Navigating the Wilderness

Contrary to popular belief, I don't believe people hate change.  We love change.  We change our clothes, change our cars, change locations, change activities, change jobs, etc.  It's not change that we fear and hate.  It's loss.  When we feel that we will lose something in a change, we resist it, even if we're not sure what we will lose.

Change happens all the time.  For individuals, organizations, movements, and systems, change is necessary to survive and thrive.  Still, change is not easy.  We become accustomed to certain ways of doing things, even if those methods no longer address the main goal and/or are no longer helpful or healthy.  In our heads we can imagine the benefits of a needed change, and even make some kind of decision (individuals) or take some kind of corporate action (groups and movements) to enact that change.  But between the old way of doing things and the new way of doing things there's a kind of a no-man's land that is unsettled and uncertain.  Writing about the dynamics of institutional change, a leader named Gil Rendle calls this a "wilderness."  The old rules are no longer in place, but the new rules are not yet clear or fully entrenched.  In the meantime it can be foggy and unclear.  And, as a result, people can become understandably uneasy and even frightened.  The old ways, even if no longer helpful or applicable, start to look appealing again.  We're afraid of losing something, even if we don't know what it is.

Rendle uses the biblical story of the exodus as an example.  God freed Hebrew slaves from slavery in the empire of Egypt.  God promised to lead them to a promised land and to make them a people through whom God would be made known to all the world.  At first it way, "Hooray!  We aren't in Egypt any more!"  After a while, it was, "Darn!  We aren't in Egypt anymore!  Maybe we should go back!"  Bad as it was, they knew the rules in Egypt, and the land God promised was a long way off.  Wilderness.  Scary and unsettling.

The irony is that the wilderness is the place for forming, strengthening, re-defining, and sharpening.  Unnerving as the wilderness is, it is a necessary and potent place for new beginnings.  Whether as individuals, teams, companies, clubs, movements, churches, or whatever, the wilderness forces us to focus more on our original core mission and goal, and not on the particular way of doing things at any given time in our history.  It strips away all is extraneous and forces us to decide if we really are committed to that goal or not.  It helps us build strength and resources to move forward into new terrain, and ultimately into new vitality.

Many people of all kinds feel the uneasiness of wilderness.  Our government is in a wilderness, trying to sort out the so-called fiscal cliff.  Individuals are in a wilderness as they face their own cliffs, fiscal or otherwise.  Our world is in a wilderness of tettering and uncertain politics.  I am a part of a worldwide faith movement called United Methodism, and we are going through massive changes in focus, identity, and methods.  United Methodists across North America and around the world are in the uncertainties of the wilderness, as we accept the challenge to be about the mission of making disciples and transforming the world, singularly.  It's a wilderness everyone.

It's hard to move in the wilderness, what it's not clear what's ahead.  In a recent article, Gil Rendle tells, "...the story of a mother who tells her young son to go out on a dark night and check to be sure the barn door is locked.  The son steps out of the house but returns in only a minute to report that he can't do his task because it is too dark to see the barn from the house.  The mother then gives the young boy a flashlight and again directs him to his task.  The young boy steps out of the house, but again returns in only a minute to report that it is still too dark and the flashlight is still too weak.  He still can't see the barn.  His mother responds, 'You don't need to see the barn, just walk to the end of the light.'"  ("Next Steps in the Wilderness" by Gil Rendle.  2012. p. 27.)

And light is there in the wilderness.  Just today at a local restaurant the young woman who waited on our youth pastor and me thanked us for what our church had done for her sister.  Her sister had turned to God because of people committed to our mission of leading people in new life with Jesus and a small group that had embraced her.  And God said, "Just keep walking to the end of THAT light!"

I'll see you around the next bend in the river.