A conversation between the comic characters "Calvin and Hobbs" went like this:  Calvin: "I'm getting disillusioned with these New Years . . . . They don't seem very new at all!  Each 'New Year' is just like the 'Old Year'! . . . Here another year has gone by and everything's still the same!  There's still pollution and war and stupidity and greed!  Things haven't changed! . . . I say what kind of future is this?!  I thought things were suppose to improve!  I thought the future was suppose to be better!"  Hobbs: "The problem with the future is that it keeps turning into the present." 
                                                                                                         (Calvin and Hobbs, by Bill Watterton)

     Hobbs is right, "The problem with the future is that it keeps turning into the present."  In the Church, the future has turned into the present much too quickly and for the most part we are not prepared for it.  We proclaim a timeless changeless Savior ("Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today, and forever" Hebrews), and we believe it so much that the way we proclaim it is timeless and changeless as well.  Hence in the church we are running the risk not just of being irrelevant, but eventually non-existent.  The New Year is always an opportunity to ask ourselves if the future has become the present while we are stuck in the past?  How will we as leaders of the Church influence our future?  Can we capitalize on crisis to effect needed change?  Today is the time, because the future has turned into the present.

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