Different Strokes ...

Over the past few months I've come to a realization: People are different.

I don't care much for art, or classical music, or sports. Other people live for those things.

I tend to enjoy relatively quiet spaces, with friends and good conversations. Other people thrive on flashing lights and deafening music and throngs of people moving and jostling.

Different strokes for different folks.

The same is true of church personalities. One church might have a "liberal" feel, while another has a "strict" feel, while another is somewhere in between.

I tend to need something in between, and have thought this is the healthy condition of a church, and therefore is the condition we should aim for. By extension, I thought that a church too liberal or too strict is unhealthy.

But people are different. The church I attend is exactly what some people need. If that church were to change its personality, those people would no longer have a place to attend.

Wanting to spur growth in a church is good. But sometimes such growth might change the personality of the church, eliminating it as a refuge for those people who needed it to have its original personality. Has the change then done more good, or more damage?