Friday Five: ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes...

Many of the RevGals [and Pals!] using Blogger are experiencing some chaos this week as they move from Old Blogger to New Blogger. (Is that anything like New Coke?)

Change is a given in life, yet it's not easy for any of us. So strap on your seat belts and let's talk about it:

1. Share, if you wish, the biggest change you experienced this past year.
Okay, I'll beat that dead horse again. Here's the biggest change in my past year (past month, actually...):
2. Talk about a time you changed your mind about something, important or not.
I was unequivocably, irrevocably, without question, no holds barred, balls to the wall opposed to signing divorce papers when my ex-wife and I first separated. Six painful months and several thousand miles of moving later, I knew it would be a far greater sin to keep punishing myself and my ex for our brokenness. Sometimes it's far kinder to let love die peacefully - keeping it on life support gets ugly.

3. Bishop John Shelby Spong wrote a controversial book called "Why Christianity Must Change or Die." Setting aside his ideas--what kind of changes would you like to see in the Church?
In two words, kenosis and nachfolge.
Nachfolge: I'd like to see far more interest in discipleship, the "following after" of Jesus described so eloquently by Bonhoeffer (see the title of this blog above). I'm 32, in the fourth year of my first call, and I'm sick to death of dealing with "membership" and the social-club-at-prayer mentality that often comes as a result.
Kenosis: I'd like to see the church focus far more on helping people for their sake instead of working so hard to maintain the church - the "kenosis" or "self-emptying" love that Jesus and His early followers showed. Not that they were perfect, either, but I don't like the way the church often self-justifies her existence by lifting up those things that only matter to "members."

4. Have you changed your hairstyle/hair color in the last five years? If so, how many times?
I would change it to a strictly short-buzzed bald head, but Beloved won't have it. So nothing's changed.

5. What WERE they thinking with that New Coke thing?
Coca-Cola High Executive: "Man, Pepsi is kicking our ass! What do we do?"
Coca-Cola Mid-Level Exec: "Maybe we make a new Coke that tastes like Pepsi?"
'Nuff said.