Over the last few months I have been reflecting on what the church may look like post-COVID-19. I took the opportunity to talk to a range of church leaders to hear their thoughts and the result of this investigation is in a short video. CHECK IT OUT HERE
It seemed that since isolation was such an important theme it was appropriate to “top and tail” the video with a scene from the Pilbara region of WA. It also coincided nicely with a visit to our Pilbara family as soon as the regional boundaries were opened.
As you would expect there was plenty of variety in the approach of different church leaders, but there were some themes that came through to me. I got the sense from these conversations that churches in the future would need to be simpler, more agile and more directly focussed on Jesus. ______________________________________________________________________________
It is time we stopped imagining the church as something we have to invite people into and see it as something that is blessed to be broken and given to the world. From Microchurches: A Smaller Way by Brian Sanders
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Ten or so hears ago I was avidly reading books about the “emerging” and “emergent” church (apparently there’s a difference). Since then some of these movements have fallen by the wayside and some have just become “emergencies”. Nevertheless the desire to see the development of fresh expressions of church has matured in some way over the years and I am holding out hope for the future.
Next week, as a result of my desire to investigate some of these issues further, I will be participating in some online workshops initiated in both the UK and USA. It seems to me that we can no longer depend on the inherited church models as the only way to bring about God’s Kingdom “on earth as it is in heaven”, and I’m keen to sharpen my thinking on this topic.
COVID-19 has forced many churches to reflect more deeply on whether our focus on the weekly gathering needs to be as high on our list of priorities as it has become. It would seem that the original intent to worship God and to prepare ourselves for mission has become an end in itself and the heart of the Gospel has been lost.
Watch this space as I dig deeper into how we can develop a fresher and simpler expression of church in the future.
(If you haven’t seen my video, COVID and the Church, CLICK HERE to see it on YouTube)
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