Same statement, different venue

"We want new people!  We want to reach a younger audience!  We will fight change tooth and nail!  The new people must come in and like to do things the same way we have since the beginning of time!'

Having spent most of my working years in a church setting, I was under the illusion that this type of thinking occurred mostly in churches.  It doesn't.

One of the last times I heard Youth Specialties co-Founder Mike Yaconelli talk, he made the statement "When you do what you always do, you get what you always get."  My notes from that talk wound up on a bulletin board next to my desk and I read that statement over and over and over again.  It was hard to implement change, simply because it was easier to just keep doing what I had been doing.  Changes did happen, though, because I got tired of getting what I always got.

Fast forward years and I'm in a different job, no longer in full-time ministry (though I am going to be volunteering on a regular basis in someone else's youth group...eek!) and working with some who have been asked to think outside the box.  Guess what?  The people who have been in the game a long time don't want no stinkin' change.  Just come in and do things like they have always been done.  It's worked for us before, it will work again.  They say they want to attract younger people but...

The worse part?  Grown-ups who act like teenagers but say they are grown-ups.  I've worked with teenagers...I like them better than faux grown-ups.

There's a country song playing in my head right now...anyone want to take a guess as to what it is?  =)