A couple of weeks before UK churches closed, I was sitting at the back of my church after the early service talking to an older member of the congregation and watching the young families come in for the main morning service.

As I watched the ebb and flow, I was overwhelmed with an intense sensation of joy in this bustling scene, a picture of church life that I had previously taken for granted or perhaps never truly appreciated. How lovely to see mothers coming in with pushchairs, eager children running around, fathers carrying infants, teenagers greeting friends. I was still sitting there taking it in, experiencing an unusually deep joy in that scene, when the next service started. I nearly stayed, but pulled myself away to go home and do…well, I don’t remember what. Something that seemed important at the time. Little did I know that a couple of weeks later this would be an unrepeatable scene, a fading memory, and that my church family would be meeting via screens in scattered homes.

The Lord had been trying to show me something – his joy in what we had all taken for granted: meeting together in peace and safety, without masks (at least not of the medical variety!).

Church Online

The first livestream meeting was emotional for many. We chatted in the YouTube channel but it could not replace real fellowship. Our 20-minute evening liturgical service via Zoom¹ has a greater intimacy, being a live event, but the chat after is awkward at times because the group is just that bit too big and not everyone has the same degree of familiarity with everyone else.

My church’s staff team have produced wonderful online services and one great benefit has been people visiting who do not normally attend church. Another has been our missionaries ‘visiting’ us from across the world and the parents of one staff member who live abroad being able to see their son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren who variously preach, sing and perform actions to songs (I will leave you to guess who does what!).

Some church members have become used to online services and have welcomed the new opportunities for outreach – it is so much easier to invite friends to tune in remotely without ‘threshold fear’. Numbers of people viewing services after the event are hundreds more than attended the service live. This is happening in other churches too.

A survey at the beginning of May found that almost a quarter of British adults had watched or listened to a religious service since lockdown began on 23 March (obviously that is across all faiths). Apparently, just 6% of adults regularly attended a religious service before lockdown.²

Some church members have become used to online services and have welcomed the new opportunities for outreach.

Benefit or Bust?

Depending on your view, the closure of churches has been either a sign from the Lord (both judgment and wake-up call),³ or else the work of the Enemy to silence and divide believers and prevent them preaching the gospel and reaching out.

Could both be right? The Lord is sovereign over viruses and governments and he allows the Enemy to work within certain parameters: “I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the Lord, do all these things” (Isa 45:7). The Enemy rubs his hands as the churches close, but the Lord has an unforeseen plan for good – the ‘deeper magic’.⁴

Whatever your take on the situation, there are benefits, despite the obvious drawbacks. There is the opportunity for a reboot and a return to first principles. Individually and corporately, we have had the chance to reassess our priorities and the way we do ‘church’.

“All the Believers Were Together and Had Everything in Common”⁵

An Anglican Chaplain said that pre-lockdown there was much talk of working together and resource sharing across their chapter and inter-denominationally (particularly in relation to youth and senior communities), but now this is actually happening. Churches with less of an IT offering are joining the Zoom meetings of neighbouring churches. “There is definitely a feeling in the chapter of togetherness and sharing.”

The virus crisis has probably created more spiritual openness than any other event in recent memory. The same Chaplain reports many more conversations about faith and increased opportunities to pray with people. People are asking more questions and are ready to listen to online services and testimony videos, partly also because of more time spent at home. Will that change as people re-enter the rat race?

People Not Property

Businesses are realising they can cut costs in the wake of coronavirus. Why pay huge city rents for half-filled offices? Who needs fancy client reception areas and slick meeting rooms when even the Cabinet is meeting via Zoom? Shareholders will welcome cost-cutting, especially with recession eating into profits. Similarly, how long can churches go on raising money for new roofs and expensive new building projects? Can they be justified as essential to 21^st-Century outreach?

With church members losing their jobs as the economy grinds into recession, churches will need to adjust their financial priorities. Some are seeing the economic and spiritual benefits of moving online. One ministry, Saltshakers, headed up by Steve Maltz, ran its Foundations Conference entirely on Zoom during lockdown.⁶ It was unexpectedly successful with small groups meeting in Zoom’s ‘breakout rooms’ for meals together, seminars and even Israeli dance performances. Many felt more relaxed joining in from their own homes and as a result were able to receive better from the Lord. They also saved time and money by joining in from home rather than paying accommodation fees and fuel.

On the back of this success, they are starting to invite people to online evangelistic events, having seen how people respond joining in from the safe and unthreatening environment of their own home. One attendee, who had struggled on the fringes of church, found it life-changing and begged them to continue to meet online. If people want to go deeper, they can go to a virtual breakout room and talk with an evangelist one to one. In some ways, it is friendlier than a church meeting. There is an intimacy to an online chat room where you can see everyone’s face (whereas in a church meeting it is mostly the backs of heads). Guests can join in without commitment and, if they feel uncomfortable, can simply disappear at the click of a button. No awkward excuses and tiptoed departure from an unfamiliar church building.

Individually and corporately, we have had the chance to reassess our priorities and the way we do ‘church’.

Going Underground

Some believers were already out of church before lockdown, meeting in small groups in homes. Andrew Strom’s book The Out-of-Church Christians explains why so many committed believers around the world have been leaving their churches.⁷ Issachar Ministries has sought to minister specifically to those who have come out of church for good reasons with its ‘Outside In’ project. Have these outside-church Christians been prepared especially for this time?

Others are wondering why we would rush back to our church buildings, pointing out that it reinforces the priority of building over people, the false sacred-secular divide, and the role of professional clergy over Body ministry.⁸

The church as ‘Body not Building’ has been perhaps our biggest take-home (or should that be take-back-to-church) lesson. Clive Urquhart, Pastor of Kingdom Faith Church in Horsham, West Sussex, wrote to his church recently about what the future holds,⁹ saying:

Everything that has been lent on or looked to - conferences, events, activities, and programmes - have all gone by the wayside at this time. There has been much activity, time and money spent on these things, they have all had their time and place for a season…At the heart of this is the priesthood of the believer, the equipped saints doing the work of ministry.

Indeed, the shock news from Pastor Clive last Sunday was the announcement of the closure of Kingdom Faith Church’s Bible college at Roffey Place. In preparation for what is to come, they have been given the word "many people in many places". Interestingly, they had already closed down their annual Faith Camp at the East of England Showground in Peterborough in 2018 enabling New Wine to take their slot last summer.

Kingdom Faith Church won’t be going back to their church building “any time soon”. Instead, “The Church will operate more like an underground Church because it has gone back to the simple foundational, disciple making people it is supposed to be. It won’t be cluttered with activity and busyness that can so easily occupy the saints because the saints will be too occupied living the Kingdom life, winning and making disciples.”

Let’s pray other pastors catch this vision.

The church as ‘Body not Building’ has been perhaps our biggest take-home lesson.

Would You Like Fries with That?

Livestream services mean people can visit churches down the road or on the other side of the world and can see behind church doors without commitment. However, the downside is that performance-led worship is not presenting a true picture of church, at least not the New Testament Church (Acts 2:42).

Drive-thru church in Florida. SOPA Images/SIPA USA/PA ImagesAre we actually attending drive-in church, in the American sense of going to the cinema? We may be in our homes, but are we simply watching a performance? Get your tea and biscuits (or popcorn) and settle in to watch us perform worship for you as we all enter God’s holy presence. It’s cosy, but is it church?

On 18 May, In Northern Ireland, churches opened for ‘drive-thru’ or drive-in services. The pastor of one church led the service from an open-sided lorry while congregants listened from inside their cars.¹⁰ Beverley Donaghy, from Lisburn, said, “It's nice to get a bit of fellowship from the rest of the church. It's one thing watching it on Facebook live but it's another thing being able to come and see everybody here.”

Quite. But how do we get to that point? And what will church be like after lockdown?

This is the question church leaders have been asking themselves for the last few weeks as they try to picture the reality of an ongoing socially-distant church life.

In Part 2 next week, we will look at what the future may hold for churches.

References

1 Video conferencing software.

2 Bashir, M and Farley, H. Coronavirus: Churches may not be back to normal by end of year. BBC News, 10 May 2020.

3 E.g. Smith, J. A Time for Blessing? Prophecy Today UK, 8 May 2020.

4 Lewis, CS. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Chapter 15.

5 Acts 2:44.

6 www.saltshakers.com.

7 Strom, A, 2008. The Out-Of-Church Christians. The-Revolution.Net. Read reviews on Amazon.

8 Kennedy, B. Why the rush back to our buildings? Blog post, 29 May 2020.

9 News update, Kingdom Faith Church, Horsham.

10 Pastor Billy Jones of Dunseverick Baptist Church. See news coverage by Q Radio.