Pastor, here’s how to answer “The church was better back when…”

You’ve heard it the week you changed the service order, retired a song, or brought in a new tool: “The church was better back when…” Back when we had the organ. Back when we sang hymns. Back when it was Vineyard in the ’90s, or Hillsong in the 2010s. Everybody’s golden age is a little different. It’s a sermon of the serpent, and it keeps good churches stuck. Here’s how I answer it.

What nostalgism is

Nostalgism treats a past era, usually the one you personally lived through, as the church’s golden age, and then resists change and innovation because of it. It’s not the same as conservatism. Conservatism keeps what we have now. Nostalgism wants to go back to something we used to have.

And nostalgia is strong. We all have it. When I first gave my life to the Lord, the songs I sang and the way I first read the Bible burned that season into my memory. I’ll always have nostalgia for it. That’s okay. You can hold those memories and still move forward.

The serpent’s question

The hiss here is “Did God really say to sing a new song?” It’s “Did God really say?” pointed at the present. Scripture tells us over and over to “sing to the Lord a new song” (Psalm 96:1). God says, “See, I am doing a new thing!” (Isaiah 43:19). The serpent doesn’t need you to stop worshiping. He just needs you looking backward so you miss what God is doing in front of you.

The Bible even names this exact temptation: “Do not say, ‘Why were the old days better than these?’ For it is not wise to ask such questions” (Ecclesiastes 7:10).

Step 1 — Ask the diagnostic question

In your next change conversation, ask it gently: When was the church most pure? Was it the hymns? Before the hymns, Gregorian chant? Before that, some other kind of chant? Keep going back and most people land on Acts 2. Fine. Are we wearing sandals now? The question exposes that “better back when” almost always means “better back when I was there.”

Step 2 — Spot selective anabaptism

Nostalgism shows up with technology, too. “I’ll never use AI. It was better back when we just had Google search.” Okay, but where exactly was the line of purity? Before AI? Before search engines? Before the typewriter? Before the printing press? Picking one past era and calling it holier than this one is selective anabaptism. It projects a kind of moral purity, but mostly it keeps you from moving forward and leading your church.

You don’t have to be a crazy early adopter like I am. But you are the primary change leader in your organization, so you have to lower your own resistance to change. Watch for preference dressed up as principle, including your own.

Step 3 — Honor the history, and say plainly the method will change

The gospel never changes. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). But the forms always have. Jesus said new wine goes into new wineskins (Matthew 9:17). So honor the people and the seasons God used to get you here, and then say clearly: the method is going to change, because the mission hasn’t. How can we reach more people? How can we have the best music possible? How can I preach the best sermon I’ve ever preached?

Step 4 — Go where the babies are being born

When I was a young man studying to become a pastor, I went to a brand-new church plant meeting in a big high school. It was packed, maybe a thousand people, almost all of them under 30. Then I noticed the man sitting behind me was my pastoral professor, Dr. Watson, a wonderful man of God in his sixties. I asked him why he came to a church where everyone was decades younger than him.

He said, “Jon, I love to be where babies are being born.”

His voice and his persona might have seemed stuck in an era, but he wasn’t. What he did forty years earlier to lead people to Christ looked nothing like what that church was doing. He got it anyway. For him it was all about people finding Jesus. That’s the posture I want for every long-tenured saint in our churches, and for me as I get older.

If you’re always looking back, you miss the miracle of today. I think that’s one of the ways the devil distracts us. Leave your nostalgic preferences at the door and give yourself to the next generation finding, following, and serving Jesus. The gospel never changes. The forms always have. Lead forward, not back.