In 1814, Ivan Andreevich Krylov, poet and fabulist, wrote a fable entitled “The Inquisitive Man” which tells of a man who goes to a museum and notices all sorts of tiny things, but fails to notice an elephant. The phrase became proverbial. “Elephant in the room” or “Elephant in the living room” has become an English metaphorical idiom for an obvious truth that is either being ignored or going unaddressed. The idiomatic expression also applies to an obvious problem or risk no one wants to discuss. It happens all the time in almost every level of life. (Well maybe not in Hollywood, they seem to be willing to talk about all most everything.) We usually ignore something because it is something difficult to talk about or perhaps we hope it won’t affect us, or maybe we just hope it will go away.

For instance, you have that annoying relative that always happens to show up unannounced right at dinnertime. But you don’t want to say anything because you don’t want to cause a rift in the family; or that person who has bad breath or body odor. You just don’t want to hurt their feelings but it gets difficult to be in the same room with them.

One of the things that churches like ours need to address is not just the dwindling numbers and fewer young faces we find in traditional services but the shrinking influence that the church has on society in general and the millennials in particular.

I know that as we move towards changing our services in October that not everyone is going to be happy about the changes. It is going to inconvenience some and for some those are not minor inconveniences. The Board has tried to minimize those inconveniences as much as possible but still there will be some. I personally wish that we could hold enough services that every person could have the kind of service they wish to have. But the elephant in this room is that we are simply not a large enough church at this time to do that.

Our commission on earth is to reach as many people for Christ as possible. We are not given specific instructions on how to do but we need to utilize everything we have to accomplish that commission. It is my prayer that we as individuals and as a congregation would say, “It is not about me but it is about Christ and reaching young people so that the influence of His Body will grow.” It is my prayer that many of you will say “I not only will sacrifice my desires but I will participate in new things so that I might show others how the love of Christ reaches across generational lines.