The Mission Hasn’t Changed

In Middle Tennessee, no one can seem to get through a sentence without using the phrase, “unprecedented times”. Every time a newscaster reads the daily headlines, every time a politician gives a speech, a CEO updates the company, or a pastor prays, they all will come to the moment where they are trying to verbally grasp the magnitude of traumas our area is dealing with. On March 2, Nashville and surrounding counties were hit with a series of tornadoes that wrecked the northern and eastern neighborhoods of Nashville and flattened several communities in nearby counties.

Just as we were mobilizing to help our neighbors get their lives back together after the storms, COVID-19 hits and Nashville, like most of the country, received a shelter in place order. The governor of Tennessee and every mayor of every city were telling people to stay home.

What do you do? There was a lot of debate among our leadership but here is where we came down. Love for neighbor demanded we find another way to do church. I don’t know about your church, but when my church is open, the first people to show up are the last people who should be getting out. Our senior adults are some of the most faithful members of our church. If it’s Sunday, they’re going to come to church. Ice? Snow? Corona Virus? These people lived through Great Depression and World Wars. It will take more than a little bad weather or the threat of an illness to keep them home.

The early reports on the virus was that it was particularly dangerous for our senior adults. More than that, young people were carrying the virus without ever showing symptoms. That means our church could gather and our senior adults (and everyone else for that matter) could be infected without ever knowing they were standing next to someone who was carrying the virus.

I couldn’t live with the fact that we might be exposing some of our members to something that would make them sick, if not kill them. That would have been too hard of a burden to carry.

I couldn’t live with the fact that we might be exposing some of our members to something that would make them sick, if not kill them. That would have been too hard of a burden to carry.

So, we made the decision to go online. I’m fortunate to be at a church with a creative team when it comes to technology. I lovingly call them “The Nerds” and right now, they are the most important part of our church team. In a matter of hours, they had sets constructed, lights focused, and the online platforms set up. Sunday morning, we were live to several thousand homes.

So far so good.

But that was just one day.

How do you do church in a time when, well, you can’t come to church?

I know. Everyone says the church isn’t the building, it’s the people. But no one lives that way.

We go to church. We point to the building and say, “that’s our church.” When we talk about “building the church”, we’re usually talking about a building program.

But what happens when you can’t go to church. What happens when there’s no building to use?

Church happens.

For most Christians in North America, trying to do church without a building is something few have thought of, but for most of the church’s history and for many parts of the world today, church was and is done without a building. The church met in homes. The church met in forests and along riverbanks. Anywhere a group of people could be comfortably seated – or even stood – someone would stand up and teach the Bible, someone would sing and someone else would pray. From there, the Christ followers would leave to change the world.

Now, buildings are nice. You can control the temperature. The rain doesn’t hit you and the sun doesn’t beat down on you in the summer. You can set up a space for ministry and leave it set up for next week.

Buildings can also be a problem. Instead of supporting the ministry, the building can define the ministry. We can only do certain things certain ways because that’s the way the building was designed. Can I do a Bible study? That depends. Can they fit in this room? The question isn’t is this ministry effective, but does it fit in our building.

Church hasn’t been cancelled. Church can’t be cancelled. If the gates of hell can’t shut the church down, neither will COVID-19.

Now, we’re in a time when we can’t use our buildings and a lot of us are stumped. We don’t know how to do church without the building. How do you sing our hymns and songs of worship? How do we preach? There has been a lot of discussion about what to do when church has been “cancelled”. Hear me. Church hasn’t been cancelled. Church can’t be cancelled. If the gates of hell can’t shut the church down, neither will COVID-19.

In all of the times Jesus talked to His disciples about their mission to share the gospel with the world, He never tells them how. The command is to “go and make disciples”, period. The how is up to them.

I think this is because the how is always changing. Sometimes it will be in homes as people prayed together. Sometimes the word will be preached in stadiums with thousands attending the gospel rally. In grand cathedrals with priests in liturgical robes and in small rural churches with a preacher in blue jeans, the word is preached, and the gospel is heard. Disciples are made.

The message never changes. The mission never changes.

The method is always changing. Jesus gave us a mission and left it up to us to figure out how. So, how will we make disciples in this time of pandemic?

The mission hasn’t changed. We’re still charged by our Lord to take the gospel to the ends of the earth.

Now, we just have to figure out how.