English | 繁體中文 | 简体中文 | 한국어 | Deutsch | Português

Coronavirus: Possibly The Most Energizing Event To Happen For Your Church

How our church SCATTERED and became an Everyday Church, Everywhere Church and Everyone Church
Length: 4-minute read

“Will I lose people if there are no ‘in-person’ services?”
“How are we going to reach out when there are no services?”
“We were having such a good momentum of growth and this happened…”

My guess is that these are some of your thoughts. I know because they crossed my mind too. Then we Decentralised into small groups and something wonderful happened.
It’s like the church was unleashed!
We had more new friends invited to small groups.
We had more people saved.

I know this is bordering on blasphemy, but I am going to read Acts 8:1-4 through the Coronavirus lens.

…A great wave of persecution pandemic began that day, sweeping over the church in Jerusalem; and all the believers except the apostles were scattered through the regions of Judea and Samaria.
But Saul Coronavirus was going everywhere to destroy the church. He It went from house to house, dragging out both men and women to throw them into prison quarantine.
But the believers who were scattered preached the Good News about Jesus wherever they went.

The church scattered could turn out to be a good thing.
The church scattered is the church mobile and mobilized.
Maybe the church had been gathered far too often?
Maybe the church had been dependent on the stage ‘professionals’ for far too long?

Here are some ideas on how to mobilize the Scattered church… You probably know it or are doing it already… so that’s good, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Now just be more focused and intentional about it.

• Invite church attendees to join small groups.
  If you no longer run the big weekend services, there are not many options left for them. Intentionally and systematically seek out these people and invite them to a small group. Take this opportunity to increase your small group engagement percentages.

• Challenge and empower small group leaders to become mini-pastors.
  When there are weekend services, church-wide prayer meetings etc, I noticed that leaders tend to fall back to just facilitating and administrating. But now… no more crutches, they are the last line of defence. It’s all on them. No pressure!

• Mobilize your members to meet up with unchurched friends for meals or coffee… on Sunday! Do you realize that on the streets, Sunday is the most unchristian day? Because all the Christians are in church.
  And not just Sunday but everyday… challenge your members to engage their friends and family. Train them to steer chats into deeper and spiritual conversations.
  Equip your members with the John316 app to share the gospel. Resource them with bite-sized podcast and YouTube sermons to share with their friends anywhere and everywhere.

• Invite unchurched friends to small group meetings on the weekends.
  Watch the online service together. Train your people to share their testimonies. Train them how to pray and minister in the power of the Holy Spirit. Everyone is reaching Everyone.

A SCATTERED church is an Everyday Church, Everywhere Church, Everyone Church.
They can’t come to church, so we bring the church to them.

In the last month, we had more unchurched people engaged.
We had more individual and small group Bible studies done.
We had breakthrough numbers.

The audience became an army.
Maybe the dry bones needed a virus for a revival.
In fact, we are so excited about this month that we call it #MiracleMarch.
#MarchOn.

Besides the church SCATTERED, this series also talked about SUSTAINABILITY, SCENARIOS, SENTIMENTS. If you are not up to speed, catch it here.

Pastor Lia also wrote something that all your church members should read. Coronavirus: Don’t Stone Your Pastors

Know any pastors or church leaders who might find this helpful? Here’s a link you can share with them: pastor.how/covid-pt3