We have now been in this new COVID reality world for more than a month now, and all of us are asking the same thing about our family, our business, our shopping, our school, our stock market, sports, social interaction, and church life:
When will we get back to normal?
The way I see it from here is that the question really should be,
What will a new normal look like?
There is no way that any of us can really answer that with 100% certainty. We have to look through three lenses to wade through the waters ahead:
- Take a look at the reality of what is (current certainties).
- Filter it through the long-term mission of our church (our biblical mandate).
- Finally, focus on God’s mission as it is lived out daily in this current reality (life).
After celebrating Easter Sunday over a week ago, this has been my new focus for our church. I have given a good bit of meditative time thinking through this, our staff and elder council are in conversations about this, some of our leaders are reading material related to this, and I have been in numerous online meetings with trusted friends from other churches about this. I am challenged in a positive way about what God might be doing through us in response to this new reality.
This coming Sunday morning, April 26, we will, of course, have our online streaming service at 10 a.m. I am continuing to preach out of Romans 8:18-30 this weekend. At the conclusion of the service, please keep watching as I present a “state of the church” address! I will be joined by a couple of LifeWay’s elders, and we will address some of the questions you might have about how thing are going in the church (people issues, money issues, program items). I will also lay out some details of how we are going to be moving forward as a church in these current circumstances, and how we are going to move into the next phase of connecting and growing as disciples who make disciples, reaching the world with Jesus’ mandate of taking the gospel to a broken world.
The world has thrown a major curve ball at us. We are having to reposition our hands on the bat and our feet at the plate (how’s that for a baseball analogy?). But God’s calling for our church has in no way changed. What scares me is that we might not adjust our work in a way that carries out His grand mission in this world. That is what we are now in the middle of doing for our church: adjusting our hands on the bat and our feet at the plate. This is the perfect time in history for us to do that.
He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” — Acts 1:7-8
See you Sunday. Love you all.
Billy Arnold