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How old?

January 25,  2009  - Dale

Is it an advantage to be so old? Or is age a hindrance to life? Does life increase or decrease the longer it lasts?  I suppose it depends on who is living the life. In this case it is a church. But is the church that old?

Something has been at Menteng since 1819. We say it is a church (we are not talking about the building at this point). We could be talking about the organisation or institution that has been here under different names for 190 years. But this is a kind of historical construction in our minds. A way of summarising the life of groups of people as that life is seen through the organisation they developed.

The living thing that is the church is not quite the same as its institutional structure. The church is the continuously changing group of people who have met here for 190 years to worship and serve the Lord Jesus Christ, and to build each other up.

The church that is alive now is a group of people that has been meeting for a much shorter time. It is both old and new. It is continuous with the first group, but it is an entirely different group.

And that is where we can see potential for both strength and weakness. The group that is here at present may be wise enough to ask what was it that was good that their predecessors did? And what was a mistake? They might choose to learn from those who were here before. 

The present group could also choose to ignore the past, and act as though they were the original church. This might allow them to invent new ways of being church without any restraints from the past. They could also repeat the mistakes of the past without knowing they were doing so.

The present group could also misunderstand how old they were. The recent past could be thought of as the distant past, and come to hold a power that sapped life. This is the problem of groups that are continuously changing. Not everyone wants them to change. And not all change is for the better.

So the life of a group is like the life of an individual. Age is not the main issue, but rather one’s ability to assess the best way for life to develop rather than to wither, and the willingness to follow that way.

Dale

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