March/April 2008: Gospel Evangel

Transition Team: What kind of change are we facing?

by John Troyer, Transition Team member

In many ways I thought of life as having a typical path, involving a stable job, marriage and having children. Family and friends often place enormous pressure to fit into this path. If we follow this path, our life is about normal, expected changes. On the Transition Team we have talked about this kind of change as technical change. Technical change is often expected, or we at least have resources easily available to adjust to it.

One of the places in which my life deviated from this expected path was in the area of having children. About 10 years ago, doctors told my wife and me that there was little to no chance we would have biological children. With that news, we knew our life probably would not be as we had first imagined. This started us on a journey of adaptive change. It was unexpected, and few people in our life had faced something like this. We didn’t have a playbook to follow, and we were continually readjusting as we moved forward.

We struggled for several years to sort out our thoughts and feelings. Do we feel called to have children? Do we press for a miracle? What kind of miracle -- the peace to accept where we are, or to focus on having God give us a birth child? If we decide to have children, how do we sort through the options of medical treatment, foster care, adoption? If we decide to do medical treatment, how far do we go with it, and how much money are we willing to spend?

The answers we needed and the detail involved were not answers we already knew, or had been prepared to face. We had to think deeply about what we really valued and what was important. We didn’t feel comfortable with automatically following all of the options given us by the medical field. In the end, we chose to pursue having children through international adoption from China.

That choice involved enormous amounts of prayer and study. It was not a simple process. We consulted with many people, constantly asking whether we really were following God’s call. The answer we received was not a template for everyone else, but it was true to the call within us. From the beginning, the miracle we received was a sense of contentment and God’s peace throughout the process. In the end, the gift we received was a daughter we love and cherish.

The blessing and curse of the world we live in is that we have many options, whether they be in jobs, healthcare, food or relationships. In some ways, the church is at a similar place. We recognize that the typical path is no longer providing growth within the church and that the church is getting older at an accelerating rate. Experts offer us many options and programs that promise to be a fix for whatever is broken.

While the church has many options, for many people church is only an option. Church attendance is not automatically assumed, nor is it assumed that you will stay at one church your entire life. Many people choose a congregation not because of the denomination or theology but because of their assessment of the quality of the worship, preaching, facilities and programs. Yet in Latin America, Asia and Africa, the church is growing at an explosive rate. It is not because they have first-rate educational programs and facilities. Their growth seems more organic, less structured, more adaptive.

In October, the Transition Team—with some members of the Executive Committee and the search committee for a new lead conference minister—spent some time with Alan Roxburgh, co-author of The Missional Leader. Alan helped us embrace two important ideas as we look at the transition within the conference. The first is to recognize that this transition will be an adaptive change and not just a technical change. The second is that the proposal we are working with is not just a change in structure and roles within the conference, but is calling for a transformation within our conference culture. This summer, Alan will join us for part of our conference’s Annual Sessions and walk with us as we wrestle with these areas.

I am grateful to be a part of a community that finds joy in following Jesus, that cultivates hearing God’s voice as the stimulus to our imagination, that provides opportunities for Scripture to breathe fresh winds on our lives, and where we embrace an unpredictable future shaped by God’s unpredictable response.

In my own life -- due in part to some challenges from Alan -- I’ve focused more on the Lord’s prayer, fasting and staying for longer periods with one passage of Scripture. Out of this I’ve glimpsed God’s kingdom in ways I never dreamed. Best of all, I’ve enjoyed spending time with God. I look forward to tomorrow, whatever it may bring.

-- John Troyer, a member of the IN-MI Conference Transition Team, serves as youth pastor at Clinton Frame Mennonite, Goshen, Ind. Other team members are Gene Hartman (chair), Dan Miller, Phil Mininger, Sarah Rohrer, Bill Scott, Klaudia Smucker and Timothy Burkholder (staff representative).