Last Friday, I scheduled an appointment with a physical trainer at the YMCA where I exercise so that he could give me a new workout.
I’d been doing the same routine since January. Even though it was a taxing program, I had gotten used to it and so wasn’t getting the same benefit from it as in the early stages.
Fitness experts say you need to change your workout program every three months or so. I just am such a creature of habit that I stick with routines longer than I should.
Anyway, the trainer gave me a new series of exercises, complete with different patterns and new weight levels. Some parts of it are diabolical in their difficulty.
The whole point is to create muscle confusion. When muscles do things they haven’t done before and in a way they’re not “expecting,” it creates health and endurance.
Which is a long way of saying that you’re really, really sore afterwards.
What’s true of working out is also true of church life.
Satisfaction with the status quo breeds complacency which leads to inertia.
Sometimes churches need to create muscle confusion in the flock. Whether it’s a new worship design or alternative programming or even a goal that is so outrageous it’s not attainable aside from divine intervention, churches either change or stagnate.
It’s not change for change sake.
It’s change for the sake of stretching and growing the body.
It causes soreness in the short term but strength for the long run.