Do people ever really change? Some people are pessimistic. Can a zebra ever really change its stripes? I tend to be an optimist. Over the years, I've seen so much growth and change in people's lives that I can't help but be hopeful. Obviously, people change and grow through ordinary development stages. But even more, some people change radically - sometimes for the worse and sometimes for the best. More to the point today, under the influence of Christ and in a catalytic environment that fosters positive spiritual transformation (a healthy church), I really do see people change.

Not everyone does change of course. I resonate with one author who laments the obvious truth that some people can call themselves Christian and spend a lifetime in church and still act like crabgrass on the church lawn. Change is hard for all of us, especially when we think that others need to do the changing, not us.

Still, assuming someone really does know Christ, and really has invited Christ to take up a place of Lordship and ultimate influence, I believe enough and I've seen enough to be really hopeful about the transforming power of Christ to make people new and different.

And that's the hallmark of the 5-Year Vision that many of your thoughtful peers have drafted, with much prayer and useful inputs. They really believe, and so do I, that transformation is the critical concern for the next five years of our life together. Transformation as persons and as a people.

Three important questions:

1. Am I experiencing transformation?

There are many ways to lay out the stages of Christian development, but we're being asked to address three aspects of transformation. First is acquiring my faith. Second is declaring my faith. Third is living and learning. Am I a Christian? Do I believe that Jesus is who Jesus says Jesus is, according to the testimony of scripture and historic Christianity? To borrow from Jesus' own language, have I been born anew? Or to borrow from Paul's language in 2 Corinthians 5:17, am I a new creation? Have I embraced God's love and forgiveness, turned away from my godless life and taken hold of Jesus' life and His teachings as my new ethic and direction in life? Again, am I a Christian? Am I a follower, or disciple, or apprentice, or student of Jesus?

If our answer is no, then my own optimism about our change potentials takes a serious dip. Even with ordinary steps and stages of modest and metered human development, and even with the attainment of varied levels of common wisdom among acutely attentive people, and even with steady cycles of resolution and practice and effort, and even with the aids of skilled third parties, I'm still underwhelmed by the track-record of humankind in self-initiating any real or sustained change.

Not so under the influence of Christ, assuming the person truly wants to be His disciple, subject to His authority. Then my confidence for you and me, and others, goes way up. And so much of that change happens pretty quickly - the initial boost.

Having acquired faith, we confess and believe and bear witness. Our baptisms dramatize outward the inward miracle of the transformative work underway. When we believe, the Holy Spirit who was with us now enters within us. When we confess and declare, we identify with Christ. Then we live and learn and learn and live. By putting learning and living in the same sentence and stage, the writers of the vision statement are suggesting that Christianity is a practical faith - head and heart learning are only legitimized by a lifestyle of actions, and actions, and good works are only legitimized when they are born out of our faith and learning.

So how receptive are we to this unfolding drama - this metamorphosis? Jesus tells the story of a planter (sower) who throws out the seeds (the gospel - good news). Some seeds land on rocky soil, where it grows in a surface-y way, but never really takes root. Some seeds land on the path, where birds and outside influences snatch it away. Other seeds land among the thorns and weeds, where sin and worldly influences just overwhelm the seedlings and they never come to a point of maturity. Other seeds fall on ready, fertile soil, and the seeds take root, grow up, and bear much fruit.

All of scripture describes the healthy, mature Christian life in fruit-bearing terms. There are the fruits of the Spirit - the fruit of a spirit-cultivated character (Galatians 5:22…). There is the fruit of good works that prove Christ's influence on us (Colossians 1:10). Then there is the fruitfulness of reproduction - a life of influence that draws and supports other people into a life of faith and maturity. Growing, changing Christians bear fruit - character, deeds and a winning influence.

This process of growing toward fruitful Christlikeness is characterized both by internal work and external work. Jesus says in Matthew 12:33 that only a good tree can produce good fruit, and bad trees bad fruit. The goal is to invite Christ's transforming internal influence in ways that bubble and burst out of us into a lifestyle of influencing others.

Obviously, church is all about creating a climate of transformative community where this change process has every change to take hold and get traction in all of us.

2. Are we experiencing transformation?

Are we the kind of church where change is the norm and transformation is a common outcome of associations? Or are we the kind of faith community that is wary of change and committed to a more settled and static form of religion?

The church needs to be a safe dangerous place. It needs to be a place where everyone who longs for growth and change will have a safe place to metamorphose. And it needs to be a dangerous place where people who are resistant to change are in constant danger of being swept into it. I was taught to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. And I hope we're all committed to being that kind of place and people.

When and where we aren't, we need pruning. In John 15, Jesus calls us to abide in Christ like a branch abides in the vine. But Jesus also warns that fruitless branches need to be cut off and thrown away, to make room and opportunities for newer, healthier growths.

One very important aspect of the church vision calls for the healthiest kind of pruning. We believe that our whole church and every subculture in the church needs to ask "Are lives being changed here?" Are lives being changed in each small group, every ministry team and all classrooms and mission enterprises? Are we bearing the fruit of changed life? If so, we need to keep pumping every kind of investment into those efforts so that the fruit-bearing branches can bear even more fruit. If not, we need to be brave enough to prune - to stop doing some things, or at least to reconfigure the way we do them. I'm not going to be walking around with shears, but I can't encourage you strongly enough to be honest and brave in the pruning process. Longstanding institutions usually calcify and have a harder time producing new shoots and bearing fruit simply because longstanding institutions have a harder time pruning. Longstanding churches tend to make decisions and investments based on familiarity, sentiment and tradition, rather than on real health, transformation and the question of actual fruitfulness. New church plants tend to flourish and grow faster, once they take hold, simply because they are green and organic, more than institutional, and they aren't battling a long history of sentimental attachments and traditional behaviors that sometimes prevent the kind of brutal honesty required to prune.

Shifting images, Jesus also said that you can't put new wine into old wineskins. In essence, He's reminding us that our commitments to old ways and means are often like old stiff wineskins, without the elasticity to handle the bubbling ferment that He wants to instigate in our lives (a chemical, substantive metamorphosis). So we always have to be asking how to stay fresh in our forms and functions, so that the agelessly, timelessly fresh and transforming gospel can find form and expression in our church life.

As I said last week, there are aspects to this great old church - our style and core personality - that we don't feel called to tamper with. And we still feel that some classic styles and sounds and structures are useful and worth preserving because they still facilitate transformation. But, again, we're simply asking every small group, class and ministry team to ask a simple, critical question: are lives being changed here? If so, then pour it on. If not, please have the honesty and courage to prune. And not to prune people. We believe that people are a priority over programs. Realize, though, that people occasionally and temporarily feel displaced whenever programs transition. There's a transplant shock whenever change happens.

Finally, as we hope for personal transformation and church transformation, we want to be agents of transformation in others - our community, our friends and family, the world. 3. Are we catalyzing transformation? Are we living the Great Commission, making disciples, baptizing them and teaching them? As the Gospel was bearing fruit in all the world (Colossians 1:10), it certainly is today. Are we part of that or spectators, sidelined by some systemic disease or paralysis or hesitation? Is the world a better place because we're here? Are people around us more likely to know Christ and live with heavenbent confidence because we're here?

I love Proverbs 11:30 "The fruit of the righteous is the tree of life. He that winneth souls is wise."

So the crux of our hopes and plans have everything to do with personal transformation, church transformation, and our transforming influence on those around us with the help and power of Christ.

So what stands in the way?

I already mentioned sentiment, our commitment to familiarity and the basic human proneness toward a static, changeless approach to faith and church. (Not an age group thing…Frankly, young people are as prone to clinging sentimentally to one form as any other age group.)

I also think that arrogance stand in our way. It's really unlikely that anyone of us will experience significant change for the better if we're not convinced we need change. God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. One of those graces is kindly and steady transformation. Jesus says that all we need to do is ask for wisdom. This is an arrogant culture where people tend to think that just because we know technologies, or business, or whatever, we also know life. It's just so often not true, and the arrogance actually makes it even less true.

And I think that good things stand in the way of transformation. So many of us are committed to a thousand good things that will never change us for the better, and those good things squeeze out the three or four great things that would transform us for the better. Frankly, a lot of our personal lives could use some serious pruning; until it happens, real change toward Christlikeness will be stifled by soccer and ski trips, and karate lessons. None of those things are bad; all of them can be sorry surrogates for a better way of living and growing. Too often good things stand in the way of the best things.

Also, we don't know Jesus…

The Bible teaches us, most pointedly, to receive correction and to receive Christ. To receive the gift of salvation and to receive the Holy Spirit.