Some excellent reflections on Mark Heath's blog "WordandSpirit", about what should ever change in a church, and what must continually change in order to avoid "successfully contextualising ourselves in the past". Thereby becoming progressively becoming less and less evangelistically effective as our prefered golden era gets further and further from present reality.

Prompted by the excellent question "What would it mean if your church was currently doing things exactly the same way as 20 years ago?", Heath makes three points well:

1. The gospel isn't up for change because it doesn't have a sell-by date

2. We need to make a clear distinction between those things Scripture commands with regards to the local church, and the things that it allows us flexibility on

3. Culture changes rapidly, and so a church that contextualised itself successfully in the past, will only reduce in evangelistic effectiveness if they refuse to make any changes to the way they operate

He notes that the longer the church has been going the more it can come resistent to changing human traditions, and the dangers of a church interpreting a lack of structural adabtibility as "uncompromising gospel faithfulness".

Really good read. Click here for the link