How to prepare for persecution

 How to prepare for persecution

So far we have established that the voices that are anti-church and anti-Christian are growing in volume and intensity.  Last week, we looked at several misguided ways we might prepare for persecution.  Today, let’s look at what we can positively do for the day when/if persecution comes to American religious life.

First step in preparation is to disengage our dependence on things that are not essential to the life of a disciple or a group of disciples.   We have in too many cases made the life and ministry of the church dependent on things that while not anti-Biblical are certainly extra Biblical.  Rather than try to list everything in this category, let’s choose one and use what we learn as a template.   Because it is easy we will use church buildings.  

Our theology tells us that the church is not a building, rather it is a people.  Rarely is our orthodoxy more out of step with our orthopractice as in the matter of church buildings.  I am not opposed to church buildings, but much of American Christianity has become overly dependent on having a building. If I say, “Let’s go to church,” what actually comes to mind?  If someone asked us, “Where is your church?” How do we answer that question?  If your church building were closed, what would your congregation do? (Like that would ever happen) Because the church is highly dependent on our building for all our ministry we are highly vulnerable to a loss of impact if we lose access to or use of our building.  From 1995 to 2004, churches in America spent an estimated three billion dollars on building construction.  During that same time there was no measurable change in the things we identify as marks of discipleship (worship attendance, baptisms, Bible reading, etc).  Apparently, we have overestimated the importance and power of using a building for the gathering of the church.  

Since the Covid experience, worship attendance is down about 30% nationwide.  We can debate why that is the case, but there is reason to believe that the ministry in the buildings was more about the event and less about being a disciple of Jesus.  Perhaps, we should see Covid as beta testing for what to do when we can’t be as public about our faith.  Think about what ministry would be like if you could not use your church building at all, ever again.  We can apply those lessons to other things that mark most of our community of faith.  What if we had to do without: worship teams, full-time paid career staff, fog machines, children’s programming, great videos in the services, coffee shops, by-laws and constitutions, the list is almost endless?  Could we still make disciples?  Yes, we could.

So, how would you do ministry with or without these non-essentials?  Will this approach to ministry work if we are not under persecution? Will doing them now limit our ministry effectiveness?  

While I did not plan this to be a cliffhanger, in order to do this justice, I will need to finish this next week.