From Pastor Kendra
February 2026
Last month I went to Disneyland. It’s very interesting to go to Disneyland as an adult with an adult daughter as the experience is not what it used to be. We used to go to Disney and the trips very much followed the same pattern. Rides, meeting the characters, and shows. We ate snacks in the lines and pushed from the time the parks opened until they closed so we could do absolutely everything. We did the
same activities and ignored the things that didn’t appeal to us (I’m looking at you Tom Sawyer’s
Island). We could really only tell the difference in the trips by my daughter’s height. Then a couple of things began happening at the same time. My little Princess started getting older and the park itself began to change. All of a sudden we had different priorities which continued to change as the years went by. Our latest trip bore little to no resemblance to those early days besides those foundational rides that we have to ride every time or we don’t feel like we’ve really experienced Disneyland. The trip wasn’t better or worse than those early trips, just different. Church life is much the same. We often form an idea of what church is supposed to be. It can be influenced by what we grew up with, what is most meaningful to us, or what we’ve been told church has to be.
Sometimes any or all of those things can be correct. The problem comes when we think that is all church can or should be. We change. Church changes. The world changes. Expecting to have the same experience and meaning now as we did 20 years ago is short-sighted. It doesn’t mean that what we do now is better or worse, it’s just different. And different is good. While there may be things we miss, there are new things to learn and experience. There are new people to welcome and a whole new generation that is building their
foundations of faith right now.
Walt Disney famously said “Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world.” If an amusement park can have that level of growth and movement, how much more should the church. The church is never done. There is always another prophet, always more inspiration, always something new to learn, and always more work to be done. As long as we live and bear witness to the Gospel, the church will continue to grow and change.