(33) Change Shortage

    (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for Change Shortage, originally shared on July 20, 2020. It was the thirty-third video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   My hero in church development is a guy named Lyle Schaller. One of the many things I have learned from him is that, when you are speaking to a congregation about long-range planning, it’s important to remember that a year doesn’t mean the same thing to everybody. For example, a 7-year-old knows that there are at least 780 days between birthdays, while a 70-year-old knows that there no more than 125.

   Have you noticed that time has become more fluid since the pandemic began. Sometimes the days seem stretch on forever, and sometimes they just fly by.

   People’s attitude toward time has changed as well. We easily lose track of what day it is, or the date. Time seems to have sped up and slowed down at the same time.

   Today is July 20, 2020. This is also the day of our 33^rd video. I have to say that the only birthday I have ever had that really bothered me was not actually a birthday. It was the day I realized I was 33 and 1/3 years old. That’s a third of a century! That seemed like a big number; it seemed really old to me. It bothered me. For several days.

   You know what else bothers me? There’s a change shortage. Stores can’t make change, which is ironic since these days they can’t seem to do anything but make change. Change the tables, change the chairs, change the cleaning schedule, change the silverware, change to outdoors. Close the door.

   Maybe you saw on the news the story about the restaurant manager who misunderstood his instructions to be “don’t give any change”, when the instruction was not to give any change. So, he was rounding up the bills to whatever bills the patron had, not to the nearest dollar.

   We do have plenty of bills, for now, but we don’t have enough coins in circulation. We have a shortage of change, while change is all around us. Why? Because the mints are not producing enough coins because employees have been sick, and because a lot of people haven’t been out buying things, or at least not out buying things with cash, so that the coins that have already been minted aren’t moving around in circulation, and because some people are hoarding coins.    

   Now, I’ve read about a bank in Wisconsin and have heard about some local banks who have starting to give a 5% premium for bringing in change. Some supermarkets will count it for you and give you store credit with no service fee.

   So there is not enough change, while change is developing all around us.

   What changes will we see?

   Dennis O’Leary of Shark Tank, the guy who sits in the middle. “Mr. Wonderful”, was on TV talking about the value of a college education. I’ve long felt personally that college is no longer about getting an education, it’s about getting a job. Even in that environment, he said, that it used to be said that the value of a college education wasn’t in the classes, it was in the contacts. So, now that almost all schools will offer most classes in online versions only, what is the value of going to college?

   I’m not endorsing his advice, but I think I see where it’s coming from, if the main value of college is getting a job. That advice was, if you’re in college, stay there, protect your investment, let the college brand be added to your brand. If you’re not in college, consider other avenues to getting a good job with no debt.

   That’s a huge cultural change. I was told by a cracker barrel philosophy professor, one of my favorite teachers (though not necessarily the best. I’ve learned that my best teachers are not always my favorite teachers) that a person who knows how to do something, who really knows how to do something will always have a job. But, they will be working for someone who knows “what” and  why”.

   That’s the difference between vocational training and an education. That’s the difference between being a worker, a manager, and a leader. A worker does the work that he or she knows how to do, a manager decides what work to do, and a leader knows the larger vision for why the work is being done. Like the old business example that workers cut through the jungle, managers make sure they have enough workers, they get fed, and paid, etc., and the leader is the one who climbs a tree, looks out and yells “wrong jungle”.

   Where will the visionary leaders come from if education is taken out of the college experience as the result of economic insecurities?

   Churches are similar. Congregations are full of weird people. Where else would we come into contact with such a large variety of people who are so unlike us. And yet, we are even more than family to one another. We are brothers and sisters in Christ. How is that community formed and maintained now? How will people learn to live in community with one another if our only experience is with people that are like us? As in social media.

   Our insecurities lead us to places of comfort, not challenge. They lead us to resist change. There is even anger and resistance to the change that has come as a result of the consequences of the coronavirus and the calls for racial equality.

   Where do we learn to get along with people who are not like ourselves is we only seek homogeneous groups because of social insecurities?

   That is the other change shortage. A shortage of changed lives.

   Change is fundamental to the Christian life. The message that Jesus brought when he began his 3-year public ministry was, “The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. Repent and believe in the good news”.

   Repentance is change. It is a deeply fundamental change. It’s not being sorry. It’s not doing good stuff to make up for the bad stuff. Those are futile.

   Repentance, “metanoia” in the Greek language in which the New Testament was written, means to make an existential U-turn. It means a change of heart. It means recognizing the things in our life that are killing us, rejecting and turning away from them, and turning toward the one true living God, who gives life. It means turning away from the weakness in ourselves and our own efforts and allowing ourselves to be drawn toward the power of the Holy Spirit.

*2 Corinthians 5:16-17

   I thought things were just about right for me to get a haircut, and then things closed again. It looks like I might be ready for a man-bun by the time they open again. I hope not. What do you think? I’m starting to get Rip Van Winkle hair.

   Do you know the story of Rip Van Winkle? The story takes place before the Revolutionary War. Rip Van Winkle wanders into the Catskill Mountains and meets a mysterious group of men. He drinks some of their liquor and falls asleep. When he wakes up, it is 20 years later. He goes down from the mountain and finds an election going on in his village. He has never voted before and declares himself to be a loyal subject of King George, which gets him in trouble because the country has changed. He finds that most of his friends have died in the Revolutionary War. His wife has died. He slept through all of it.

   Changes will come in our world, some for the better and some not, and then they will be replaced by other changes. Will we sleep through them, or will seek to influence them for the good of all people?

   The change that God brings to us and sustains by the Holy Spirit lasts forever. We welcome it. We long for it. We work on it, not to earn our salvation, but as a natural response to the love and grace of God. We commend the same gift of transformation to the world.

   We are called to change, to live into that new Creation, to be the people of God. That is the Christian life. We have been changed, change that endures forever because it is rooted in the one true living God.

   The offer of transformation at all levels of society comes as God wills. It is brought by the person of the Holy Spirit, the streams of living water that forms and reforms us and everything from the inside out.