Pastor's Corner

The Pastor’s Corner

    Let’s talk stock market for a minute. I have a nephew who was in a game
in his finance class at college. The objective was to pick stocks to buy and then
sell at the most opportune time. The prof then tallied the amount of profit for
each student over a time of several weeks. My nephew made as much money (on paper only of course) as the rest of the class put together. He figured out a way to buy stocks that had already gone higher and then back date so that all his picks were winners, big winners. He then showed the prof and the rules were changed for the next class.
    If only it could be done that way. Foreknowledge would be so nice, or maybe not. There are ways in the real life that help people know what to invest in. And there are ways of predicting when the stock market is going to go up or down. The problem is that they are not proofs that the market will go up or down but are rather indicators. The history of the market tells us that in most situations where certain conditions existed the market went up or down so that indicates what it will do this time.
    There have been however, times in history where even the best of market interpreters have lost tons of money trying to pick and buy the bottom for certain stocks. Consider for example, those who invested heavily in buggy whips after the turn of the twentieth century. The price over the years just kept going lower and lower, with the indicators constantly flashing strong buy signals. The problem was that the fundamentals of transportation were significantly changing as cars, rails, and eventually tractors were replacing buggies. Those whip manufacturing companies were going down and we all know that they wouldn’t be back. The word used here is obsolescence. That which had great purpose and effectiveness in the past, but just doesn’t get it done today.
    This is true in the church as well. There is One that never changes, He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And what he teaches in the Bible is the same as well. We just celebrated the resurrection of Christ.   And rightfully so, that is a truth that will never change. But our methods and traditions must be allowed to be fluid and scrutinized and we must always maintain a willingness to change, even on some of our longest standing and most loved traditions. And even in our most loved ministries we have to be open to modification and change.

God bless,
See you Sunday,
Pastor Steve