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“The times they are a-changin’.” So sang Bob Dylan. “Change” was a prophetic theme when the song first came out. And change is upon us once more, albeit this time a different kind of change. The times they are a-changin’.

Ever since the 1960s, America – and I suppose most of the quote-unquote “Western World” – has lived with the revolution of those turbulent years. Fuelled by protest against Vietnam, and singing along to the tunes of not just Bob Dylan but (of course) The Beatles, and others, much of the discourse and context in which the church lives and works in the Western World has been shaped by the changing times in which we live, and which have been bequeathed by the 1960s.

But things are changing. Again. The evidence for this is everywhere. There is a new return to the traditional in some quarters. A longing for the “traditional West” and its purported culture and “civilization.” Politics are not what they were. Old divisions and partisanships have given way to new divisions and partisanships. Alliances once certain now seem fragile.

For decades the church has been (to cite John Stott) aiming to live “between two worlds” – a perennial mission taught to us by Christ in his prayer in John 17 that we would be in the world but not of the world, but with particular intended resonance as we have sought to reach out to a world shaped by the changing times of the new world picking up steam ever since the 60s. For decades the church has been seeking to “build bridges” to this world around us, and to be “missional” to it, and all the rest. To translate our message into the language of our day. The task of contextualization remains. How can it not? We are always called to be in the world but not of the world. We must (in Stott’s well known phrase) hold the Bible in one hand, and the newspaper in the other. But even that now almost arcane picture of the “newspaper” begins to evoke the challenges of our (again) changing times.

In such days as this how then shall we live?

By following the example, as Paul puts it in Philippians 3:17. We have an example in him, in the models to which he points us in that letter (Timothy and Epaphroditus), and of course Christ himself in Philippians 2. It is an example, a model, of cross-like sacrifice and love for a cause that is greater than self. Could it be that the church that thrives in the next several decades will be the one that has Christ on the throne to such an extent that He is evidently bigger, better, greater, worshipped above all – and is the example which we all follow?

By proclaiming the gospel, for in a time when the times are a-changin’ the Word is not. The call, the charge, to preach the word, in season and out of season (2 Timothy 4:2), whether convenient to us or not, remains, especially in these days.

By redeeming the time, for though the times (we may feel) are particularly difficult, tumultuous, or even (we may say) especially evil, it is these very times that God uses to expand his kingdom. Is it not said that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church, and that in any case we have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood? In fact we are to “make the best use of time,” or “redeem” the “season,” just “because the days are evil” (Ephesians 5:16). It is these days, these changing days, and times, in which we are placed, which we are to seek to utilize for best advantage for the kingdom. To not be sleepy, but ourselves to awake, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on us.

Even as again the times they are a-changin’.

This article was first published in Evangelicals Now in January 2026.