6 Things COVID-19 contexts might be teaching the church of 2020? - Part 2

Continuing on from Part 1, and As some parts of the world begin incrementally 'lifting' some of the restrictions of the last months, let us not be quick to forget some further lessons this time may teach us...

2.- We might be learning more of what it might mean to minister better to 'shut ins' and 'the disabled'

 (to know how to minister well, means first understanding well, and what better way to understand than to experience it yourself!)

a recent blogger mused about how the current 'lockdown' restrictions might in some way resemble other life contexts and he wrote:

Is this something like racial segregation, being told I can't go in a certain store or restaurant?

Is this something like a concentration camp, living with suffering and not knowing how long it will last?

Is this something like poverty, not getting to buy the food I want for my family? 

Is this something like prison, not being allowed to leave the premises?

Is this something like summer, with kids home all the time and minimal time alone?

Is this something like loneliness, wishing for human interaction and not knowing how to get it? 

Is this something like having a child with a terminal illness, always being careful where they go and what they are exposed to? 

Is this something like Jesus in the Garden, wanting to have company in his suffering?

Is this something like the persecuted Church, not being allowed to meet together?

Is this something like Heaven, time out of time or beyond time? 

What is this time teaching you about being better able to pray for the needs of others, to weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice?

3. We could be learning more about what it means to go cross-culturally…and discovering coping mechanisms from such brothers and sisters in Christ who have already walked that road before.

This blogger highlighted several parallels of what cross-cultural workers experience (which we would agree with!) such as:

- 'social' - physical distancing from home church, friends, and extended family - missionaries can't just pop in to visit elderly parents and their kids can't just easily visit grandparents. We (missionaries) are far away from friends and lack of face-to-face contact can mean communication isn't so easy and it can feel like  we are 'losing contact'. Home church links are through email, a phone call here and there, and listening to sermons on-line (or before the on-line days, it was waiting to be sent cassette or video recordings of sermons as part of a 'care parcel' by post)

- new ways of shopping - we can't just pop down to the local store and pick up things we are familiar with. We have to learn new things to cook and the items we want may not be available…and may not be available for months!  We often have to buy things on-line or from overseas that we need for particular ministry or personal needs, and wait for parcels to arrive in the mail (which also may take months!)

- new ways of greeting - we had to suddenly learn a new style of greeting with a two-handed-arm-held-triple-handshake and slight bend of the knee …every time we met someone.

- evading new diseases - a new environment meant exposure to new diseases and an even greater alertness to hygiene. When we arrived into Africa the HIV epidemic was extreme and we had to learn what to do and not to do. We had to learn to be extra vigilent regarding greater occurrences of gastro-intestinal infections due to different local food storage, transport and preparation contexts. Often soap and water were unavailable so bottles of hand sanitiser are a constant companion!

Here is another blog highlighting similarities between the culture-shock experience that missionaries encounter and what people are experiencing right now with adjusting to new ways of life in 'lockdowns' and movement restrictions etc.

How might this time be teaching you - teaching your church - how to better pray for and partner with your missionaries?

4. We might be growing more in appreciation for what we usually take for granted

- the blessings of what we had in our daily lives - (ease of movement, freedom to meet, maybe a job we took for granted etc), but also the blessings of the church being able to gather together as well as minister face to face more easily. The blessing of being able to share communion together, hug a hurting friend, be with the family of a dying church member in hospital, have a kids holiday VBS program, have home cell groups, meet some friends for lunchtime bible study and prayer over coffee, invite neighbours for dinner, babysit the kids of some friends while they had a weekend away for an anniversary.  

During this time, many are having to experience what some people have to live with each day.  

How will new experiences and understandings shape and change church ministry in the future?  

How will not taking blessings for granted make us more joyful, kind to others, considerate, patient, gentle and loving….more Christlike, more as Jesus' hands and feet in the world?

How will this time teach us to be more thankful?  Remember one of the accusations against this world in Romans 1 is that we not only fail to honour God, but we fail to give thanks to him.

Let us not be weighed down with worry and grief over what we have 'lost', but give thanks for what we took for granted, and for what God is doing and will do through this time.  God can be trusted to do what is best for those who are called according to his purposes, and what we think we might have 'lost' might just be a 'gain' of something even better. Do we really believe that?

5. We might be being prompted to a greater leaning on the Lord and looking to the Lord

I have been amazed at how many messages I have received by email and text and whatsapp from Christians saying we need to pray (often that they have received as forwarded from others). 

I have had requests to pray at 7am and 7pm in your time zone (so these are messages meant to reach all the way around the globe and be a 'continual' prayer of God's people, wrapping the world in prayer so to speak), to pray for countries' leaders, medical personnel, the sick, the church to respond well, protection for the vulnerable etc etc. I have had people desperate about ways they feel their government is or may not be handling the situation well and they feel there is nowhere else to turn but to pray.

Is this maybe a time when God is exposing to his children just how easy it is to lean on our circumstances and our possessions, our social positions and false senses of security, instead of on the Lord?

It is never a bad thing for us to learn to trust God more and have our own hearts revealed to us through the situations we are in.  

It is never a bad thing (although it might feel bad), to have our trust pulled from the wrong things and onto God, and it is never a bad thing to be caused to see where our hearts fail to rest in the Lord, and turn to the Lord, when they should.

It's never a bad thing to be reminded that we are weak and prone to fear, and we need God who is strong and says 'do not be afraid'. 

It is never a bad thing to grow in our understanding of where our mis-placed trust might be hindering God's work in and through us and thus hindering our worship of Him and hindering God being able to use us to bring others to worship him!

If we are being prompted to humble ourselves, pray, turn from our ways that are wicked and dishonour the Lord, (2 Chronicales 7:14), then this COVID-19 is not detrimental to the church, but beneficial to the church, and might just be a severe mercy to shake us out of our complacency and make sure we never go back to the 'normal' of before!

Let's look to the Lord, lean on him in prayer instead of panic, and seek his face as to how he wants to use this situation, and use you in this situation for his glory and humanity's good!

Let's get our eyes off the scariness of our circumstances and onto the Lord. When our eyes get off him onto the circumstances we will begin to sink in the fear and uncertainty of the circumstances, but with our eyes on Jesus, we will be able to navigate the path to walk through the midst of the circumstances! (Matthew 14)

6. We might be gaining a greater understanding and appreciation for just a little taste of what Jesus endured for us

I really appreciated what this blogger had to say as he pondered the situation of being unable to 'gather' in the usual manner as Christ's church, especially in the light of Easter….

The feeling of isolation, loneliness, and sadness comes from not being able to gather together with our church family. Rather than try to find some sort of faux-joy in amongst all the strangeness, perhaps it is appropriate to lament…?

After all, we enter Passion Week tomorrow, the week that symbolises the final week of Jesus' life, culminating in his horrific death and glorious resurrection.

And perhaps this is something we can take away from this season? As we recognise the aloneness of this season this year it may help us enter more into the aloneness of Christ during this time. Though Jesus was surrounded by his disciples, and though he continued his ministry in this final week, we read of the unique isolation he felt as he headed toward the cross. Luke 22:42-44 helps reveal this to us:

"Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me—nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done." Then an angel from heaven appeared to him, strengthening him. Being in anguish, he prayed more fervently, and his sweat became like drops of blood falling to the ground.

And so, while we may feel alone, sad, and grieved, unable to meet in the same physical location this week perhaps this provides us with an opportunity to see Jesus more clearly and walk his way more steadily?

Some have here and here also noted that this time feels like living between Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday would have been for the disciples.

So what can we learn as the church now, during this time, 

that will enable us, when we can gather again in our local gatherings, 

to better 'be' the church, 

to each other and to our neighbours, 

and to our world, 

and better long for the fulness of heaven, when the church will be all that our Lord Jesus died to purchase back on that first Easter Day?

6 Things COVID-19 contexts might be teaching the church of 2020? - Part 1

In this period of COVID-19 the world is certainly being stretched and strained in all kinds of ways.I'm not just talking about the sadness of deaths and the strain on ICU departments in hospitals in places such as New York  and the devastation in places like Ecuador, and the unemployment rises around the globe as communities 'lockdown', which is all very real and terrible. But rather, I'm referring to the additional 'stretching' on everyone having to develop new ways of 'living'.  There is much being written about how to cope, how it will change our lives, what it means for the future, what it means for the church, how the church should respond etc etc. 

And as we here in Botswana have moved from being virus 'aware' to nationwide restrictions and then to 'lockdown' with even permits needed to go out of our homes, I am caused to reflect even further.

In some ways, while others are stressing out about movement restrictions or having to work from home or not being able to go to restaurants or movies or even Sunday worship service at church, I am not finding it a change much at all. We 'work' from home, and my mobility issues mean I just cannot get out and about much. I have more than once gone over 3 months without leaving the plot I live on. I rarely manage to get to church.

But as I read what is being written on news articles, and blogs, I am left in no doubt at all, that:

 in the midst of all the upheaval in life and the threats of the Coronavirus, God is at work.

The events are certainly prodding humans to think in new ways, to re-order their lives, to re-assess their priorities and being forced to make choices about life that they would possibly not otherwise be inclined to make or even think about!

But not only is humanity in general - across the whole world, being forced to re-think life with many seriously considering God and eternity for the first time, but the church—Christians—are being awakened to think about their lives and ministry and relationship with their Creator and Savior in new ways.

So what might be some of those new ways???????….

1.- We could be being challenged to think more about being the church not just 'going to church'.

It is SOOO wonderful to see so many churches thinking of ways to be the church in new creative ways as much as they can. 

I was sent a little video produced by some Aussies, about how in this time the church is learning to be the church, not just 'do' church.

This is a perceptive statement.

Yet, some folks seem to be very concerned about the church during this time. I read a blog that was concerned about how 'church' over technology (such as YouTube or Zoom etc) is a 'Claytons' (substitute) church - not the real thing. I think I understand what he was trying to say. It's not what we are used to. Live-streaming has its limitations. There is a lack of enjoying each other's full fellowship through a shared physical presence and interaction. 

But I think there is more to consider on this.

What is 'Church'?

Whether we are in the USA, UK, Australia, Asia, Europe or in Africa, we are apt to forget that the 'church' is not defined by an occasion/s in the week of THE gathering, rather the church GATHERS. Or should I rather say, the members of Christ's body—the church who share a local area, gather together. We don't become the church when we turn up to a building with a sign saying 'church' - in fact we don't even need a building - the 'gathering' might be under a tree in the African bush!.  We might say we 'go to church' (for want of a better phrase), but if there is any truth in that, it is not the place or the building we go to, but the people. It is a local gathering that forms a local church, which is part of the the full church across the full global extent of believers past, present and future.

Technically, when the people all drive or walk out of the 'church' grounds after Sunday Service, the church is no longer there.  All that remains is a building - a property that belongs to the local church members.

Maybe this time is prompting us to think about our understanding of what 'church' actually is.  Maybe the deeper issue, is not that we don't have 'church', but that we have for too long lived with some wrong assumptions of what 'church' really involves.

So is 'church' over the internet just a Claytons substitute and not 'real' church'? 

If your definition of church is a building that fills with people once a week for an hour or so, then yes, church over the internet, phone calls, whatsapp messages, and emails etc is not the real thing.  But the church has not at all stopped being the church. The church may have paused in the way it usually meets in some places, and had to temporarily change the form in which we meet to a form that doesn't fully engage all our normal sensory joys of meeting.  But what have we lost? - presence with one another through touch (eg hugs, handshakes, meal sharing) and the dynamics of sharing the same space.  

But what about my fellow church member and friend who is blind and does't get to see anyone else when church members gather in physical presence of each other? She misses the sensory element of 'sight fellowship' every Sunday (and every other time she interacts with people), which others take for granted. Is her fellowship less because of that? Or what about the deaf?  Or what about a young disabled friend in the church I grew up in who was fed through a feeding-tube and could never partake of communion (or gluten-intolerant people who can't have the communion bread, or my husband who is allergic to many fruits so can't drink the grape juice).

A Comparison?

Maybe it is helpful to think through this by comparing it with the fact that my mother and I live on separate continents, and my only other sibling, my brother, and his family live on yet another continent. We are all family whether we are in each other's physical presence or not, We don't stop being family. We just don't always get to fully enjoy the fullness of the relationship that comes when we are in each other's presence. 

But, do we do the least we can over technology, in the fear we will not want to ever be together physically if we do too much over technology?

No.

We do as much as we can over technology, and it only makes us wish all the more we could be together physically. 

The world has done the same for decades with telephone calls and letters when physical face-to-face chats are not possible. 

Do phone calls with family we love make us want to be with them less or more? Oh how we thank and praise the Lord for the level of 'togetherness' we can have because of technology that otherwise would not be there.  

I read one article that mentioned that a church felt that the leaders/elders couldn't really do their job in this 'internet' type church so it wasn't really 'church'.  But although they may not be able to interact in physical bodily presence, being in a separate physical location doesn't have to prevent church leaders from leading, video or audio calling, praying, making decisions with other leaders about the church, emailing etc etc. It just requires a bit of creativity. 

Biblical Counselor Alasdair Groves of the Christian Counseling and Education Foundation, in a short video  encouraged pastors during this time to remember that while they might yearn to be able to shepherd their flock by physical presence,  they can still minister the Word, and that in fact the Word is just that…'word'… and 'word' communication can be by email, text, phone call, Zoom or whatever. He reminded pastors that the Word is not handicapped by distance, and we only need look at the Apostle Paul who wrote letters to minister the Word to those he couldn't be physically present with. He said it might feel 'less' for now, but we should not underestimate what happens when people come together 'word to word' or 'mind to mind'.

Or maybe think of it this way - what about the fact that we are God's children while not yet being in 'physical' presence with him in heaven.  We are still his children, but the fullness of our relationship is yet to come. We don't have to wait to become his children till our physical presence is with him. The belonging, the identity and the one-ness and fellowship that comes with that identity is already enjoyed if not yet in its fulness.

Our relationship and spiritual 'being' part of the Church, is not defined by our social and physical 'doing' local church activity. The 'doing' results (as we are able) from the 'being'. Our works result from faith, and are not the basis of our faith. Our position in Christ directs our Christian practice, our practice does not determine our position. Faith without works is dead, but works without faith are worthless. If our Christianity is founded on 'doing' more than 'being', we will feel totally adrift in the current situation. Maybe this is  a time to check if we have got the 'doing and the 'being' the wrong way around or out of balance. And if we have, then to get them back the right way around and back in balance, is a very worthwhile lesson, not just for now, but for our entire lives!

Maybe 'Less' is not BAD, but just DIFFERENT…or maybe even 'more' for some!

Many are writing about how live-streaming church is not really 'church', that it is less than 'real' church, and saying it thus shouldn't be live-streamed or over the internet. 

Some are wondering if Christians should just have this time without any form of gathering so they won't get used to prefering a false substitute. 

Some believe that church over the internet is not real worship so are not having 'worship' services but are calling them something else. 

But these 'lesser' options are still a HUGE amount more than those whose churches are too small or not equipped with the technology, or members don't all have smart phones or computers, or in parts of the world where internet streaming isn't easily available or affordable.

Again I understand that people acknowledge that physically gathering in each other's presence is the goal on this earth and we don't want people to be satisfied with less. 

But can I say from one who has had years of mostly not being able to physically gather regularly with others, that those who truly know the Lord and are part of his family will not ever be totally satisfied with no corporate gathering fellowship at all. 

I am VERY thankful in past years for being able to hear the preaching of the word as recorded via cassette, or sermons downloadable from on-line, but now with YouTube and Live-streaming I am SO thankful to also see that preaching. But I have NEVER stopped yearning for the ability to be able to share the joy of full physical presence corporate worship. It is NEVER that I 'prefer' being 'with' people only via a screen, but it is a wonderful blessed provision for those, who by necessity, cannot meet with other church members physically in the weekly gathering. 

My experience and participation of 'gathering' with fellow church members for worship and fellowship has not diminished with live-streaming and Zoom but has increased. And for ZOOM prayer-meeting, I get to see everyone, hear everyone, participate with the others who have gathered on-line, and have feedback both verbal and visual in real time. It's been absolutely wonderful and an incredible blessing!  

Is church for me currently a 'Claytons' version? Absolutely not!  It is better now for me, not worse. It is more, not less. It is greater fellowship, not less...  

...Because the church is not the building or the place. 

We do not worship on this mountain or that. 

We worship in Spirit and in Truth, in the same Spirit who indwells us all as Christians, and gives us one-ness in all our 'less than full' ways on this earth, and makes us long for and prepares us for the day when we will enjoy the fullness of worshipping together before God's throne for eternity. On this earth, with human limitations and dwelling in various physical locations, as well as some already departed, and some yet to be born, we do not yet fully enjoy or experience the church as One, worshipping the Lord together in the fulness of all our created senses and un-sin-tainted understanding and appreciation. 

We are the church, but we are not yet fully what we shall be.  

Maybe this lockdown time will remind us that the longing we have to enjoy a greater measure of corporate body life and worship, is the same longing that we should have every time we gather as we long for the fulness of experience as being with Christ and his body the church, one day, in heaven.

But there are a few more things this season of life might be teaching the church….and I will explore some of them in Part 2…