Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds – Romans 12:2

            This verse is helpful in thinking about the theme, “Renewed & Transformed,” from the 2024 Manitoba/Northwestern Ontario (MNO) Synod Convention.  It is also very difficult to do, renewing your mind.  Most of us have some well-ingrained patterns that don’t change easily, and many of us have trouble thinking “outside the box,” as they say.  However, with God, all things are possible.

            One of the things that delegates were asked to do at the recent MNO Synod Convention was to think about transformation and renewal rather than repair.  Repair - at least when it comes to the church - tends to be about getting things back to the way that they used to be.  However, transformation and renewal are more about allowing God to lead us into new ways of helping others to encounter the love of God through Jesus Christ.

            Transformation, however, can be scary, and is also hard work.  One of the biblical examples of transformation is Saul (aka Paul) who went from persecuting followers of Jesus to preaching Christ all over the Roman Empire (Acts 9).  When he first encounters Jesus, Saul is blind for three days, and then is healed and baptized by some of the same people he was trying to arrest.  One would think that this would be pretty scary for all involved, and difficult for Saul, who had spent his whole life trying to serve God (he thought).

            Another often used image of transformation is the butterfly.  A caterpillar essentially needs to leave behind the only life it has ever known, wrap itself up in a cocoon, and wait for nature to take its course.  The result is a thoroughly transformed creature that can fly instead of crawling.  A caterpillar that might try to fly without being transformed into a butterfly seems ridiculous to us.  Yet, do we sometimes hope for recovery without doing the hard work of transformation?

            One of the tools that can be used is a sort of reverse thinking when it comes to fulfilling our purpose as a congregation, or as any church body.  So, for us here at St. Luke’s Zion, our purpose is to share God’s love with all people.  Given this purpose, what are some of the worst things that we could possibly do?  What are some of the things we could do that would prevent us from fulfilling our purpose?  Once you have this list, the next step is to ask if we are doing anything that resembles the things on the list, and then come up with the first steps that are needed to change that.

            This seems like a “renewing of your minds” type of thinking, which is hard to come by, and doesn’t come to mind very readily for most of us.  We tend to think more in terms of repair, or even preservation.  However, this statement from Bishop Jason Zinko seems right on the mark: “God is transforming us from preserving our institutions to a focus on life-giving faith.”

            After all, a life-giving faith is far more like what Jesus came to bring, as in, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (Jn. 10:10).  One could also say quite truthfully that Jesus did not come to start a new religion or to found an institution, but to love and to save the world that God loves.  May all of us find that life-giving faith, being renewed and transformed through Jesus Christ our Lord.

            In Christ,

            Pastor Lynne Hutchison