An opportunity for re-imagining who we are?
Clearly we are facing a serious situation. If, however, we accept the coronavirus at God’s hand rather than at China’s hand it may lead us to wonder what God wants for us in and through these times.
Many things are being brought to the surface for reflection: geopolitical issues, our own Australian responses to globalism, the decline in our social fabric. God is always at work among the nations. Some are using the term “reset”. This being the opportunity to hit the reset button on society, family, geopolitics and more.
But what about us? Are we being invited to hit the reset button on church as we know it and enact it?
A God-given opportunity
God has permitted our Sunday meetings to be shut down for 3 to 6 months or even longer. If our response is to see it as only a hiatus in business-as-usual, I tend to think we will waste the opportunity. It seems to me that he has granted us the gift of time and motivation to explore and reflect. It further seems to me that if he is asking us to rethink or reset, it is unlikely to be a case of tweaking our current structures and functions. A future that might include shut down through persecution will not be one in which most of our current arrangements will stand.
Some good things have already been happening as believers find ways to connect with each other. Genuine, caring bonds will survive and blossom beyond the COVID-129 season.
Beyond business as usual
One common COVID-19 response from churches has been to find ways in which to maintain the distribution of sermons. Some move to electronically broadcasting ‘church services’. It is understandable because, for generations, that is what church has been: a Sunday meeting with sermon as the hub around which all aspects of corporate Christian life gather.
If God is nudging us to think beyond a ‘how can we maintain business-as-usual’ response, how would we discover what might be on his mind? What might we be ‘resetting’ to?
God has been gracious to us in leaving us an enormous amount of Biblical material concerning who and what a local ecclesia is, how we are to function and especially what our goals are.
As for the goals, they are most easily set out in Ephesians 4:11-16 and could probably be summarised as: full, functional maturity and stability guided by gifted people and maintained by mutual ministry. Those so gifted have as their primary function to equip others for their tasks.
As for the functions, they also are described in quite considerable detail across all of the epistles and Acts: who and what the ecclesia is, who and what leaders are; the purpose and types of meetings; what is supposed to be done when we meet; the nature of Gospel-based relationships and how they are to be maintained. And across it all, mutual ministry –‘therefore teach one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.’[1]
These things really are shown in many places, some as commands, some as models, some as recorded history. We might well make cultural adaptations of the recorded history but so long as our preferred modifications meet and match God’s intended goals.
Scripture versus tradition
What is obvious is that what we traditionally do by way of our (obligatory) core meeting of the ecclesia is not a cultural adaptation of anything in scripture. It is a new construction on many levels. What is equally obvious is that, in too many places, the specific goals set out by God in Scripture have slipped out of centre place and have been replaced by the necessity of maintaining our reconstruction of the church. We change styles of music and dress, add multi-media…but it is still the same basic function. We still hear the Bible taught in half-hour weekly bursts with no opportunity for discussion, response, contribution or even shared reflection. Were we to try to bring people to functional maturity in an area of life, that is not the way we attempt it.
Is it working?
Our core meetings are more often assessed in relation to the number of people we have managed to collect through to (especially of late) our singing — redefined as worship—rather than according to the goals that God set for our meetings.
Even where there is the very best of preaching, we might still ask the question, is it working? Is God adding daily, monthly, yearly? That, of course is God’s doing, but worthy of thought. More significantly, are people growing to unwavering maturity through our core meeting? Are we creating radical disciples? And perhaps, how do we in the West compare with the growth of the kingdom in nations where such meetings are forbidden?
By way of example, in many groups and situations Marilyn and I have asked people what was the period/means/occasion of the greatest spiritual growth in their lives. Not one person has ever responded in terms of Sunday morning church services. Each has spoken of a small group, a time when ‘a few blokes got together’, a ladies fellowship meeting, a KYB group, their annual beach mission etc.
Many churches do value and try to create networks of small groups, but they still gather around the mandatory Sunday service hub. What if we reset those small groups to become free as functioning ecclesias? What if we returned the ‘priestly’ functions of baptism and the Lord’s Supper to the people, with elders not doing but guiding? And what if large Sunday gatherings were only occasional, vibrant with the collected life and energy of multiple ecclesias of people who had been given back their voice and their responsibilities?
A matter of objectives
It seems to me to be a reasonable question: Is God asking us to think about all this? If not, then business-as-usual. But if there is something lurking in the shadows that he wishes us to bring to the light, we would waste the opportunity he has given by not seriously thinking about it.
Our Sunday auditorium ‘church services’ are not wrong. But their contribution to identifiable spiritual growth would appear to be less than the effort expended on maintaining them. Most of our money, time and effort go into the maintenance of that one weekly function, its necessary human and bricks-and-mortar infrastructures.
Whereas scripture very clearly indicates that growth will come through mutual ministry: teaching, admonishing, exhorting and encouraging one another. That’s a lot cheaper and simpler to maintain.
Back to the beginning?
As we know, that’s where our first brothers and sisters began. They met in homes around the meal table. In those meetings each person was able to contribute in mutual ministry. Indeed each person was responsible to bring something along to contribute. They broke bread, gave to each other and supported missions from those groups.[2]
We lost that.
So here we are. God has shut us down. We have for the first time in generations been brought into line with most of the churches throughout most of church history—forbidden to meet. Is this a gift from God? Perhaps practise for if and when open persecution comes and we are shut down for political rather than health reasons?
Might be a wonderful opportunity to re-examine the biblical documents to see how God described the ecclesia, its functions, leadership and goals? Opportunity to re-examine and re-establish the priesthood of all believers, the body, mutual ministry, the family? To become Biblically bound rather than denominationally or traditionally bound.
Don’t waste the opportunity
If our response to the current situation is to make sermons available and ‘electronically connect’ people to church services with no one in them, it is simply an attempt at business-as-usual with some modifications. If it is only to find ways to distribute sermons, it simply says that the body’s primary growth in wisdom and knowledge can only happen through salaried clergy and oratory. And our post-coronavirus effort will go into trying to get everybody back into the same place and the same routines as all-but-passive audiences. A wasted opportunity perhaps? But if we began to reimagine the church as we read about it in Scripture based on the enormous wealth of material available…?
[1] Interestingly, evangelism seems not to be presented as a function of the ecclesia but as a response by the watching world to the lives of the believers. The people did the living; God did the adding. In a world that would hate them they had only to be ready to answer the questions when asked. Their lives were to be the light that shone.
[2] That does not mandate homes as the only valid venue—a pendulum swing too far. But it does describe and illustrate principles that need to be taken seriously, principals that do fit well within the home as the core location of society.
