Come to the Feast!

 

In the wake of Covid, many people have left the church and decided that they don’t need it anymore. Not because of their fear of Covid but because they figure that it doesn’t matter. They will do their spirituality on their own. In their way. On their terms. I suspect that it will result in a diminished personal and spiritual life but we are a nation that does it's own thing.

What they don’t know is that they are missing the party. You heard me right. The party. In Nehemiah 7 and 8, after the completion of the wall that Nehemiah helped organize, we read this: “When the seventh month came and the Israelites had settled in their towns, all the people assembled as one man in the square before the Water Gate. They told Ezra the scribe to bring out the book of the Law of Moses, which the Lord had commanded for Israel.

They built him a platform and “on the first day of the seventh month Ezra the priest brought the Law before the assembly, which was made up of men and women and all who were able to understand. He read it aloud from daybreak till noon as he faced the square before the Water Gate in the presence of the men, women and others who could understand. And all the people listened attentively to the Book of the Law."

Ezra opened the book. All the people could see him because he was standing above them; and as he opened it, the people all stood up. Ezra praised the Lord, the great God; and all the people lifted their hands and responded, “Amen! Amen!” Then they bowed down and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground….They read from the Book of the Law of God, making it clear and giving the meaning so that the people understood what was being read.

As the people heard the Word of God they were sad and grieved because they realized they were not following God as they should. But the Levites calmed the people down and said “Be still for this is a sacred day. Do not grieve.” Instead they threw a party. We read, “Then all the people went away to eat and drink, to send portions of food and to celebrate with great joy, because they now understood the words that had been made known to them.”

I know a group called the Light of Jesus Family that has a weekly meeting called the Feast. They feast on God’s word, on worship, prayer, and food together each week. Feasts are times of joy and fellowship and that is how they see their worship and how we ought to see our worship as well. This is how we ought to view our weekly worship. A feast around God's word with people we love to give us what we need for the upcoming week. Worship and fellowship go together. And so does rejoicing and music and laughter. Oh, food helps as well!

We ought to throw more parties around God’s word, good food, laughter, and joy. They all go together and they feed the mind, body, and soul. Worship should be seen not as an obligation but as a feast, each time you meet and open the Word. Next week, come to the feast!

It is counterintuitive but Covid may be a blessing for the spread of the Gospel

 

I have a firm conviction that nothing happens in our world, good or bad, which does not first pass by the hands of God and which He does not use to build His church. History is full of examples of adversity that become accelerators to the advancement of the gospel. In fact, it is often in the face of difficult challenges that the church shows itself to be the most resilient.

The age of Covid has been difficult and presented many unwelcome challenges. But, there may be some hidden blessings for both the church and the spread of the gospel. Ironically, as infectious as Covid is, the gospel is even more infectious and both are impacting our world, one for sorrow and the other for joy.

First, Covid has disrupted almost all of ministry. In doing so it has also caused Christian leaders to rethink what is truly important and how they can adapt and focus on what God has called the church to do and to be. There is no disruption that does not create opportunity to rethink, recalibrate and refocus.

For too long we have focused on church size and programs more perhaps than on discipleship and the involvement of each one in ministry according to their God given gifting. We have assumed that church attendance equaled spiritual maturity. 

One thing we can be certain of. The church will never go back to where it was pre-Covid. It just won't. Many have decided they don't need church for their spiritual lives. Others will simply do church on-line. This creates an opportunity for us to rethink what we are doing and why. That is a gift although perhaps an unwelcome one.

Second, digital ministry has the potential to be one of the most potent forces for the gospel in the years to come. The church was forced into digital formats by Covid. Many churches have come to the conclusion that the digital format is not simply a way to reach their own people but to reach beyond their four walls and reach a world that does not know Jesus. Rather than fighting the change, many churches are embracing this change and see it as a significant opportunity to share the gospel with those who don't know.

In fact, when we talk about the gospel being preached to all people before the return of Christ, this is exactly what is happening. Recently I had opportunity to interact with the founder and leader of CCF (Christ's Commission Fellowship) in the Philippines a huge ministry of house churches and mall based congregations. They are now reaching people at an unprecedented level via digital content across the globe and incorporating many into digital fellowships for discipleship. They have embraced this opportunity with enthusiasm and it will be a part of their strategic vision ongoing.

One of the realities in our world is that fewer and fewer people are coming to church out of spiritual curiosity. But almost all are online so is it possible that in God's sovereign plan, the church was forced to go online in an unprecedented way allowing the Good News to multiply in exponential ways? I fully believe this to be the case. It is also the case that in many cases, those who experience an online service will find their way into a local congregation as is happening with the church I attend, Forest City Church in Rockford and Elgin, IL. Look up Tiny Church on You Tube. 

We didn't ask for or desire Covid. But  nothing happens in our world, good or bad, which does not first pass by the hands of God and which He does not use to build His church. He is doing that today - as He always has. 

Why the church itself is largely responsible for people not returning post Covid

 

The phenomena of those who have chosen not to return to church has been the subject of speculation as numbers have dropped dramatically in church attendance. Even long time church attenders are absent and have indicated that they don't intend to come back.

A case can be made that in many cases, this reflects either poor theology (I don't need church or I can get what I want online when I need it) or low spiritual commitment (I can do my spirituality without the church). Certainly Covid sped up the tendency among church goers that Sunday is a day off and church is an option but not a priority.

Covid's fallout thus reflects the loss of those whose faith was less than robust, who may have been church attendees by habit or tradition or many who simply find the church irrelevant to their lives.

My take is that while the above is often true, that the church itself is largely responsible for people not returning post Covid. It has itself to blame and it should cause major reevaluation as to the purpose, message and engagement of the church. So here is my take on dwindling church attendance in the post Covid world.

We have failed to teach and live a Biblical ecclesiology. We have lost a Biblical theology of the church. The Scriptures have a theology of church that has been lost because the church has not taught it or lived it. Scripturally, the church is a gathering of God's people to worship God in community, be encouraged and challenged by God's Word, in community, care for one another in community, and engage in God's work in the outside world together as God's people are released into their gifting to live out their unique God given calling and legacy.

Instead we have made worship services about us rather than about God. The focus is on meeting our own needs rather than being focused on the worship of our creator. Certainly that needs to be done in culturally sensitive ways but still it begs the question as to whether the focus of the service is on us or on God. 

We have failed to teach and live out the "one another" aspect of the Christian life. Here is where in the words of Scripture, male and female, Jew and gentile, rich and poor, slave and free, people from every background, culture and language become one in Christ. The Gospel is the great leveler as the Spirit knits disparate people into one- body that is the local manifestation of the body of Christ. None of this happens in isolation. It happens in authentic community. It happens as we are forced to grapple with what it means to be part of the body of Christ and to move from autonomous independent individuals to people knit together by the Holy Spirit. Quite simply, that does not happen in isolation but in community, sometimes messy community. If we understood God's plan for the church, diminishing our commitment to the church would not be an option. But we don't.

We have substituted feel good teaching for transformational teaching. Many messages from the pulpit today can hardly be differentiated from the self help section of books at Barnes and Nobles. There may be great advice there but Scripture is meant to teach, instruct, rebuke (where necessary), train us in righteousness and challenge our thinking, relationships, hearts, actions and priorities. Too little of our preaching does that these days. In traditional settings it is theology without application. In non traditional settings it is often self help without theology. This is the fault of the church.

If I want self help, the You Tube channel, a podcast or a book will suffice. I don't need church for that. If I want theology and Biblical teaching that forces me to think Biblically and allow the Holy Spirit to transform my life, I need the church because all of this is done most powerfully in community with other believers. This is not about entertaining folks on Sunday mornings but engaging people in a common experience of worship, prayer, Bible teaching with our fellow pilgrims.

We have changed ministry from that of living out our God given wiring and gifting meant to reach the world to volunteerism within the four walls of our churches. Don't get me wrong. The church as an organism needs the best of what each of us has to bring. We are all fellow ministers working to grow together and it is as we use our gifts that the body of Christ is built up into what it is meant to be (Ephesians 4). Note again the emphasis on community. 

However, the call of God on our lives goes beyond serving coffee on Sundays. It goes to a lifestyle where we are intentionally using our God given gifts on a 24/7 basis, not only inside the four walls of the church but in the world where we live and work and play. Yet in many ways the church has defined ministry as what happens within its four walls and in doing so has downplayed the strategic call of God on each of our lives to be His representatives in a hurting and broken world. In doing so we have diminished the important work that God has for each of our lives whether we are school teachers, janitors, salespeople, executives or wherever God has placed us in life and work. We have failed to help Christ followers understand the way that God wants to use them in a fallen world.

We have allowed "information" about the Christian life to trump "relationship" in the Christian life.  If the Christian life is primarily about information, we can find that commodity in many places. But that is not the teaching of Scripture. It is in community that we grow as we learn to love disparate and different people. It is in community that I learn to care for others and be the hands and feet of Jesus. It is in community that I learn the humility of working and living with others. It is in community that I learn to put my spiritual maturity to the test: to forgive, work together, use my gifts for the common good; be encouraged and challenge others. Count up the "one another" statements in the New Testament and you get the picture. Even Jesus, our greatest example, chose to live life in community with twelve other individuals so say nothing of the many hundreds of others who were part of His larger community. 

We have allowed church size to substitute for church health. I am not a critic of large churches. Many become large because they are healthy. I am a critic of the drive to become large as if the size of our congregation is an indication of health. I would rather see small churches who lived out a Biblical ecclesiology than a large church that did not. Church health results in transformed lives. Church success is the life change of its people through the Holy Spirit and living in community where we must put our theology into practice. 

My conclusion is that the church itself is responsible for much of the fallout from our Covid period. In that sense, Covid can be a wake up call for the church and call us back to become missional communities once again that engage people in community for our transformation and His glory. It is worth thinking about.

Don't miss these three significant lessons that Covid taught the church

 

Nothing happens in this world

 that does not first pass by the hand of God

 and which He does not use to build His church!

There are three lessons that Covid taught the church that should not be missed. In fact, if your church misses these three lessons you will be poorer for it and may see your ministry decline. If you are waiting for things to come back to normal and assume that this normal is what was, I suspect you will be deeply disappointed. The new normal will not look like the past normal. 

Covid has brought home lessons and has accelerated change. We need to learn the lessons it has taught us. If we learn these lessons we will see greater ministry impact. If not, not.

The first lesson is that the church is not our campus or our building but God's people. Don't miss that. For years in the west, we have taught our people that church is the building and the campus, and we built some great facilities. There is nothing wrong with these facilities. What is wrong is the concept that the church is the facility. Having not been able to be in that facility for almost a year, we have had to find new ways of doing ministry. God has taught us that the facility is not the church, but that God's people are the church.

In fact, this definition of the church, which is the New Testament definition, is the church distributed throughout the community, which is how God designed the church. In this season we have told our people to be the church where they live and work. That is different than the concept that to be the church you need to be at the physical church location. 

This cannot change! Jesus gave us the opportunity to learn this lesson and our people should not be allowed to unlearn it. The church is not the building. The church is God's people. This is one of the most fundamental realignments of the church that Covid has brought us. It is a gift and needs to be reinforced. 

The corollary to this, and the second lesson, is that ministry is not the purview of church staff but of all of God's people. This is after all the theology of the New Testament. but in the west we often hire staff to do ministry rather than releasing everyone in ministry. In this season, we have had to encourage everyone to be the church in their place of work and in their neighborhood. 

Again, this is a lesson that we must capitalize on. The reason the church has so little influence in society is that God's people have not seen themselves as the ultimate owners of ministry (that is what paid staff do). In many cases, post Covid, church staffs will be smaller and that is perhaps a good thing as it forces ministry back to those who were to originally carry it out - all of God's people.

A third lesson is that in this season we have had to find innovative and new ways to do ministry, engage people and share the Good News. This cannot change moving forward. Covid has sped up changes that were already happening and our ministry environment is very different than it was previously. Traditional paradigms will not reach many of the younger generations so we must innovate if we are going to engage them with the gospel. Those who resist innovation and change and new ways of engaging people with the gospel will see their Gospel influence decline.

In some respects, Covid was a gift to the church. Don't waste the gift.

Ten ways that Covid will change the landscape of the church

 

I recently finished a book by Fareed Zakaria who is host of CNN's top international affairs show, GPS and one of the most prescient thinkers in our day. The book is entitled Ten Lessons For a Post-Pandemic World. I highly recommend the book which analyzes how our current pandemic is changing our world in ways that will be lasting and consequential. In many cases, it has greatly accelerated changes already underway in our world and in other cases radically shifted our center of gravity altogether.

Ministries of all sorts, and especially the church need to evaluate how the post-pandemic world will differ from what was. Here are ten ways I believe that the world will be different for the church and will divide the thriving from the merely surviving.

One: The pandemic has accelerated the number of those who will no longer attend church on any kind of regular basis. Many individuals have concluded in the age of Covid that they no longer need to attend church regularly. They have been without it for a period of time and have concluded that it is just fine. This is certainly true for those who attended church for cultural reasons rather than reasons of deep faith. Thus, the hiatus from church is going to separate those who truly follow Jesus and those whose faith was shallow to start with. Do not expect that your attendance will be what it was pre-Covid. It likely will not be.

Two: This means that we will need to change our measures of success - which is a very good thing. Way too much emphasis has been placed in recent years on the size of one's church. That scorecard has nothing inherently to do with whether a church is living out the mandate that Jesus gave the church. 

Fortunately, Covid will force us to change our measure of success as fewer choose to attend church. We will have to look more closely at what success means for the church. Things like disciplemaking, community involvement, evangelism, generosity, racial reconciliation, justice and the living out of our faith in tangible ways will take on new relevance for those ministries that will grow in the future.

Three: Healthy ministries will place far more emphasis on the real engagement of their congregation in ministry rather than being passive observers. This is not only the mandate of the church (Ephesians 2:8-10, 4:10-13) but it is the heart's desire of those who love Jesus. Our faith is not designed to be head knowledge but heart knowledge where we live out that which we believe. And it is in the living out of our faith that we grow an even deeper faith. Growing ministries will be those who focus on empowering and releasing their people in real, meaningful ministry rather than fostering onlookers. 

Four:  Churches that thrive will be those that address the real issues of their communities and their world. As noted above, Covid has sped up the growing irrelevance of the church to many people. That does not mean of course that the church itself is irrelevant but many local congregations are increasingly seen that way. 

The gospel should touch everything. It should transform individuals, communities and institutions through the power of the Holy Spirit but that means that the church must address issues that dehumanize and steal life with the life giving and transforming power of God. God cares about the poor and marginalized - those without a voice. He cares about racial reconciliation and justice - read the prophets! He cares about helping the needy and the hungry and lifting people out of generational poverty. If we are to pray, "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven" we must be agents of Jesus to see that bits of heaven come to our communities in tangible ways.

Engaged churches that bring the life and help and transformation of the Gospel in real ways to their communities will attract those who want their lives to count and will show the community what the heart of Jesus actually looks like. That in turn draws people to Jesus.

Five: Humble leaders who build the church of Jesus rather than their own kingdoms will be a mark of healthy churches. Celebrity driven churches are antithetical to the Kingdom of God. Humility was the mark of Jesus while pride, ego and the building of personal kingdoms rather than God's kingdom has been a curse on the church. Already before Covid we saw the collapse of several large ministries led by prideful leaders and I suspect that there will be trend away from celebrity based ministries toward a more humble and authentic leadership.

Ironically, God is the model of humility while Satan is the model of pride. Proud, controlling and self important leaders in the church, who are building their own kingdoms rather than God's Kingdom will increasingly be seen for what they are. 

Six: Generosity will become the norm in growing churches. The church in general has been selfish when it comes to giving. We have asked people to give generously to the church but congregations have used that money for themselves rather than being equally generous to needs outside their congregation. We have not practiced what we preached.

Few practices get the attention of our communities than congregations that are generous to needs within their communities. In fact, if God blesses those of his people who are generous with others, why would this not apply to congregations who are generous to others. Radical generosity can bring radical blessing. There is power when churches help other churches. There is power when congregations invest in their communities to meet real needs in the name of Jesus. There is tremendous power to transform our own lives when we see God meeting real needs through our generosity. There is power when we invest in ministries that bring the Gospel to those who have never heard.

Seven: Risk taking must become normal. Churches can be the most cautious organizations on the face of the earth. And look where it has got us. Why would we not risk everything for the cause of Christ? Living cautiously doe not excite anyone to better and higher aspirations. If you believe something you act on it. If you worship the God of God's and Lord of Lord's you take risks for Him. Like the parable of the Hidden Treasure and the Pearl, the man who found a treasure in the field, sold all he had to buy that field. 

Congregations that risk for the sake of Jesus train people to do the same. They demonstrate what a life of faith actually looks like. You cannot preach faith when your congregation does not practice faith. Faith means that we take risks for a Gospel that wants to touch everything around us.

Eight: Churches must become welcoming to anyone and everyone. That means those who don't look like us, don't act like us, and even have lifestyles that are not like our own. If Jesus came to minister to the sick and the broken and the needy and the marginalized, so must we. He welcomed all into his presence to the consternation of the Pharisees and even at times of His own disciples. Those congregations who will thrive in the future will do the same. They will be places that welcome anyone and everyone as Jesus did. They will also be places where the love and acceptance shown can lead to personal and spiritual transformation as the Holy Spirit does its work - in all of us.

Nine: God's power will be increasingly evident in those congregations who embrace their calling in a new way. Throughout the ministry of Paul we read that the Gospel came with truth and power. That power is hard to find in many churches today because we have both put the Holy Spirit in a little box and because our ministry is not about what God alone can do but about what we can do without His help. Churches that embrace the kind of commitments we have been talking about will also see His power change their ministries. He wants to show up in power and will do so when we embrace His way and His mission. 

Ten: The pace of change has accelerated with Covid. Change in the church to meet the needs of a new day will be faster rather than slower in pace. We don't have the time today to play to the lowest common denominator in the church when it comes to changing to meet the needs of a new day. We need to show love to those who are cautious but move boldly for the sake of Jesus and the mission He has given us.

There is not time today for incremental change. We need to make the changes that are necessary to become the church He has called us to be. Of course, change takes wisdom and timing but it also takes courage and boldness. Cautious churches will languish while bold leadership will increasingly be the norm in healthy churches.

For too long the church has subordinated its mission to the willingness of a few to agree. We have been held hostage by those who like the old way. In the meantime, people are not being reached. It is time to lovingly but firmly put the mission of the church first, regardless of those who object. 

Post Covid the church will not look the same. Many congregations will languish and move into a quiet decline. Those who will boldly reexamine their purpose, mission and priorities in light of Gods Word and our changing world will flourish. They may in many cases be smaller congregations but they will also be far more effective and impactful.