WHAT, EXACTLY HAPPENS TO A CATERPILLAR IN A COCOON?

I am not sure I understand fully, but it sure isn’t pretty.  And I am not sure it’s painless.  But there are moments in nature where morphing from one stage of life to the next is disruptive, to put it mildly.

I have a favorite t-shirt with Bob Dylan’s famous lyrics: “The times, dem’ are a changin!”  The other day a young cashier at a hardware store, who was maybe 25, and who probably has never listened to Bob Dylan, looked at my shirt and said, “Wow, that’s really true!”  In his life he saw the emergence of smart phones and now AI.  He has seen the huge disruptions in our American politics. And he is a part of a generation where more people are choosing against marriage and children than ever before in history.

I am 64 years old.  I remember what church was like as a pastor’s kid in the sixties.  I think back and it’s like remembering life on another planet. It was lovely. But it is gone gone.  And most of those lovely people are gone.

I recall the changes to worship life in the 70s in a church that embraced the culture of late twentieth century southern California.  We grew like crazy as a result.  My aunt came to visit. At the end of the service, she giggled and looked at me and she said, “Well that was different.” 

I remember when we excused the choir from one of our services at the church I served in the 90s and added a band.  That service tripled in attendance and morphed into something very different from the 70s.

And on this goes. I’m back in California now, in a growing church that is amazingly different from what it was ten years ago, let alone what it was in the 60s.   The music, the theology, the clothing, the informality, the demographics, the gay people!!  Our fellowship hall used to be mostly a children’s ministry building. Now its biggest single use is feeding hundreds of poor people each week.

Yet, my Palm Springs congregation is still working from a paradigm, a basic structural concept of church, that is similar to the 1960s. This paradigm is now failing globally.  Members who pay dues to fund facilities and staff who exist to help us fulfill our mission.  It is still working in our congregation, but for how much longer?

At some point in the twenty-first century, this paradigm is going to collapse entirely as a workable model in most places.  For some folks this will feel like the moment the church finally dies.  But the Kingdom of God is not in critical care. We just have an aging model of church life.

The church is not dying. It just isn’t. But it is changing. And the changes are about to become more disruptive and intense.  Which brings us back to the cocoon analogy.  The caterpillar is reduced to goo, from which something more beautiful emerges.

Some important things we can remember these days: 1. Our faith is as vibrant and relevant as ever.  2. We have neighbors to love and serve.  3. It’s wise to keep an eye out for the butterflies that will be emerging and flying about in the years ahead!

What is coming will be breathtaking!

“See, I am doing a new thing!  Now, it springs forth!  Do you not see it?”