Obama has staked his campaign on the theme of change, and Obama has made a lot of headway among people who are looking for change.

But could it be that the unhappiness with the status quo and the search for a quick and extreme shift away from what we've known has more to do with our spiritual state than with our political one? It's easy to look for a Band-Aid fix when we neither understand the nature of the wound nor are presented with a better, more healing alternative.

I believe that is the fault of Christians. While the world has grown more hungry for answers and profound transformation, we have resisted it and opted for the comfortable and routine. While something in the heart of people has been drawn toward God, we have demonstrated bad public relations on His behalf and kept the world from wanting to be like us. While the world is searching for the supernatural, we're suggesting humanistic solutions to the problems society faces. And while the world seeks change, we either insist on doing things the same ineffective ways or we morph into looking so much like the world that we don't offer anything different.

Yes, we have problems in Washington and in our individual states that people want to change. But I believe what they're really searching for is the One Who is the "same yesterday, today, and forever," (Heb. 13:8), the One who never varies nor changes (James 1:17). They're experiencing what St. Augustine called "a God-shaped void" inside each of us. Even when they don't recognize it, we should.

Let's hear the people's cry for change and make that the theme of our spiritual campaigns as well. Let's start looking differently at our world and the role we're called to play in it. Let's look at individual people God puts in our lives and hear their cries and find ways to minister effectively to them.

If we do our jobs the right way, then the world around us won't need to search in the wrong ways. Now's the time, and the call is for change--not in the Truths we stand for but in the ways we convey them.

After all, it's not only Obama who hears the cry for change.