This is not a fun question. People who don't understand the "code" language in the article may suppose my comments to be extreme or absurd, but the fact is churches are being devastated by this seemingly benign pitch that the church must change to be relevant to culture, and that it can introduce innocuous incremental changes to accomplish gradually what believers would not accept immediately. When Jesus spoke of new cloth for new garments and new wine in new wineskins (obliquely referenced in point 2 in the article) he wasn't talking about accomodating culture or tastes, he was talking about accepting God's purposes on God's terms. Strangely enough, many of the loudest advocates of change are actually striving to do the very thing Jesus warned against, by putting the patchwork of preChristian liturgy into the new cloth of the Christian church.

It is true that western culture has changed in the past 40 years. It is true that the gospel must be expressed in terms that convey truth with meaning to the generation we live in. It is not true that the church must or should conform to vagueries of cultural tastes.

Referring to a "mustard seed" approach again is disturbing, for it is an advocacy of subterfuge. Of course when Jesus talked about the kingdom in terms of the mustard seed that grows into a tree, he wasn't talking about getting people used to things and gradually working them up to more and more momentous changes. He was talking about the church beginning as a tiny movement, one man with a few disciples, a group of 150 swelling to 3000 growing to fill the earth. The mustard seed parable (or Jesus' refererence to faith as a mustard seed) does not teach us to mollify people's feelings by introducing change gradually, and that sort of disingenuous reasoning is disturbing.

The church is to do what is right and pleasing to God, not what appeals to contemporary appetites. So much of what is advocated as "change" today is intended to appeal to the carnal mind, not the mind of the Spirit. It often isn't about edification, but rather about feelings and excitement which are not the same thing at all. Edification may produce good feelings, and it may produce bad feelings. The feelings are a by product, and generally temporary. The goal is edification, growing mature in Christ, being built into a house of God, which endures. By and large the manmade religions of the past had more ceremony and excitement than the legitimate worship of Jehovah (contrast Elijah and the prophets of Baal in 1 Kings 18:25ff). God's tastes haven't changed, and we need to conform to his desires, not the desires of a culture that is moving ever farther from His standards.

The same gospel was preached to all the world from the beginning of these last days, and the same church established among the nations, no matter what culture the apostles carried it into, from Britain to China to Africa and beyond. It is amazing that "missionaries" who carried their faith to various nations in the past five centuries have become the objects of censure in the educational establishment because they dared to impact foreign cultures with their teaching, and the church today is being told we can't impact culture, we've got to change and adapt to it.

I'm not saying that change is inherently bad. When changes do need to be made patience and communication and love and prayer are all important aspects. There is much that can and should be changed in any given congregation, and constant evaluation and consideration of the scriptures with application should be the theme of the Lord's church in any community. But the point is to come ever closer to the Lord's design, not search for ways to adapt to a fluid culture. A theme echoed repeatedly in ancient Israel, and repudiated by the prophets, was "we want to be like the nations around us." That is the pathway to disaster, but the theme persists in the church today.