Communities cannot stay healthy unless they are growing, and growth means change. But not all change is healthy, not all growth is healthy. Thistles grow. Morning glory grows. This is something we must think through carefully, and in our thinking we must be mature.
There is a vast difference between changing because you are growing, on the one hand, and trying to grow simply by changing, on the other. Everything else being equal, the former is far healthier than the latter. It is healthier because it is normal. As a young boy grows up, he will need to get a new set of clothes. But suppose he was impatient to grow, and tried to fix the problem by pestering his mother to buy him clothes that were three sizes too large for him.
One man can plow and plant, and another man can water, but both men must always remember that it is God alone who gives the increase (1 Cor. 3:7). That is, only God gives the increase if it is the kind of increase we want. But the modern church has drifted into the great folly of believing that various jiggering techniques can bring about the increase. We mess around with the music, or the length of the sermon, or the range of programs, as though we were ecclesiastical mechanics. What we ought to be concentrating on is preaching Christ and Him crucified, singing praises to God with a whole heart, communing together at His Table, and loving one another. Growth will come, and with it, changes will follow after the fact.
But this means there is one change that facilitates growth. There is only one kind of change that enables growth, and that is the change that we call repentance. Everything else is usually just tinkering.
I repent.