Tag: change

Posted in Life, sounds

There are some sounds I no longer hear

Posted on by William Douthwaite
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Yesterday, I talked about all the sounds I heard in the distance, sounds that immediately brought images to mind. Today, I happened to think, “There are some sounds I don’t hear any more.”

  • Like a phone ringing. By that, I mean, the ringing of a phone hanging on the wall of my home when someone called. Ninety percent of the time, I’ve got the ringer on my phone turned off. It’s in my pocket and I feel a vibration when someone calls. But the phone automatically silences the majority of my calls, since they are from unknown numbers. Once in a great while (usually in church or a movie theater), someone’s ring tone will be that traditional harsh. It’s annoying. I don’t miss it at all.
  • I don’t hear the doorbell. I disconnected it. When we had one, the only time someone pressed the button was when someone was taking a nap. It could be me. It could be a grandchild. The dogs would go nuts, the kid would start crying, so I cut one of the wires inside the wall unit. Problem solved.
  • I don’t hear the sound of nails being hammered. All I hear at new home construction sites are nail guns run by noisy compressors. I suppose the carpenters have a hammer somewhere in the back of their truck, but I don’t hear it hitting a nail very often.
  • I no longer hear coffee percolating. Our coffee maker pushes hot water through a pod with a surprisingly quiet hissing sound. When we travel, it take about ten minutes to burp the water through an old Mr. Coffee. I don’t miss him at all.
  • And speaking of phones, I no longer get a busy signal when someone is on another call. Instead, I am sent immediately to voice mail.

The sounds I don’t hear tell an interesting story about innovation, technology, and our changing world.

Posted in Life, Ministry

From grow to go

Posted on by William Douthwaite
I get the feeling that the church has turned an amazing corner. All I heard about twenty years ago or so was how important it was for the church to grow. Most of our conversations at meetings and conversations were about how to make that happen.

Now it seems that we’re not so much concerned about how we grow, but where we go. Size isn’t as important as our presence in homes, community and in places where ministry is needed. The number of new ministries outside our walls rather than the number of new members is what we listen for in meetings and conference. Our energies are focused more into mission trips, shelters and food pantries, and community organizations than attracting people to our particular congregation.

As I think about that, I can’t help but wonder when we turned that corner. And what factors led up to that? Was it the economic crises of 2008? Was it a proliferation of natural disasters around the world that forced us to look outward? Was it fighting a war on the other side of the planet? A combination of these things?

If I had known our focus was changing, I think I would have spoken more against the new sanctuary we built in 2004-2005. We were growing at the time and felt like this was something we needed to do and do well. Just a few years later, handicapped by a much bigger mortgage than we had before, we couldn’t go quite as freely as we wished. Yes, we’ve been blessed by our facility. But how many others could have been blessed had we scaled back or stayed where we were?

Life is so much different now than it was five years ago. From the economy to social media to the administration in Washington, few could have predicted what the world would be like in 2010. Five years from now, we’ll probably say the same thing.