I cannot remember where I first heard the phrase, “When the horse dies…dismount”. However, it has always struck me both as funny and as incredibly self-evident…until I became a parish pastor.
Congregations can be passionately resistant to change. Even when membership, worship attendance, and offerings are declining, average age of members is increasing, and Sunday classes are diminished if not dead…still they seek to stay the course. Tradition becomes a bondage from which they cannot escape. The “Status Quo” is known, comfortable, and reassuring. It has taken on a sense of divine mandate. To depart from the known is to sin against God. And yet change is all around …with all its fear and discomfort.
Another old saying reminds us that to continue to do the same things the same way and expect different results is the definition of insanity. Perhaps it is insane to stay mounted on a dead horse and yet expect to make progress.
How many parishes continue to ride a dead horse to nowhere? Inertia has long ago replaced the cool breeze that blows through the hair of the rider. The journey to nowhere seems preferable to changing horses. Laughable or Tragic?
While it is easy to criticize those who remain mounted on the dead horse, what of ourselves? Where might God be seeking to replace old wine skins with new ones.
Remember, when you tire of drinking sour vinegar and desire new wine, it is not only a matter of changing your liquid refreshment, but also your container. (see Matthew 9) New wine will burst an old wineskin. One change leads to another…and so on and so on.
Is God trying to bring something new, something refreshing, some sweet into your life? Is God trying to get you somewhere beautiful and blessed? Do you need to dismount from dead ways and find something new, powerful, and moving?
Think about it…
Has the atmosphere become stagnant, smelly and fly infested?
People not wanting to stick around?
Life seemingly going nowhere?
Time to dismount?
