Church is Different Now

[Gregory Matthews]

See:

https://atoday.org/will-the-church-ever-be-the-same-again/

Both church members and leaders are grappling with the new reality. What does it mean to be a church with no physical church events, no corporate programs, no corporate Sabbath programs in our church venues? What does it mean to be a local church pastor who is not able to preach to a live congregation during Sabbath worship inside a building? What does it mean to be a local church elder of members who are having Sabbath worship in their homes? What does it mean to be a President or Executive Secretary or Chief Financial Officer or Departmental Director or Executive Committee of a conference whose churches are not meeting at the known locations but rather as small groups in people’s private homes? Who manages the preaching roster for these thousands of churches in homes every Sabbath? How does the Church Board even provide administrative guidance in such a situation? Of course the easiest wish to have is to believe that this will just be for a short period of time. That this will be over in a few weeks or months and we will go back to our “normal” church. But who says it will be over in a few weeks or months? Even if it were to be over in a few weeks, who says we will go back to our “normal” church? What if this COVID-19 era fundamentally changes the way a big section of the church membership thinks about church? What if they develop an appetite for home churches and don’t feel like going back to the past? What if, during this time, they start questioning many things about “doing church” that have been assumed to be the normal and only standard since 1863?