Nostalgia – A Christian Perspective?

I was reflecting yesterday about what seems to be a growing attachment to the past, particularly with regard to what I watch on television.

My favourite TV programme is Doctor Who and I really look forward to watching it each Saturday.  The modern Doctor Who has become one of the BBCs great success stories, popular with the general family TV audience but critically acclaimed as well for the quality of scripts, acting, special effects etc.  I enjoy the modern Doctor Who, but if I’m honest I prefer the older stories and the Tom Baker episodes in particular, which I watch regularly on DVD.  I can overlook the dated special effects and occasional bad script because Doctor Who had a magic then that it doesn’t quite seem to have today, as something indefinable that’s missing from 2011 Doctor Who.

It’s not only Doctor Who though.  I find myself increasingly watching programmes from my past, programmes I enjoyed in my youth and still enjoy now.

I don’t think there is anything intrinsically wrong with enjoying TV from decades past, but nostalgia isn’t a healthy thing when it comes to the church!

As a Student Minister I have visited a lot of different churches in the past year or so and they all have one thing in common; they invariably look to the past.  They talk about the time of the great Methodist preachers like Sangster and Soper, to the times when chapels and churches were full to bursting and every church had a thriving Sunday school.  Their measure of the success of a Minister is how far he or she can lead the church towards recapturing those glory days.  A good preacher is one who chooses the old familiar hymns, which they see as so much better than “these modern worship songs”.

I think, at least I hope, that all Christians would share my own desire to see our churches full again; but we cannot see this come about by hanging on to the past, by wallowing in nostalgia.

Instead we must look to the future, with faith that the God who has revived our churches before will do so again.  There have been times in the past when it has seemed that the church is dying, but then it has been resurrected by the one who himself rose from the dead.  Revival has come through persistent prayer, through the faithful preaching of the word of God, through Christians who are open to the movement of the unpredictable Holy Spirit who, like the wind, blows where He will.  With revival can come new songs and hymns, new styles of music and new ways of worshipping.  We can either hold onto the past or we can look to the future, and exciting future of revival and restoration.

As Christian people we should be trying together to discern what God is doing right now, what God is going to be doing and then working with him as the united Body of Christ.  The past was good but it is just that, the past; we need to be working with God and looking towards an exciting future.