Proof of God

"The continued existence of the church is the greatest proof of the existence of God." Courtesy of my wise man.

There are so many days of my life that I am reminded that this is completely true. I have been a member of different churches and different denominations for my entire life. There is very little that changes. There will always be things that seem to combat the existence of the church. These can come in the form of people who always find something wrong with the workings of the church, or those who seek to keep their church exclusive. Not only is this completely counter productive to keeping the church going, but it goes against the main purpose of the church.

It is so easy to get caught up in the idea that the church will always run the way it has run for the past fifty years. This is why the continued existence of the church is the only proof I need that God exists. When an institution decides not to change, then the institution will cease to serve the people who require it. Somehow, despite the resistance to change that I have met in most churches, they have somehow continued to survive. Some of them have even managed to thrive.

It constantly amazes me that churches continue to thrive and serve the people who require them, while so many people are adamant against any amount of change. The reality is that there will always be a different group of people who need to be served and there will have to be changes to adjust to serving in different ways. The change shouldn't always feel like pulling teeth because it's not.

There are many people in the church I grew up in who would love to change some things, and many of them are over the age of 65. Given that that is the median age of the congregation, this is a good thing. The members of the congregation who do not want anything to change, unfortunately, out number those who want things to change. There are not large changes that many of us want to make. They are mostly small things, like the tempo of the music we sing, having more congregational things, more connection within the members of the church. These things are like pulling teeth.

And so I am back to my original statement. The continued existence of the church is absolute proof of the existence of God.