What does the post-COVID-19 reopened Church look like?
This week’s blog post offers some pastoral and prophetic ideas that I pray will be a blessing to you.
My initial hope and prayer are that our contemporary “Houses of Worship”, once to reopen, will not be guilty before the Son of God, of compromising its divine calling to be a faithful witness throughout our battle-worn and disarrayed culture. Faithful Believers who are committed to the Lord, belong exclusively to Christ, as His Body producing fruits that are worthy of one’s high calling.
“To Him, the one who loves us, who has freed us from our sins at the cost of His blood, who has caused us to be a kingdom, that is, cohanim, the priest for God, His Father-to Him be the glory and the rulership forever and ever. Amen. Revelation 1:5 Complete Jewish Bible
Secondly, as faithful witnesses, called into living and proclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom of Heaven, while we yet live here on earth, we are commissioned by the Holy Spirit of God to be “Like” the Master, in our culture. To be like the Master is the effective fusion of the Teachings of Christ and the actual practice of those teachings in a “foreign” land or culture.
The greatest danger facing the reopening of the institutional church in America is her very unhealthy alignment with the cultural norms, systems, and institutions that essentially silences her prophetic call to the hearts of its citizens and the ideologies of this Nation.
Throughout the Holy Scripture, the church’s role and function were to call out all social, economic, and political evils and injustices, while offering Godly alternatives that will liberate while transforming living souls and the very culture. Anything that disables the church to function in the manner in which the Master taught and demonstrated, this church must “come out” of matters that are uncivil, and ungodly. The Body of Christ is not to compromise and accommodate the kingdoms of this world.
What the post-COVID-19 church is to look like in appearance and practice will be that of “Faithful Discipleship” to a lost and judged culture at all costs. This notion of faithful discipleship is one of the central messages that The Lamb in Revelation gives to the seven churches in John’s writings. While some of the churches received positive affirmations, each church would face common dangers if they were or continued in being unfaithful witnesses.
What the post-COVID-19 reopened church cannot look like!
Drawing on the work of Pastor-theologian T. Scott Daniels, the late New Testament scholar Bruce Metzger, and spiritual theologian Eugene Peterson, the following is the typical danger facing the post-COVID-19 reopened church. [Taken from Revelation, chapters 2-3]
Ephesus– Losing the love it once had, abandoning their first zealous love for Christ, boundary keeping, ungenerous orthodoxy.
Smyrna– Fear of suffering and consumerism.
Pergamun – Doctrinal compromise, indifference to heresy, accommodation, failed witness.
Thyatira– Moral compromise, tolerance of immorality, privatized faith, dividing body and soul.
Sardis– Spiritual deadliness, apathy, apathetic faith.
Philadelphia– Failure to hold fast, fear.
Laodica– Lukewarmness, substitution of material riches for life in the Spirit, self-sufficiency.
As both the society and churches are opening up all over our country, many of our churches throughout any era of human history have various combinations of these aforementioned unholy spiritual practices and unfaithful witness in the presence and grace of Christ, who is forever with us.
There is somewhat a consensus among Bible scholars that the ancient church of Laodicea best describes the Western Christian institutionalized church in America. This is so because of the power and affluence that capitalism has played in shaping and defining our way of life, and our Christian beliefs.
Michael J. Gorman in his book, Reading Revelation Responsibly states that the problem with the Laodicean church is that it is neither hot nor cold but lukewarm. Lukewarmness is an ancient metaphor that does not imply indifference, but “lukewarm” means so prosperous and supposedly self-sufficient as to be completely out of spiritual fellowship with Christ.
Due to its wealth and prosperity, the modern church in America is the most accommodating due to her faithful participation with the status quo when needed as its means of survival, while fully embracing the lifestyle and values of the elite and most powerful. [Gorman, chapter 5, Seven Pastoral-Prophetic Messages from the Risen Lord Revelation 1-3, page 96.]
The Great Takeaway
The seven messages that our Priest, Prophet, and King gave to John in Revelation is essentially one universal message, calling the soon to reopen churches in America to be a united gathering of all the explicit and implicit marks of what was found in chapter two of Revelation.
In his book, What Christ Thinks of the Church, John Stott finds the marks of the church of Christ to be that of Love, Suffering, Truth, Holiness, Authenticity, Mission, and Whole-heartedness.
One would also argue that the Master desires for the church to be very consistent in the fullness of orthodoxy of the message of the Gospel of the Kingdom of Heaven and its faithful and fearless orthopraxy, a witness before the world. Our devotion and the ultimate alliance are to Christ as our Lord not the state nor the federal government.
This is my prayer, Amen!
Grace and Peace
May the Lord Bless you and Keep you!
Grace and Peace
Brother Alonzo
Study material that was used for this blog post:
“Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness, Following the Lamb into the New Creation”, Michael J. Gorman. A Messianic Commentary. “Yochanan (John) Presents the Revelation of Yeshua The Messiah”, Rabbi Gavriel Lumbroso