April 22

Different churches will arrive at different conclusions. Does the church need to recapture its ways, and quickly get back to business as usual? Or is this an opportunity, and is the church primed for a needed course-correct? (And, are these two answers/conclusions at all compatible?)

Pastors find it too easy to go immediately to the how. While missing the why. And, there's much to consider. People's livelihoods (especially staff people in large churches) could be at stake. Individual preferences could be threatened. Routines altered if not broken. Wholesale change could result in wide spread chaos, if not anarchy. (Hopefully no carnage.)

People do not like change forced on them (even with a 3 month break.)

A few odd ducks (like me) like change, simply for change sake. (Not always good.)

Consider this: every church did what they previously did because they felt it right and best. Us too. Maybe because we all get comfortable with comfort. Comfort is the love child of predictability and control.

Shouldn't we perhaps begin by asking a different question? (That question, you ask? Thanks for asking!)

What is the purpose for the church?

I read this morning (1 Kings 5-6, 2 Chron. 2-3) that King Solomon conscripted (forced) 153,000 people to build the temple in Jerusalem. 480 years after Egypt, and 7 years after starting the temple was completed. A magnificent structure!

But if you read what comes before and after this construction project in the OT, you see how that temple (or the next one, or the next one) wasn't the answer. The Old Testament tells the story of God's people, and all of Creation needing something far, far greater.

A Savior. A do-over that only the Savior could bring.

John 20:21 says, "Jesus said to them again, 'Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.'"

We can rest in and count on the peace that Jesus gives. He is the Savior. It's His to give.

But...we have been sent. The "why" of any church is that we would be local expressions of the "sent ones."

The thing we have been missing, the needed course-correct is for us to live as a church on mission.

You may see that not all of the rhythms or activity of our church will change when we finally do reemerge. But some things will have to change.

We have to address the "why."

I'm hoping and praying that our reasons for what we do, and how we do it, will be fueled now by the mission to which we have been sent. The why will inform the how.

Building another temple to replace the previous temple isn't needed. We are the temple.

And we are the sent ones.