How The Church Will Survive And Grow Through The Coronavirus Confinement

Everything happened so fast.

The last few weeks feel uncomfortably like the tragedies that fell upon Job, one after the other. In the biblical story, the first messenger had barely finished speaking to Job about one calamity before another messenger appeared to tell of the next one.

In Jewish tradition, there’s a line of rabbinical thought that shortly before the arrival of Messiah, the plagues of Egypt, as recorded in Exodus, will replay. Lesser known than the list of individual plagues were the economic impacts each had on the Egyptian economy. In fairly quick succession, insect invasions damaged crops which provided less food for eating and for trade, driving the economy hopelessly into a nosedive. At the end of the tenth plague, the low cost labor force left, taking significant personal riches from the Egyptian populace. Egypt is recorded in history as ceasing to be a world power around the same time as the Exodus.

The rapid spread and highly contagious nature of coronavirus has completely shut down global movement and commerce, and we are just starting to feel the negative impacts. In case it hasn’t sunk in yet, life isn’t going to go back to normal, certainly not anytime soon. We’re going to get a new paradigm, a new framework for how the world works.

So how do you navigate a world where everything has turned upside down?

You look to the past to help with the future. The first century church found themselves in a similar situation to what we face today.

The disciples were following Christ, when suddenly, all of their expectations were shattered. Jesus was crucified. Even though He told them what was before Him, normalcy bias blinded them to what was coming. Normalcy bias blinded us to the tsunami of the coronavirus itself, and is blinding us to what is headed our way.

First century Christians had to quickly assess their new normal, in a time when their lives were in danger. For them, it was the fear of death by the hands of the religious leaders. Fairly soon thereafter, Rome began zealously pursuing the Christ-followers and blaming them for disasters like the Great Fire of Rome in 64AD.

For us, our new normal may not involve persecution – yet – but we’re facing illness or death from an unseen invader (COVID-19) or the pending business collapse that will surely come.

Other than knowing that some of the disciples were fishermen, Luke was a physician and Matthew a tax collector, there’s so much we don’t know about how the earliest disciples lived, worked and supported themselves. We know from Paul’s letters that he worked as a tentmaker, something he likely did to support himself in addition to serving as a missionary.

So how did they survive, and ultimately spread the gospel? 

1 – They pooled their resources. Each person contributed to their community financially, and also contributed their skills to the mission that Christ had left for them to accomplish. Those two things are completely different, and both are absolutely essential for the church to survive and the message of Jesus to continue.

2 – They were continually devoting themselves to prayer, as recorded in Acts 1:14. Consider Sunday March 15, a national day of prayer, as the start of the body of Christ’s continual devotion to prayer. But more than just prayer, our nation and Christians everywhere need to repent. Jonathan Cahn has issued a powerful call to repentance called The Return. Scripture is very clear that repentance, turning towards God and in step with His ways, is what moves His heart. Without repentance, there is no healing, no restoration. 

3 – They were people of action – and courage. Prayer is not to be meaningless words. Prayer is intended to connect with God, and bring about change. Over and over in scripture, from the ancient heroes of the faith all the way through the life of Jesus and the disciples, prayer led to action. These were not ‘frozen chosen’ or Sunday morning spectators. Every Christ-follower was by necessity engaged in their gospel mission. As the apostle Paul said, the first century Christians were either absolutely correct in their claims about Christ, or they were the most pitiable fools that ever lived. There was – and is – no middle ground.

4 – They took care of the physical needs of their ‘church’ so they could fulfill the greater mission of spreading the gospel. I’m beginning to see posts and infographics about how the Church should be and is responding, and that’s a good thing. But for the Church to really be where Christ needs us to be, we have to take stock of our assets right now. Because that’s the way the Church got going in the first century, and the way it will flourish when the quarantine is over. Take a personal and corporate inventory of the resources God has put in your life, and in the lives of the people in your church. A couple of great resources for you, your family and your church are coronavirusandthechurch.com and the work from my day job, helping churches and ministries in this time and after, keyministry.org. 

These four steps are the same essentials that will enable the Church of 2020 to survive – and grow.

Photo credit: Robert Anasch on Unsplash.com

Great creativity is beginning to emerge, in large part because of technology. Jobs will disappear, but new jobs will be created. New products and services will arise to meet needs and provide support. What’s impossible to envision today – a to-be-created tool or service – may soon be indispensable.

Much like my dream of the tsunami knocking down the bank where I worked, I’ve had an innumerable number of dreams of empty houses: half finished, partially destroyed, fully constructed and furnished but empty. House dreams represent where you physically live, but also represent your personal spiritual state. Like the bank and tsunami dream, I have always believed that the house dreams were more than just me looking for a new house, or some unsettled personal issue. I am concerned that what I have seen is a vision of the future, a future with what is already being called a ‘greater depression.’

The point of this post is not to despair, but to face the horizon with eyes wide open. The coronavirus and recent events were not a surprise to God. You and I and everyone else alive was made for this time, and we each have a role to play in helping our families, neighbors, Church and the world.

A final thought: The gematria of Corona is the same gematria for Messiah, or the arrival of Messiah. I fervently hope it is so. Some days, I don’t know how the Lord can stand humanity. But between now and then, in this time while we are isolated and in the time after the coronavirus confinement, there’s no time to waste. Jesus has given us a mission, and Jesus is coming back soon!