What is our faith-filled response?
Events have been moving swiftly. Only a few days ago it seemed unnecessary to contemplate live streaming a Sunday service and asking church members to watch from home, preferably as households with some others invited in.
Yet that is what we have done this last weekend. The leadership wanted to be ahead of the curve not behind, but not far ahead as it happens!
There has been some preparation, though. A couple of weeks before, Ps Rick challenged a meeting of campus leads and others to ponder what would happen if we had to stop meeting in large numbers. Would it be the end of church as we know it or would it be an unexpected opportunity to go further into recovering what New Testament church really should be?
And the preparation goes back much further. For some years Ps Steve has been preaching on becoming a disciple-making culture and we have emphasised that doing life together through our Life Groups is what church is really about.
Many of us have found the challenges of being up close with people (yes, there are challenges when we are real with one another!) are more than worth it. But many have yet to make the transition from thinking of church as a Sunday meeting to church as 24/7 life.
We live life in our households, friendship groups, workplaces and above all with the people God the Spirit is joining us to. Life groups are not just a convenient way of looking after people and some pastoral needs. They are not just a convenient way of organising some things. They really are the essence of church.
Jesus gave a definition of church in Matt 18.20 when He said, literally, “Where there are two or three who are being gathered into My Name, there I am…” Not gathered into a building (though big meetings for the gathered church have their place). Gathered “into My Name” - in other words into the character of God. And not just gathered in the past but “are being gathered…” because there is a continuing process as we share with one another, encourage and bless and challenge one another.
When all this is happening in homes and other places where people connect with each other, “I am in the midst of them!” God is there!
So the essence of church is the presence of God as people connect, drawn together by the Holy Spirit.
Could it be that God’s people will now really be church in homes and neighbourhoods, reaching out to love and care for the vulnerable? Could this be the way God's presence is seen and known in our streets? The fastest growing church in the world is in Iran, where persecution makes it essential to meet and reach out like this.
God did not send coronavirus as such. We do not believe He causes evil (more on that in the next blog post!). But He is using this outbreak to help us in All Nations, and other churches too, to be the church in life, in small groups that have the potential to multiply as we reach out to others.
- Chris Horton
Yet that is what we have done this last weekend. The leadership wanted to be ahead of the curve not behind, but not far ahead as it happens!
There has been some preparation, though. A couple of weeks before, Ps Rick challenged a meeting of campus leads and others to ponder what would happen if we had to stop meeting in large numbers. Would it be the end of church as we know it or would it be an unexpected opportunity to go further into recovering what New Testament church really should be?
And the preparation goes back much further. For some years Ps Steve has been preaching on becoming a disciple-making culture and we have emphasised that doing life together through our Life Groups is what church is really about.
Many of us have found the challenges of being up close with people (yes, there are challenges when we are real with one another!) are more than worth it. But many have yet to make the transition from thinking of church as a Sunday meeting to church as 24/7 life.
We live life in our households, friendship groups, workplaces and above all with the people God the Spirit is joining us to. Life groups are not just a convenient way of looking after people and some pastoral needs. They are not just a convenient way of organising some things. They really are the essence of church.
Jesus gave a definition of church in Matt 18.20 when He said, literally, “Where there are two or three who are being gathered into My Name, there I am…” Not gathered into a building (though big meetings for the gathered church have their place). Gathered “into My Name” - in other words into the character of God. And not just gathered in the past but “are being gathered…” because there is a continuing process as we share with one another, encourage and bless and challenge one another.
When all this is happening in homes and other places where people connect with each other, “I am in the midst of them!” God is there!
So the essence of church is the presence of God as people connect, drawn together by the Holy Spirit.
Could it be that God’s people will now really be church in homes and neighbourhoods, reaching out to love and care for the vulnerable? Could this be the way God's presence is seen and known in our streets? The fastest growing church in the world is in Iran, where persecution makes it essential to meet and reach out like this.
God did not send coronavirus as such. We do not believe He causes evil (more on that in the next blog post!). But He is using this outbreak to help us in All Nations, and other churches too, to be the church in life, in small groups that have the potential to multiply as we reach out to others.
- Chris Horton
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