New year, new start

Then end of pages on a calendar is a time when most of us look back over the last year, think about the good and the bad and the ugly that happened over that year, but also look forward to a new year, about the ability to start fresh.

We look at the new, empty calendar as if it were a blank sheet. But it's not. Because we bring our old baggage into the new year. When we make those resolutions, and you know you will, they nearly always fail. Because we don't plan for success.

We try to add something new, exercise, eating right, watching TV less, but we haven't really bought into the change. We do it because we feel like the calendar change means we are supposed to do it. So the heart isn't in it and we have set ourselves up to fail. We didn't count the cost.

I speak from experience. I have resolved to lose weight, to eat better, to exercise more nearly every year until last year. I finally decided to stop teasing myself because I wasn't preparing myself to do it, I was just making a claim that I didn't believe could happen.

Fast forward to this past fall, when I went for a routine checkup. I knew my cholesterol would be high (diet and genetics are to blame there. Mostly diet.) but was blindsided by high blood pressure. Suddenly I had an even greater reason to watch what I eat. And I have been for the most part (Thanksgiving to New Years are a season of MGR, much grace required). I've owned my desire to lose weight and eat right.

We all need to do that, not just for our diet, but for every part of our lives. So I resolve that in 2011, I will have no resolutions. Except for one. I resolve to life better each day than the day before. It's a small goal at one level. But imaging the power of multiplication involved. If try to live for others more than yesterday, that life change is exploding all around.

And that is a good thing.

My goal is to try to do this by reading through the Bible in 2011. Sunday I passed out a reading plan to read the entire Bible in 2011. If I'm going to live for others I need to be reminded daily how I'm supposed to do that. Scripture will help me do that.

My hope is to blog about what I'm reading there and to share with you all what God is doing as I seek to live for others intentionally.

I encourage anyone reading this to do the same. Don't make resolutions that will set you up to fail. Take small steps, small attainable goals that you can make wins in but keep your eyes on a larger target. We are called to change this world, and that happens one person at a time.

Let's make that happen this year!

What is new is old and old is new...

It's funny how things can hit you at the most mundane times.

This morning while taking the trash cans to the curb, it was about 20 degrees. My hands were getting numb from the cold. I was thinking how I'm not used to this weather, but I should be. I mean this is where I grew up. I'm not a transplant to New Jersey after all.

A re-transplant, yes, but not a transplant. I feel like at one level my roots are still here. Always have been. But after nearly 20 years away (I haven't lived here full time since 1991!) I've changed and the area has changed. And while no one likes change it is a reality we all deal with.

Then it hit me. My church is much the same.

We are a re-transplant (a replant would be the more correct term for church planters but just keeping with the analogy). We aren't a new church and we haven't been around for years. But we do have a new identity, while keeping much of our old.

The challenge we face is much the same as my personal challenge being back in Jersey. It is not letting the old ways trump the new ways, as well as letting the old ways that were good survive.

For me it is relearning the personality of this area. Even though I grew up here, I've been in Central Pa, Pittsburgh and Jacksonville, and have been influenced by the way of live in all those place, each with similarities and huge differences compared with South Jersey. One great example is that people here are much more direct than in other places I have lived (yes, that is a generalization but one that holds).

For Christ Anglican Mission, we are in the process of relearning what it means to be a church and not an institution. It is one we are embracing but it is a challenge. Doing new things in new ways when you are in the same place you have always been (yes, we are in a new building but still in the same town, etc) is hard.

Especially when our old ways, both personal and church, weren't wrong, just ineffective in new situations. So often though, doing things the old way is comforting and familiar and we all go back to the default setting rather than challenging ourselves to embrace change at a deep level.

It is a process, embracing change. I know I daily have to battle personally to embrace the change. Some days I do better than others, but my hope is to always keep advancing and not retreating. Keep pushing into the changes we are each called to, either personally or as part of this church (or your church). Don't be discouraged by setbacks, but be heartened by the successes.