I'm sure you have experienced it too? The quiet sound of an electric car coming down the road behind you. It's not quite like Ernie's milk float at 5am in the morning. His was louder. It's an extraordinary experience in South Street outside our church offices. You don't hear the sound coming at all. There's no kind of build-up. It just arrives, and it's quiet. It happened to me again this lunchtime in the beautiful blazing sun and got me thinking. I wondered what it's going to look and sound like; this brave new world just around the corner of no engine noise.
It's nothing more than a dream of course - some engines will inevitably still be around us. I say that as a matter of faith - as a "classic car man!" I naturally (because of my age and era) started to remember my old MGB and its throaty exhaust sound, and then I started remembering leaning over the front wing side tuning its dual SU carburetors (a right pain to balance) and I remembered what my Dad had modeled to all of his sons: that ear to listen to the engine and its tick-over and the slightest peculiar noises or misfires, or lack of balance in the engine's constant tick, or of course any squeaks or knocks! I still do it today. People may be talking to me, but I'm actually listening to an engine! So it's some massive revolution that's taking place - the death of the internal combustion engine! Have I bought my last car with one?
Revolution is what we've been through in the last 13 months during lockdown. Don't ask me how, but the paradigm shifts have happened in places I wasn't expecting. But let me defend my passionate cause with a dart up a quick cul-de-sac: I absolutely, completely and wholeheartedly believe in the local church and not cyber church! There, that's done!
But if the pace of re-opening continues - and I hope it does, then we in the local church are beginning to dust off some of the old ways that have been gathering dust. And it's not easy. "Lockdown Church" has become a feature. Routines have been established. Of course, a few are still saying "it will be nice to get back to normal!" Truth is, quite a few have now stopped. Normal as was, ain't coming back. I'm not even sure that "the new normal" is coming back. The new is still emerging. The pieces are in the air and they are still landing. I've stopped listening to the "Prophets of the future streaming church only" brigade by the way. Please go away quietly and annoy someone else!
But dusting off the old ways is not easy. There's a rota for this and that, and that too. That's what we were doing 13 months ago, Let's resurrect the rota! Hmm - not sure. It sounds like we ought to, but there's a tad of reluctance. In "Leader-me" - that asks "will people do so?" In "Ordinary-me" that asks "do I want to?" Trouble is, if we don't, then the survival teams of the last 13 months - who have put their heart and soul into holding the bare minimums in place, they will fade and die. These have been the emergency heroes and heroines who have stepped up to the plate and given their all in order to hold it all together. Now we are moving into a new phase, it's almost like starting all over again. The survival teams are tired and we can't continue on these emergency batteries. Now it's time to start rebuilding, but it's all a little different. The combustion engine is on its way out, the electric engine is arriving. Simply going back to the classic car as was, isn't the obvious choice. Do we really need all that we had? Yes, no, maybe! Has the paradigm shift knocked us into simplicity? A simpler, stripped-down, church? Even in simplicity, someone has to "do the stuff." Yes, we do need some of that stuff, but it was important to ask the question, not assume it so. Some of the old ways are very much still good old ways. We must not lose them simply because we can't be bothered anymore. Potentially that's what 13 months have done to us - God forbid that we can't be bothered anymore! We need to be willing to serve - again! Everyone one of us is going to need to step up to the plate once again.
But then there is some stuff that frankly was mere "we're doing it because we've always done it!" So stopping and asking "why were we doing this?" That's a good question to ask it seems to me. We must not assume that "as it was, so shall it ever be!"
I never ever thought I'd see an electric car. It wasn't even in my mindset. The internal combustion engine was here to stay. Well I was wrong there, wasn't I!?
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