The Devil's Sermon

When all about us is change, there are still some things that remain the same.

In Indiana, a frustrated taxpayer recently noticed the following sign on a bureaucrat's desk in the county office building: "We Don't Make Change."

We sure don't. We resist change or making changes, and the more set our routines of life become, the more we don't make change. I am finding in my own life, as I get older, that it is easier to get in the habit of defending positions rather than making discoveries.

Sigmund Freud wrote once: "I have examined myself thoroughly and have come to the conclusion that I do not need to change much." How many of us can look in the mirror and be so smug? Few of us, deep down, can stare in the mirror without being horrified.

All of us know that life is "change, or be changed." Because life is change, nothing ever stays the same.

Lyle Schaller, Cokesbury's best-selling author and the top church consultant in the country, asks: "What is the number one issue facing Christian organizations on the North American continent? Dwindling numbers? Money?...