Driving a truck was among the many jobs in my long, illustrious career. I'll leave the detailed imagery up to you, but I had considerably more hair, more weight, and a far more impressive collection of leather belts with big buckles and my name on the back of them. (If you know, you know). I hauled oil drums, frozen food, vitamin jars, and many other things along the way and saw a large part of the American Southwest. I kept some indispensable items in the cab of my truck: coffee thermos, gloves, extra boots, significantly unhealthy snacks (thus the weight), and, of course, my Mapsco. Most likely, many people reading this heard the "record scratch" sound when they read "Mapsco." What is a Mapsco? Mapsco can be best described as a paper version of GPS. Every truck driver made sure to have a Mapsco in the cab to navigate through towns and cities with which he was unfamiliar.
Why the truck driving/Mapsco info? Because GPS and the changes we are going through are directly related. As strange as it sounds, it's true. GPS navigation operates on the basis of getting us where we're going by first orienting to where we are. Our brains are like a GPS mapping system. They track people, places, and things, like GPS coordinates, and make them "coordinate points" by which we orient ourselves relationally. For instance, notice your Sunday morning rhythms as you enter and make your way through the building on Sundays. Your brain orients your Sunday experience by the people you see and where you see them. That rhythm becomes part of your brain's mapping system, a pattern that the brain relies on to orient us to our repetitive experiences.
Now, imagine the same scenario, except that someone came in and stole all your furniture after you went to bed. As you attempted to make your way through your house, even if you have lived there for decades, you would be disoriented because you're not "bumping into" the things that orient you to where you are. This is what is happening during the change we are undergoing as a church family!
Our brains have oriented us to each other. There are all kinds of tie-ins to the body of Christ, unity, dependence, and mission here, but that is another blog. For now, let's concentrate on what the change means to us in our humanness. This kind of change brings some level of disorientation to everyone, and it takes a while to get reoriented.
We know God has called us to reach our county, which means that the people we used to "bump into" are, in some cases, not in my path on Sunday mornings like they have been for (for my family) twenty years! This kind of change ushers us into a period of disorientation. Some of us are sad in disorientation; we miss who we used to bump into, and our brains are having to reorient to that new reality. Others are excited by change, and their disorientation "feels" more like excitement and is stimulating to them. Their brains are adjusting to the new reality as well, but it feels very different to them.
As we say every Sunday, so what? What does this mean for us? It means we need to practice the "one anothers" with each other. We need to love one another (John 13:34), be kind and compassionate to one another (Eph. 4:32), encourage one another (I Thess 5:11), bear with one another (Col 3:13), and be patient with one another (Eph 4:2; Col. 3:13). There are many other "one anothers" we can practice as well, but these are a good place to start.
As our Portrait of a Connected Life illustrates, as we all look upward to God, it is essential to remember that some look backward at their stories and find fear and sadness with change, while others tackle it with excitement and zeal. As we practice the "one anothers" with each other, we are free to move withward with each other, bring our gifting inward to our body, and to move outward on mission together.
Change is hard, sometimes really scary, and always disorienting. We are disoriented in different ways. Some grieve, and some rejoice; some remember and mourn, and some remember and are excited about the next steps. Regardless of where we are in this disorienting change, it is vital that we care for each other well. As Paul reminds us, we can rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep as we live in harmony with each other (Rom. 12:15-16). Together is better and even better (x2) when we actively support each other along the way as we move from disorientation to reorientation.