The Cost of not Changing

Camp is coming, are you ready? We leave out on Sunday June 3rd for Jonathan Creek. Don't be late.
Now if you know anything about me, you know I love to eat and breakfast has become one of my favorite times of the day. It is when I get to sit down with my family and we can talk, laugh and just be together. Well, my favorite breakfast meal is pancakes or waffles and you have to have maple syrup, not just any maple syrup, it has to be Vermont maple syrup. Once you've tasted Vermont maple syrup, all those store brands just taste like goo! So my ears perked up when NBC Nightly News started talking about the troubles that Vermont maple farmers were having this year. They focused on one farmer who lives on a farm where they've been mapling for eight generations! This farmer (his name is Burr) has known that the maple trees are ready to be tapped for their valuable sap during the first week of March. It's always been that way. But recent weather changes have suddenly thrown that predictable harvest schedule into total confusion. Last year, he and his son nearly lost a third of their normal maple sap because it was either too soon or too late to capture it. For all those eight generations, Burr's family has used one time-honored method of tapping their maple trees; a spout on the tree and a bucket underneath. There is a new technology that enables a farmer to know when the sap is ready and to capture it in that brief window. But tubes and vacuums seemed pretty foreign to a man who's known one way that worked all his life and for generations. But after all they lost last year, his son finally convinced Burr to spend $10,000 for that new equipment. His son's comment was, "It takes some coercion to get him to go along with new ideas, for sure." But the veteran farmer did it. The NBC News reporter identified why. He would do anything to keep the farm for his son. In the reporter's words, "Even if it means doing what he hates the most - changing his old ways."

When the method you know, and the method you're comfortable with is costing you the harvest, you change or you lose the harvest. How can that lesson be lost on those of us who have joined Jesus in what He came to earth to do - seeking and saving the lost? Jesus called the work of bringing people to Him harvest. And honestly, there's a harvest many Christians and many ministries are losing because we hate to change. While North American Christians have built this massive Christian subculture, we've been losing our culture. And the lost people around us have changed dramatically. They don't know God's rules; they don't know God's Book; they don't know the religious words we use; they don't ever plan to go to any of our religious meetings. But in many cases, we're deciding what we'll do to reach them based on what we're comfortable doing. But since when does a rescuer decide what he's going to do based on what's comfortable for him? He does whatever he has to do to save that dying person!

Listen to God's greatest harvester, the Apostle Paul, in 1 Corinthians 9:22, "I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some." Just before this, he's told us that when he's with the Jews, he comes in a Jewish package; when he's with the Gentiles, he's as Gentile as God will allow him to be; when he's with those who need an uncomplicated presentation of Christ, he becomes what they need. All the time making sure that he is never "ashamed of the Gospel of Christ" (Romans 1:16). And Paul followed a Savior who constantly changed the package and the presentation to break through to changing audiences. But they never changed the product! They never compromised the message! Like that Vermont farmer, we're harvesting the same product, but we'll change the way we get at it as much as the harvest requires.

So are you willing to change so we can bring in the harvest of lost lives? Will you learn to tell them about Jesus in their words, not our Christianese? Are you willing to use the kind of program, the kind of music, the kind of package that speaks the language of the person you're trying to reach? That's Missions 101! Are you willing to reach them in locations where they're comfortable? Are you willing to introduce the Gospel by starting with the needs they care about? We're talking change here; what we hate to do the most. But the cost of not changing is much higher than the cost of changing - souls lost forever because we wouldn't change.