The Power of Change is in the People


I agree with Douglas Hall that the confession of the faith arises sometimes at a point when it is almost too late, and “the powerful of the world have gone too far.” He believes that when“the powerless are victimized then the faithful church resists.”[1] I see his point very well: Vladimir Lenin came up with a similar postulate, known as Principle of Power Balance required for revolution: “Change is possible when the top (the powerful) cannot rule in the new way, and the powerless refuse to live in the old way.”
Modern Russians reinvented the old postulate in a new way, “When the top doesn't want to rule in theNEW way, and the mob (the powerless) WANTS to live in the OLD way.” This new interpretation sounds scary if applied to the Methodist church. What if we are right whereRussians are: unable to live in a new way?! 
There was another Soviet formula that had to be memorized by the nation: “We say ‘the Communist Party’ but we mean Lenin; we say Lenin, but we mean ‘the Communist Party.’” 
That was how people were made to believe that the center–the Party–was them, and maybe this is why people do not see themselves as instruments of change seventy years later: even when they can, they do not want to. They would rather wait for the “the center” to put ideas into their minds to blame the center later. It is something so significant in blaming: people feel powerful without doing the work. Similar to gossiping, blaming others produces oxytocin and melatonin in the brain. As a result, people feel satisfied doing nothing.
I can see it in the life of a local church that is frustrated, lost, and angry at the conference and at the Bishop, but resists to live in a new way, indulging in gossip and complaints. 
Time for confession for all?


[1] Hall, Douglas John. Confessing the Faith: Christian Theology ina North American Context, Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 1998, 133.

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