So, on a very hot, humid day, I hoisted my computer into my arms and set off for the computer superstore. My first problem was the sales staff -- every salesperson in the store was busy selling new computers and they all looked like they had just graduated from high school. The computers they were touting were those low-priced but very powerful machines that can do everything but stir the soup on the stove.

I waited patiently and finally had a salesman standing in front of me. When I explained what I needed and why, he suggested that I buy a new computer for $900 and then he asked the question that sealed my technological fate:

"How old is your computer?"

I informed him that it was only six to eight years old and was running just fine. He smiled slightly and said that most people figure on buying a new computer every three years.

"No way," I said. "I don't want a new computer. This machine works fine. It just needs to work a bit faster."

He took me to the service counter to talk to a technician who also told me to buy a new computer. He said it would cost about $600 to update my antique, and it would still be as slow as a Model T in a snowstorm.

After hearing this sad news, that a perfectly good machine is now nearly worthless, I fell into a foggy funk. My brain couldn't process this information, and I was a bit put off by a couple of whippersnappers telling me to trash my computer.

Still, they were probably correct, and I am now watching the newspaper ads hoping to find a new computer, with Internet access, for about $500 -- the amount I now have in my savings account.

Then, while driving to work this morning I started to think about things that don't change, and I realized that just about everything changes over time. But there are a few things, such as worship, that seem to never change.

And if some young pastor comes in and tells a congregation they have to change the worship, watch out for the wicked looks and the lurid gossip that will surely engulf the cleric.

That is why we are still singing songs like the old missionary hymn "Propagation of the Gospel," which includes a line about baboons swinging through the jungle on vines. And that's why we are singing hymns composed by pastors who were also busy burying people who died during the times of the bubonic plague.

A young person I know was sitting in church one Sunday morning when she opened her hymnal to the next hymn, the one about "apes swing(ing) to and fro." She went home thinking the world has passed the church by, and she is convinced that the customers, the people in the pew, like that feeling just fine. For her, worship had begun to resemble a meaningless ritual held inside a dungeon.

She hasn't been back to church since. And she won't return until her spiritual pain becomes so great that she must return. So another person of this current generation has been turned back by the backwardness of the church.

It's true -- worship is old and dark and hasn't changed in 50 years. One of the problems is your hymnal. Religious publishing companies once figured a new hymnal was needed about every 20 years.

Now those same publishing companies say there are a couple of things that keep them from putting out a new hymnal. The first is cost. Hymnals, with the complexities of publishing rights, can be expensive to produce. The second is the abundance of material. There are too many hymns being written, too many liturgies, too much junk and not very much that will last forever.

So that makes it difficult for small churches. Because if they want to transform their worship they will have to do it themselves -- choose the hymns, formulate a liturgy, and write their own prayers and responsive readings. In the majority of congregations in this nation, transforming the liturgy would be a nearly impossible task.

But in every church there should be something bright and happy, some kind of response to the news of the day, some concern for the community and church members, a historical and theological center, and something, a song perhaps, that rings with the clear voice of today.

If you don't have those elements, you are slipping down the slope of backwardness and the baboons are already swinging on your vines.

Clark D. Morphew