REV. MELANIE LEE CAREY
Clergy Assistant to the Bishop
Many years ago, I was given a large pair of novelty glasses with red frames like the ones pictured below.
I keep these oversize glasses in my office to remind me that God’s vision is much bigger than my own. When I am not sure what to do about a problem, a challenge, a situation that I am facing, or the church is facing, I put the glasses on to remind myself that God, in God’s wisdom, usually has a different perspective than I do about the situation. This change in perspective helps me to see things in new ways, sparking new ideas, creativity and changes in my behavior or attitude toward what I previously saw as a “problem” or “challenge”. Sometimes putting on those large glasses simply reminds me to consider looking at situations or people with God’s heart and God’s eyes. Just that simple change of perspective often changes everything for me!
The word perspective comes from a Latin Root word which means to look through. Perspective is defined in Webster’s dictionary as “an interpretation, a way of regarding something, or an attitude about something.” Rather than being something static, perspective is constantly changing depending on your point of view, your point of reference or the way you are looking at things. Sometimes what we most need is a new perspective.
Author Wayne Dyer writes “If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” This is why perspective is everything and the reason why sometimes we need to look at things differently or be reminded to do so.
We often hear the lament about our denomination’s decline in membership in the United States. As we focus on these shrinking numbers, we begin to think about all kinds of implications that our smaller membership numbers have on the structures that have been built over the past years. We then think about how we might continue to sustain these structures with fewer people and resources. Often we conclude that we must work harder, or smarter, or more efficiently to keep things the way that they have always been. What we find is that no matter how hard we work, or how much we streamline things, we can’t keep sustaining things the way they have always been with our new reality. This realization often leads us to despair and grief over the perceived loss of the way we have understood ourselves or over the loss of the way things have always been for us.
In these moments of grief and despair, we would do well to remember that perspective is everything. God invites us to put on new glasses and look at things from a different point of view.
While it is true that the membership of local churches in the U.S. is shrinking, it is also true that the mission field for all of us is growing! Looking at things through the perspective of what is our mission field, reveals amazing and ample opportunities all around for us to witness to the love of Jesus Christ! It also reveals that we need to position ourselves to maximize our witness in these growing mission fields!
When we look at things this way, we change our focus, and our perspective and it makes all the difference in how we share the love of Christ and build the church! When we look at things in this way, we see not decline, but incredible opportunity to be the church in new places, with new faces and in new ways!
Perspective really is everything. The next time you are in a church meeting, a conference meeting or having a meeting inside your own head, I invite you to consider putting on new glasses and looking at things in a new way. You might just be surprised with how things look and what the new things you see are calling you to do and to be! Perspective is everything!
Last Updated on December 15, 2023