Old + New = Broke

I have lived a modern example of Jesus' teaching in Matthew 9:16-17:

But no one puts a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; for the patch pulls away from the garment, and a worse tear results. Nor do people put new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the wineskins burst, and the wine pours out and the wineskins are ruined; but they put new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved.

What applies to wineskins in the 1st Century also applies to equipment in the 21st Century. My lawnmower wasn't working right. I figured out the mowing deck is where the problem was. It looked to me like the drive belt was too loose and the blades were just dull hunks of metal with not enough meat left to even sharpen. So, I bought and installed a new drive belt and new blades. I then began to cut my yard (ok, some would say I was mowing hay, my yard was overgrown). After I had been working for about an hour-and-a-half I heard a terrible clunk and then noticed that I was only cutting with one of the blades. I shut down and found that one of the blades was not connected to the drive pulley correctly. Actually, the connecting bracket had broken off the pulley. So, now I have to make a hard choice. Do I replace the drive pulley? Or, thinking this lawn mower is going to start costing me money every time I get on it, do I replace the mower? I don't have the money to replace the mower, but I also don't have money to be replacing each piece of my current mower. I'll let you know when I've made up my mind....

The point, however, is that sometimes new things cause more problems than they fix. In church life, there is a time when we need to reach out and try new things. There is a time when we need to be thinking creatively about how to reach a lost and dying world. But this creativity must be accompanied with some caution that our "new ideas" don't destroy some old, but still good, things already going on in the church. It doesn't have to be one or the other.

On the other hand, there are times when we are doing something church wide just because it has always been that way. When we begin to think of new ways to reach out, it could be that these old ways need to be tossed. In terms of my lawnmower, if I replace the pulley, that would mean that every part of the left-side of the cutting deck was new except the housing. It could very well mean that I will enjoy years of service from this mower. I had to completely replace every part of that left-side, but the result is satisfaction and good work.

So it should be obvious that sometimes we need to completely replace and sometimes we just need to work a little harder at getting the old and the new to work together. As we start to think about church work in a new way, let's think of any things that need to be replaced and do so, but let's also look at anything we can do to make the old and new work together. I believe the result will be satisfying to our Lord and good work by His church.