COVID-19 and the Church's Golden Opportunity
When Jesus left us He gave us pretty simple instructions: make disciples.
When Paul wrote Timothy he echoed the same instruction in 2 Timothy 2:2 when he told him to Learn. Teach. Repeat.
It is literally the focus and purpose of the church’s existence; to point men and women, boys and girls to Jesus, teach them to do His will and obey His ways. It is why we are here.
However, somewhere along the way we’ve lost our focus. We’ve turned the church into a place we go instead of a people we are. We’ve taught a generation their sole responsibility is to attend and receive and you can see it in the Facebook Live explosion over the past couple of weeks.
As a member of the Media Team at our church, I’ve watched my fair share of other church’s videos to see how they are doing things and I’ve seen a pattern; a disturbing one. Almost every single video expressed some sort of concern for the folks at home because so many would not know how to lead worship in their home or lead a devotional in their own home.
Unfortunately, I fear this is true. We pastor-types have to take our lumps on this one. In this season we are finding out how important personal discipleship and growth is to the flourishing of the church; how important our individual walk with the Lord is. It is these small spiritual disciplines like reading, study, prayer, and worship which will sustain us in the dark nights of the soul we face.
When COVID-19 shut down our church meetings people sort of panicked. We heard questions like:
“What will we do?”
“Are we ready to stream?”
“What about the folks who don’t know how to do worship or lead a study?”
It was that last one that got my attention. What about them? How do we meet their needs? Good question.
One approach would simply be to package up the “food” we cook each Sunday and feed it to them like baby birds, just in a different nest. They’ll eat it up, but will it sustain them? What happens if YouTube and Facebook go down? Then what? No spiritual worms for the hungry mouths.
Another approach would be to go back to the basics, so to speak. Let’s rethink what we are doing, here. This is a different animal, one where simply repackaging what we do at the meeting and piping to the living room is woefully insufficient.
Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE the streamed worship time. I LOVE the recorded sermon, but we stand at the brink of a GREAT opportunity; an opportunity thrust on us out of the blue.
Now is the greatest opportunity in history to encourage personal devotion, personal discipleship, personal study, and personal growth in EACH AND EVERY FAMILY in our churches.
What if … you know I like the What if game …
What if instead of a full sermon, our pastors in America gave a short lead-in devotional then instructed the head of each household to open their Bibles, to read, to pray, to allow the Holy Spirit to do what only He can do? What if instead of simply feeding them, we fed them and then taught them to feed themselves? What if … What if when this was all over, the church had as its core an army of equipped soldiers for Christ fully capable of leading worship, leading study, opening the Word, prayer and making disciples because they HAD to for 3 or 4 months?
Can you even imagine? I can.
Let’s get this right and don’t miss the wonderful blessing to be found in this disconcerting time. Let’s get about the business of making disciples … at home.
