The post-pandemic Church

In my last blog, I shared a vision I had, in 2012, of a church melting from the skyline before flowing out into the surrounding community. 

As the effects of the Pandemic began to impact the church in the spring of 2020, I began to realise the significance of what I had seen in 2012.

Let me start by saying that I don’t believe, that the pandemic was sent by God. But, in His opportunistic way, He often uses the chaos of world events and human behaviour as His refiner’s fire¹, His potter’s hands ² or His jewel-hunter’s pickaxe³.

I should also say that I have always seen the Church’s main role as equipping, discipling and sending⁴ resilient, self-sustaining followers of Jesus, as salt and light⁵, into society where the real work of building the Kingdom takes place. Numbers matter of course, given how large our task is, but to me, filling church buildings does not automatically correlate to building the Kingdom of God. Multiple small missional groups are probably more effective than a smaller number of larger congregations, in my view.

There is a tension then between the idea of the Church being a building where people come to encounter Jesus and the Church being a network of believers diffused throughout society, offering help and salvation at the point of need, in the name of Jesus.

Both those views have merit but I believe the Lord is calling for a radical reset of the balance between the two.

I believe the Church has been too reliant on the organised, corporate elements of our faith and its excessive focus on being a “Family”⁶ at the expense of being a “Bride”⁷ or an “Army”⁸ has left it too inward-looking, too self-absorbed and, frankly, too pastoral to be fit for purpose in a crisis.

I think we have to soberly reflect on the events of the past two years and accept the implicit rebuke of our poor performance.

Obviously, the overnight closure of church buildings and programmes was shocking and painful for leaders and members alike. It is also understandable that people have been left feeling isolated and craving social interaction with their fellow believers. But, have we focussed on our own pain too much and is that why the Church was able to contribute so little during these fierce times?

Of course, there are some notable examples of individual churches doing brilliant work with social help programmes during the pandemic. There is a secular element to most Kingdom activities and we see that quite clearly in the ministry of Jesus²². However, good works alone are not enough to establish the Kingdom of God on the earth. Only the power of the Gospel can do that. It is also the gospel that sets the Church apart from “the world”. Both offer practical help but only the Church can offer our neighbours a different eternal future.

So, it is great that so many church groups mobilised to help in this time of need. That does speak of the love of Jesus but where were the signs and wonders or the mass encounters with Jesus Himself?

Of course it would be crass to tell the starving or the homeless to “cheer up because there will be plenty of food and shelter in heaven”¹⁵ but isn’t it equally unkind to ease their pain and suffering in the here-and-now without securing their eternal future?¹⁶

In short, we should not ignore or despise the hard work and passion of christians during the pandemic but, most of the help we offered was the same help that non-christians were offering⁹. We should not, therefore, be complacent or fool ourselves into thinking that the Church played any significant role in helping society cope with the greatest social upheaval in living memory.

So much for the rebuke and let’s not forget that the Lord does not punish His own³⁰. He will chastise them and challenge them but His goal is always to see a pure and spotless bride that He can come and claim as His own. Behind His words of rebuke are always the undertones of grace and redemption.

In that context, the pandemic played right into the Lord’s hands and the shutdown of the Church is the best thing that could have happened to it. It is almost impossible to gradually redirect an organisation that has become as set in its ineffective ways as the Church has. Only a major reset will achieve the change He wants, in my opinion.

I have come to see the effects of the pandemic as the heat that melted the Church in my vision. It wasn’t, ultimately, a destructive process it was a transformation process and I sensed the Lord’s pleasure as the wax melted and took on a new form. While we are mourning the disruption of our comfort structures, He is already looking for those who will engage with Him in the next phase of His exciting plan to save the entire world.

He does not despise our pain or discomfort³¹ but nor is He driven by it. Just as the potter² is willing to squash a near-perfect creation in order to raise up something even more beautiful, so He is willing to watch our current, ineffective expression of church collapse, confident that He can raise it up again fitter, leaner and more perfectly resembling the “Bride” He came and died for¹⁷.

I can understand why many Christians are just waiting for things to “return to normal” but I believe that merely picking up where we left off would be a huge mistake. This is not a time for sentimentality or nostalgia. It is time to make some significant changes in our thinking about the purpose of Church, which will, in turn, change the way we organise ourselves.

In Jeremiah chapter 6, we are given a picture of God imploring His people to follow the “Old, Godly ways.” (verse 16) and the destruction He is willing to allow in order to bring His people back on track if they will not follow the right path. We also see in Hosea chapter 2:6-7 That God will hedge up His beloved’s way with thorns in order to turn her back towards Him.

That is what I believe is happening to us right now. Not because God hates us but because He loves us too much not to redirect us onto His chosen path. He will never abandon the Church and He has no plan “B” but He will jealously guard the way we represent Him here on earth. He is doing this for our sakes and also for the sake of the world that has no hope unless the Church does its job.

Human nature and history both show us that any group of people, however radical the beliefs that brought them together, will inevitably tend towards hierarchy, tradition and mediocrity. We see evidence of this in the many empty church buildings, that stand as fossilised reminders of long-dead waves of revival, in every town in the UK.

I grew up in a radical charismatic tradition and, more than once, I had to pass through a picket line of angry traditionalists just to attend my tongues-speaking, prophesying congregation. We believed we were at the forefront of God’s radical purposes for the world and His Church. And yet, just a few decades later, that same congregation had become so focussed on their own well-being, so determined to maintain the status quo that attempts to move back to an outward-facing, kingdom-building engagement with our city were met with hysterical, vitriolic opposition.

Sadly, the pattern, throughout the history of the Church, seems to be that each successive wave of renewal and revival tends to become the main obstacle to the next.

So, if it takes the “melting” of our current expression of church to break this pattern than surely it is a good thing?

The most exciting element of the vision I saw was watching the wax, that had been shaped and constrained by the designs of men, start to flow out into the community, driven only by gravity and topography.

Where the melting of the Church had an inevitability about it, this new organic flow seemed to represent an invitation to volunteer and engage in the new thing the Lord is doing.

As I watched the transmogrification of the wax, from its intricately detailed form into its new, amoeba-like shape, I was struck by a number of thoughts:

1 Nature

The nature of the wax had not changed one bit during the process. I took that to represent the fact that the degree to which Christ is in us¹⁰, will manifest itself, regardless of how we organise ourselves. It is not about the new shape being more godly, it is about being more useful and approachable. Nor is it about compromising¹¹ with the world. It is about getting closer to them¹².

Above all, our confidence needs to shift from the structures, trends, initiatives and programmes that define our churches to the redeeming power of “Christ in us”¹⁸ as individuals.

One of my reasons for worrying that the Church has become “too pastoral” is that the more we focus on our needs and wants the more needs and wants we will find. That in turn can shape our paradigm of ourselves as “weak and needy” and people who believe they are weak and needy are unlikely to volunteer to be on the front line.

Hospitals are a wonderful product of civilised society but when people start moving their furniture into their hospital rooms, the staff are right to be concerned.

Conversely, the more we focus on God’s Word and the realities of heaven³², the less important our worries and fears become. Of course, healing and help are part of the gospel but it is surprising how quickly so many of our problems disappear when we start to focus on more important matters.

At the same time, as we allow God’s Word to live²³ in our thinking and our emotions the more we come to realise that it doesn’t matter how rich, handsome, beautiful, powerful, popular, confident or intelligent we are. Christ in us is the hope of the world¹⁰. We need to surrender totally to Him and as we do so we become the salt and light that society so desperately needs.

We are far more potent³³ than we realise not because of our own strength but because of the spiritual authority we carry.

Spiritual authority is one of the deep mysteries of the Christian faith but we humans have always had trouble distinguishing it from the secular authority that is associated with roles, titles and hierarchical structures¹⁴.

When Jesus commissioned the disciples he preceded his instructions, to go into the world and make disciples, with a statement of His credentials for doing so. He said: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me”¹⁹ I believe He did this for two reasons:

• Firstly, He needed them to understand that He was delegating His spiritual authority to them so they could fulfil the mission He was giving them.
• Secondly, He wanted them to understand that the key to success in their mission would be their exercising of that spiritual authority. He was not giving them secular authority because the war He was sending them into was not secular; it was spiritual²⁰.

Every born-again believer has the exact same spiritual authority that the disciples had and we are called to the exact same mission.

People who don’t understand the spiritual authority they have been given will, inevitably, prefer to stay inside the church building where there is “safety in numbers” but, for God’s Kingdom to grow, every single believer needs to bring at least one person to the Lord. That is far more likely to occur in our places of work, at the school gates or in the pub than in a church building.

Years ago, my school physics teacher demonstrated to our class that, if you grind up almost any substance into small enough particles it becomes explosive. The higher the ratio of surface area to volume, the more explosive the substance becomes. Conversely, the more “clubbed together” the particles become, the less explosive the substance is.

The explosive property of a cloud of saw dust, coal dust or even flour is all governed by how much area can come into contact with the air and the oxygen it contains. All that is then needed is a spark.

In the same way the more the community of Christians, in a particular area, is diffused and available for contact the more powerful and impactful it will be. The spark is not our human efforts or confidence, it is the nature of Christ embodied within us²⁸ and the power of the Holy Spirit³⁴.

2 Shape

Where the elaborate church, at the start of the vision, had built the wax upwards, the new shape drove it outwards. There was still some wax on the ground where the Church once stood but most of it was now spread out into the community.

As soon as I saw this, I knew that it was about letting go of unhelpful hierarchy and structure. The Bible describes a God who loves order²⁵ rather than rigid structures and authority¹³ rather than organisational power¹⁴.

At its birth, the Church was an extremely simple organisation comprising those who had become followers of Jesus “led” by Elders - some of whom travelled (Bishops) and some who didn’t - and served by a range of gifts and ministries, which were mostly self-funded. It was more of an organism than an organisation and it was unbelievably effective, in spite of the violent opposition it faced.

The early church was not built on the back of large congregations, it was built on the faith, obedience and spiritual authority of very small numbers²¹ of Christians taking the light and power of the gospel into very dark places³⁵. Its flat leadership structure and its reliance on ordinary men and women, energised by their own encounters with the living Lord, enabled the Church to spread far faster and last far longer than the Roman Empire, whose infrastructure did so much to enable the spread of the Gospel.

By comparison, the contemporary church carries a hierarchical, administrative and financial overhead that would shock its founding fathers. Perhaps some of this is necessary but can we say, with confidence, that our investments of time, energy and money into buildings, salaries, maintenance and equipment really pay for themselves in terms of salvation and discipleship - the two primary building blocks of the Kingdom of God?

It is not that these things are intrinsically wrong and they may have a role to play but, once they represent the majority of our budget (financially, emotionally or psychologically), they will inevitably distort and hinder the church’s purpose.

The Bible tells us that wherever we put our money, our confidence and focus will follow²⁷. It stands to reason, then, that the more we invest in buildings and people, the more our confidence in, and our expectations of them will also grow. Instead of them serving and enabling the growth of the Kingdom of God, supporting and maintaining them can easily become our primary mission.

This shift of focus from “Out there” to “In here” will also affect our view of ourselves and our place in God’s plans for the salvation of the world. If we are not careful, we will start to trade our confidence in the Lord, operating through the spiritual authority He has invested in us, for confidence in church programmes and initiatives.

I believe there can be a fruitful balance between individual and organised effort. My point is not that there is no role for organised Church but that it has drifted into a role that is much larger than God ever intended it to have. Establishing His kingdom (The extent of God’s rule in the hearts and behaviour of men and women) on the earth is the Lord’s priority, of which the Church (the gathering together of the saints for worship, teaching and fellowship) is a small but vital part.

The sight of the molten church flowing away from a single point of presence to a flatter more widespread shape seemed to me to represent a shift towards a greater emphasis on the role of individuals and small groups and away from reliance on large, centralised programmes and events. I also see a move away from centralised government and leadership in favour of empowered individuals, coached and supported by those older in the faith than they are.

The Lord never intended the growth of His church to be dependent on a handful of paid professionals. Nor do I believe that He ever intended church to be such a passive experience for such a high proportion of its members. Of course there has to be order and someone has to make the final call on issues of doctrine and discipline. That is the remit of Elders. However, I believe we can and should delegate responsibility and decision-making power far more widely within our ranks than we currently do.

I will probably write a separate blog on the shape of church I think would work best but the short version is that I can see large numbers of small, self-assembled micro churches meeting over food in people’s homes with the Word of God at the centre of them.

Their focus will be systematic discipleship with a strong emphasis on missional engagement with the local community (more on that later). Leaders will be more like facilitators than preachers and the primary task will be to grow more leaders as fast as possible.

Micro churches offer many more opportunities for ministries to grow and flourish meaning less passengers. Most roles in these churches will need to be self-funded²⁴.

These micro churches will transcend denominational boundaries (Which God has never recognised or cared about anyway) and probably congregational boundaries too.

Occasional large gatherings for corporate prayer and corporate sung worship will provide encouragement and a reminder that we are not alone. They would also offer an opportunity for corporate giving.

I am aware that these are not new concepts (as any leader of a persecuted church will tell you) and there are already many churches operating in some of these ways.

The purpose of this blog is to urge church leaders to undertake a radical review of their strategies, practices and visions and to see this post-pandemic chapter as a huge opportunity rather than a threat.

3 Location

Physical church buildings on our high streets and housing estates do serve as a signpost to the world that hope and help are available and even those with no faith will turn to those buildings when it is time to “Hatch”, “Match” or “Dispatch”. For centuries, the Church has been the single biggest network though which social care and support can be channelled and again, the visible presence of church building has made it easier for unchurched people to find that help.

For as long as church-going was part of “normal” life it made sense to gather in buildings designed solely for that purpose. However, a building-based, congregational view of church, limits the possible interaction with the world to a set place at a set time. Furthermore, attending church does not sit easily with the post-modern thinking that governs our world, placing much greater reliance on the congregation’s ability to attract the unchurched to an unfamiliar church building.

Many churches have already begun to see their buildings as a community point of presence first and a place of worship second. This is a very healthy trend, in my view, and the hope is that people who attend the building for a community or social event of some kind will encounter the love of Jesus in the people who are serving them.

However, this approach still relies on “Them” coming to “Us” rather than the more biblical approach. of “Us” going to “Them”.

In the vision I saw, the flow of molten wax was powered and guided purely by gravity and topography. Gravity pulled the wax away from its point of origin while the lumps and bumps of the landscape determined where it came to rest. Having been deeply involved in deliberate, strategic church planting in the past, this seemed rather strange to me.

When two fellow bible college students (Raymond and Sarah Manoehoetoe) and I were sent to plant Covenant Community Church in Manchester it was because those in leadership over us believed that there was a strategic significance to that city and that it must therefore need a church of the type we were building. They saw it as their role to decide where churches were needed.

That was the light we had at the time and, although I no longer see things in the same way, the Lord, in His grace, responded to our sincerity and desire for the lost. The church plant was extremely successful and still exists (under another name) to this day.

As I have meditated on what I saw over the past 10 years, though, I have come believe that it represents a shift away from us pushing our particular brand of Christianity into key localities in favour of small, non-aligned groups of Christians, being drawn by the needs of the lost, wherever that may take them.

Instead of house groups just being a sub-set of their mother church, they should rather be formed with the specific intention of meeting a particular need.

Instead of the only membership criterion being that we are all part of the same, larger congregation, these micro groups may be comprised solely of doctors, lawyers, teachers, film-makers, single dad’s or environmental campaigners. Or, maybe, all members live on the same housing estate or have all suffered the loss of a child.

However these micro churches are assembled, the key is that rather than being “pushed out” from a central congregation, they are “Pulled in” to existence by a sense of shared, felt need. The fact that those needs are shared and felt by christians and non-christians, alike, is what will give opportunity for the gospel to do its transforming work.

The last thing that caught my attention in the vision was that, where there were dips in the ground, the wax would pour into them and would only proceed further once they were full. This meant that the wax ended up the thickest wherever the dips in the ground were the deepest.

I took this to represent the need to focus our resources (Human, Financial and material) where the need of the community was the greatest.

Again, this will not be a new idea to many christians and congregations but it does beg the question: “Should we be spending so many of our resources on ourselves; on our buildings and staff?”

Might we be more effective if we were to sell off or rent out our buildings and pare back our paid positions in order to free up the resources that could make such a difference to our cities and neighbourhoods?

Would that make us more effective in our mission to seek and save the lost?²⁹

Biblical References

1 Malachi 3

2 Jeremiah 18

3 Job 28

4 Matthew 28:20

5 Mathew 5:13-16

6 Ephesians 2:19-22

7 Ephesians 5:25-32

8 Matthew 16:18, 2 Corinthians 10:1-5

9 Romans 12:1-2

10 2 Corinthians 3, Romans 6:10

11 James 4:4

12 Romans 10:14

13 Matthew 8:8-10

14 Mark 10:42, 1 Peter 5:1-4

15 Matthew 25:35-40, James 2:16

16 Matthew 6:19-21

17 Revelation 19:7-8

18 Colossians 1:27

19 Matthew 28:18

20 2 Corinthians 10:4

21 Luke 10:1

22 Matthew 15:29-39

23 Colossians 3:16

24 Acts 18:1-3; 20:33-35

25 1 Corinthians 14:40, Titus 1:5

26 1 Corinthians 2:10-12

27 Matthew 6:21

28 Ephesians 1:19-21

29 Luke 19:10

30 Hebrews 12:6

31 Psalm 36:8

32 Colossians 3:2

33 John 14:12

34 Acts 1:8

35 Matthew 5:14, Acts 26:18