On earth as it is in heaven in the day of COVID-19

The whole world has something in common right now, and the thing I’m referring to isn’t COVID-19.  It is how we respond to the myriad challenges that the presence of the coronavirus brings.  Churches, not the least, are praying about how they can achieve their mission at this point in time.

Many may ask, well, what is the church’s mission?

You might ask ten different churches the same question, and not all churches would give you the same answer, but I would say Jesus gives us the answer in the middle of his model prayer in Matthew 6:9-13... in verse 10 to be precise:

It includes the words, on earth as it is in heaven.

Before we can understand what on earth as it is in heaven really means, we must establish what heaven looks like, and we need to go to scripture to discover that.

I would want to stress, however, that for this time, we must focus on the qualities of heaven rather than on the place itself, for the place and manifestation of heaven is God’s dominion alone.

It does us no good to imagine that we can bring literal heaven to earth.  This isn’t the point.  The point is of bringing more of what heaven is like to earth while we’re here.

I think the biggest thing on pastors and churches hearts right now is how do we do that in this environment?  How do we bring more of heaven to earth when earth seems to have become more like hell than ever?

Now I know there are some wonderful silver linings and opportunities in this time, but the gravity of the situation cannot be lost on any of us.  Even if we were to get COVID-19 under control relatively quickly in some areas of the world, because of what it’s doing in other areas of the world, and because of the nature of disease, there are going to be ramifications for years. This is going to put the global financial crisis in the shade.

So, given this, how do churches advance the vision of bringing more of heaven to earth?

I honestly think churches and their leaders are wrestling with this reality and are praying very hard that God would give them the answer.  In faith, those answers will come!

This little article cannot hope to propose the solutions, but what it can hope to propose are some thoughts on what bringing heaven to earth might look like.

But first, we need to acknowledge that heaven doesn’t look anything like what we might imagine it to look like, for heaven I think is the character of God.

In bringing heaven to earth, the church, according to Luke 4:18-19, may:

·           engage in advocacy and social justice for the poor

·           use every facility available to it to establish freedom for the captives – this, too, involves a message of proclamation

·           preach the good news to the poor in spirit, which is an invitation to join God’s agenda in bringing heaven to earth – the poor in spirit are the ones who will receive the message, which is the recovery of spiritual sight for the blind, with the caveat that the poor only respond when the good news is actually preached (or done)

·           set the oppressed free

·           proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour

In many ways, the mission of the church does not change, even in these changed days.  The activities of our ministry, however, will change, and we will need to adapt, and I think personally churches will feel a desperate urge to adapt.

The more creative and innovative churches become in their local contexts, the more ‘success’ they may have in bringing the Kingdom close.

But remember this is not a numbers game.  We need to get away from metrics.  The kingdom isn’t advanced in mathematics, hard as that is for us humans to understand.

A big part of the problem of the way church has been done in recent decades is it’s operated off of a utilitarian agenda — it’s good for the Kingdom if it works, and the better it works, the better.  It sounds like it makes sense, but the utilitarian method is a worldly imperative; it isn’t the radical mission of God.  I mean, how ‘successful’ were Noah or Jeremiah or even Jesus for that matter in their lives?  None were hugely popular in a universal sense.  But just look at the Kingdom impact of each of their lives.

The future of the church may not be around the mega-church model.  Just sayin’

If you listen to this message you will understand what I am saying, when I say that that counting activities as successful isn’t necessarily building the Kingdom.

So, the church has an additional challenge — to overthrow the idea that if it’s popular and seems to work that it must be good.

Whatever it is that a church decides to do must be good in its own right disregarding its ‘effectiveness’ because the better measure will be that it will bring heaven closer to earth.

Perhaps the revival that is about to come will pivot around smaller groups of Christians hovering together in cells like the early church did.  That these little autonomous cells, fiery hot in the Spirit of God, modelling Jesus’ love-one-another command, begin to ‘infect’ those in their immediate orbit.  That church becomes more about social activism based off the Luke 4:18-19 mandate.

Think about it in these terms.  The diaspora of the Jews (or Christians for that matter) never did the mission of God any harm.  It only served to spread the message — just like a virus.

In the meantime, let’s focus on these words:

“Your kingdom come, your will be done...”

This is just one contribution in the discussion.

Photo by Nils Nedel on Unsplash