradition gets in the way when we refuse to do something new because it’s not our tradition to do it that way.
This is the thought process I was left with as Gladwell ended. I soaked in my thoughts and carefully crafted notes with hope that God would reveal the next step to me somehow. And just before dinner, God most certainly did. Matt Chandler took the stage to talk about our need to repent. He referred to Martin Luther and the 95 Theses and when the place became silent as he asked what the first theses was, I knew there were very few Lutherans in the house. Having just prepared to teach 7th-8th graders about Luther, I said out loud “repentance” but I was so far up in the Gwinnett Arena that not many people heard me.
As he continued to talk about the fact that we all live in sin and we have a daily need to repent of those sins, I realized that his talk was the answer to my prayer for clarity. Our tendency to be overconfident is just one example of our need for constant repentance. As we get into the habit of consistent confession & repentance we begin to be less prideful and rely more on God and less on ourselves. When we do that, we become thankful for the place God has put us and the work that God invites us to do with him.
I am so thankful that God has continued to push me towards staying in the Lutheran church. And I am thankful that I continually begin to understand more and more the importance of the history of the Lutheran church. I am thankful for the traditions that have come before me, and yet at the same time am thankful that I understand the need to kill old traditions that have become meaningless and create new ones for a new time. God has put me where I am for a reason, and for that I am so very thankful. As I find more and more like-minded individuals who become partners with me along my journey, I know that God has something very big planned. I hope that we aren’t too overconfident to see our invitation to join God along the way.
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- The Everchanging Gospel? I had not ever heard of Shane Hipps before I...
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Preaching to the choir!
Preaching to the choir!
Preaching to the choir!