renovation

Wrecking things is fun. I remember years ago my parents bought a skanky lake house in New York. We had to gut the thing. We spent an entire day, smashing everything from plates to televisions. There is nothing quite like when David Letterman decides to throw something off the top of the Ed Sullivan Theater. Especially when he has the slow-mo camera down at the street level. This joy of destroying seems to creep into the church, and honestly into my own life.

With the onset of post-modernity, neo-everything, and emerging this and that, many have set out to destroy. Honestly, this is the easy part. It is easy, and even fun to mock what others have done, and are doing in an attempt to express their faith. Often times, we feel good about ripping it apart because we claim that it is doing more harm than good. Perhaps it is, but what is or arrogant destruction doing? So we write about people, preach about people, and belittle people who are our brothers and sisters.

While renovation is good, often inclusive of destruction, it speaks toward building something new within the old. Anyone can tear down a wall, few can build one. Many can criticize, few can create. For example, my kitchen needs renovating (really it does, my dish washer is at a 12 degree angle). I could start on this by ripping out everything, in this case including the kitchen sink, but I could do nothing to bring newness to it.

Likewise, I have been blessed with a quick mind and quicker mouth, I can rip on what any church has done, but bringing newness is more difficult. As the Church continues to navigate this morphing philosophical landscape we must do so together … all of us. We cannot be reckless as we rebuild, but we must be meticulous. We are renovating making new in the confines of the old. We have to stop bashing those who are building new, and those who are building have to stop destroying everything in their way. We are one.

The Church has been, and will be far beyond us … let’s make it more beautiful for those in the future, after all that is what renovation is all about.