After Covid-19 (Part 1 of 4)

One of the greatest inventions of the electronic age has to be the reset button.  When your device gets cluttered or confused or simply stops doing what it needs to do, the reset button will allow you to return it to its state of original effectiveness.  The reset button may mean you lose some of your favorite presets, but sometimes the reset button is the best option.

Maybe the church should use this Covid-19 time out as a reset button for our ministry.  Many of us in our heart of hearts have for some time felt things were not quite right.  But we have also been unsure how to take an honest and fearless inventory of our churches and ministries.  This may be the greatest opportunity in many generations to be absolutely ruthless with ourselves. With a great deal of uncertainty about when the church will return to “normal” let’s not miss this time to plan for greater service.  When things return to normal we need to celebrate our return to corporate worship.  But we mustn’t stop with a celebration and then return to the status quo.    Here are a few places where we need to press the reset button. 

First, we need to repent for making the church 'irrelevant'. 

Let me say that like many of you I hate the word “relevant” as it relates to ministry.  We have used this word to describe our services without giving much thought to what it can mean.  We have reduced it to mean, “music, programing and sermons that those who attend will like and that will touch them at some level of felt need”. 

In effect, relevance has often been reduced to 'opinion-driven' ministry so that whatever folks like we will serve them.  If their ears itch we will find some way to tickle them.  The result of this approach to ministry is that we have collected a group of people who support the ministry because it gives them what they want.  In so doing, the church has in many ways become profoundly selfish.  I have in the past referred to a study of church bulletins and newsletters that indicated 90% of the churches activities and ministry were directed to and for the membership.

One of the questions I have asked a church when I consult with them has been, “If your church closed would anyone notice?”  That question has always been somewhat theoretical and speculative, until now.  Covid has provided the answer.  And that answer is, “No.”  In most cases, no one outside of congregation has noticed that churches have in effect been closed.  For the most part, all we have heard from churches has been arguing for the “right” to meet, with the associated threat of lawsuits.  The practical or relevant services needed by the community have for the most have been offered by secular organizations.  With the exception of those who go to weekly meetings, if churches never opened again almost no one would notice. 

By our selfishness and focusing our ministry on ourselves we have made the church radically and almost totally irrelevant.  If you have it, please send me a link to the news article that asks the question, “What will we do without the vital services provided by this ministry?”  Maybe it is out there, but if it is, it is a rarity.  It is a shame that there is greater concern over not having football this fall than the church not being about its ministry.   It ought to be true of every congregation that its absence in the community would leave a gaping hole, but that is simply not the case.

By the way, don’t be surprised if there is greater hostility toward the church’s privileged position.  The rational for churches being tax exempt is that they are so valuable to the community that taxing them would result in loss of much needed public service.  Those who dislike the church might soon argue that the church does nothing for the community, but rather is a drain.  At this time it is hard to disagree. 

“God, break our hearts that we have been so selfish that we have made it hard for our communities to hear the Gospel. Whatever it takes cure us of our own selfish agenda.”