Just because you've always done it that way doesn't mean it isn't incredibly stupid.

Is this photo-shopped or some sort of initiation rite?

It didn't rain today, which is a very good thing because we had tasks to fill up the entire day. My parent's clock is quite different from most people their age. The rise at a leisurely hour, take their time getting to the day's activities, but stay up like college students. I'm just the opposite. (I fit right in with the Sun City crowd.)
All of that to say we didn't really get started on tasks until after 10:00 but we made up for it with a vengance. Dad now has four raised beds for his squash and cucumbers, the track for the shades is fixed, one of the large planter stands is disassembled, and there's a new cover on the dry well.

I had muscles. Good ones, too.
We went to Arnies for dinner tonight and dad & I shared an order of muscles off the appetizer menu. I like muscles! Then I had salmon that was also delicious.
Nothing like the fresh seafood they serve in the Northwest!

According to this article, 40% of all pregnancies in 2007 involved unwed mothers. Teen pregnancies are also on the rise.
President Obama is expected to overturn an executive order the Pres. Bush signed that allows medical personnel to refuse to offer reproductive services to patients when doing so violates their moral conscience. If he does that after the just-begun madatory 30-day public comment period, doctors who refuse to perform abortions will be subject to criminal charges.
Never mind what this represents, where does it lead? What comes next?
Very troublesome!

Change can be difficult. We all feel more comfortable with what we know; it gives us a sense of security. Doing something new can not only bring a sense of dis-ease but it raises the potential for failure. Even if what I'm doing isn't working especially well, "The devil you don't know is worse than the devil you know."
That's why most of us go back to the same restaurants, listen to the same radio stations and but the same brands. At least I know what I'm going to get.
Safety, security, stability vs. risk, stress, struggle.

That is true for individuals and for organizations. Some organizations are particularly disinclined to change if doing so could be interpreted as a repudiation or judgment of what went before.
Yeah, I'm thinking about churches.
If doing things a new way feels like saying the old way was wrong or bad, the new way will meet very strong resistance. The new way may just be different, but if it's percieved as a judgment of the old way, expect big trouble from those who dislike the changes.

If the individual's or organization's environment is changing but the person or group resists changing along with it, the gap between the two will grow. Small, incremental changes in the environment add up over time so that the organization, the church, suddenly says, "We've got a problem."
That problem is often the departure of a generation, the age group most inclined to change with their culture. They live in a world now very different from their church and it's understandable if they conclude their church is irrelevant.

Methinks the trick is for the church to change incrementally along with the environment. This does not, MUST not have anything to do with the timeless message and purpose of the church. But methodologies are not fixed. No one expects the African church or the South American church to look and act like the church in mainstream America. The methodologies vary with the culture. So when the culture of a geographical area, like America, changes it seems natural for the church to change with it.

But that change needs to be just as incremental as it is in the culture. By making those small changes frequently the stress is lowered to manageable levels (not, however, eliminated). It's when the church lags way behind and then tries to catch up quickly that things often go very, very badly. Church wars!

So I think about Pathway. How can we make those incremental changes so that a decade from now we're not irrelevant? I'm not sure that's something we do as a conscious strategy, per se. I think it just comes from an environment of freedom and relaxation where nobody is tied to fixed forms. If an idea comes along we can try it. If it works, great; if not nobody is going to raise a rukus. Some things can be passed over just because they obviously don't work. I will not be tweeting my sermons. Others are inconsistent with the gravitas of the Word and worship. But things like architecture, musical forms and service formats don't fall into the category of biblical mandates.

Hey, this has been the subject of lots of books. I've just been thinking today about the church as free and flexible or fixed and restricted. One seems to bode better things for the future.
IMHO