How Should Christians Respond When Government Bans Church Services?

Joel James from Grace Fellowship Pretoria, in South Africa, has written three articles that help us think about the Christian's response to the government's banning of church services for whatever reason.

Lockdown church service at home

With national lockdown in its second week here in South Africa, we are unable to gather with the saints.

We are 5 in our home. Together with myself, there is my wife, my daughter (25), my son (23), and my mother-in-law.

We sat together and prayed, and then afterwards we watched a sermon by John Piper, called "Seven Reasons We Must Pursue Supreme Satisfaction in God."

Specifically, in a time such as ours with the COVID-19 disease sweeping across the world, having killed over 65,000 and infected more than 1,200,000 people already, we look at life with new eyes.

That is why I felt that this sermon of John Piper's was perfect for the occasion. We as humans have the tendency of finding satisfaction in all kinds of earthly endeavours, things that have pushed Christ down the ladder a rung or ten. Things like money, entertainment, sport, prestige, etc. But, right now, no matter who you are or your position in life, SARS-CoV-2 attacks indiscriminately, ignoring who you are.

It is for this reason we must seek our complete pleasure in Christ, and Christ alone!

This isn't always easy. On Friday in an online meeting with the rest of our company, our MD informed us that since the company group wants to be known as a people's company, that people are our greatest asset, the board has decided that in order to make sure that people aren't laid off due to COVID-19 and the lockdown, that everyone in the group will have to take a 20% pay cut for at least 2 months. Obviously, we do not want anyone laid off in the group because of this situation. As a company in the group, we unanimously agreed that it is a better idea than laying off people across the group. With budgets already stretched to the max, this is not an easy one to take; but, it is a necessary step! It is in times like these that we learn where our pleasures are. Are they found in things, or in Christ!

Where do you find satisfaction?

This sermon of Piper's can be found on the Desiring God website with the video and text.

Nancy Pearcey on the church and the gospel

“The Christian community [the church] is the concrete reality where the transcendent reality of the gospel is made manifest... This is a sobering thought, because the other side of the coin is that the gospel is also most easily discredited through the church. What happens when nonbelievers hear preachers proclaim the importance of the family, but see churches full of workaholic parents with little time for their own children? When they see power relationships that are as exploitive as anywhere else? When they see Christians trapped in the same sexual addictions as the rest of society? When they see evangelical celebrities using the same dishonest spin tactics as the secular advertising world? Christian may preach passionately about the need for a biblical worldview, but unless they are submitting themselves to  continual process of sanctification, they will not have the power to live out that worldview—and they will discredit the very message they are seeking to communicate.” (Nancy Pearcey, Saving Leonardo: A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, & Meaning, B&H Publishing Group, Nashville, TN, 2010, p276-277)

9Marks eJournal: Revitalizing the church

9Marks ministries has released their latest eJournal, and the subject matter of this month’s journal is, Revitalize: Why We Must Reclaim Dying Churches—and How. There is a story on a church that went through revitalization, articles on “Why revitalize?” and articles on “How to revitalize.” There are several really good articles on this subject. So, if you, as a pastor is thinking of revitalizing your church, you need to pay attention!

In his article, Be a Tortoise, not a Hare, Jeramie Rinne gives the personalities of 4 types of revitalizers:

1. The Purist: “The Purist has strong theological convictions. He has been blessed with a clear biblical vision for church life and practice. He runs straight and true without deviating from the course. Unfortunately, he moves too fast for the congregation.”
2. The Pragmatist: “The opposite extreme from the Purist, the Pragmatist will do ‘whatever works’ to get people into the church and keep them there. Nothing is out of bounds so long as it grows the church and doesn’t involve blatant immorality or obvious heresy.” Of course, questions remain such as, “Are people truly being converted by the gospel, repenting of sins and trusting in Christ?”
3. The Copycat: “The Copycat shaves time by taking a short-cut: he merely replicates another church’s philosophy, programs, and structure in his own congregation. Why reinvent the wheel? Why not just buy the book, attend the conference, order the kit, and download the sermons from another successful church?”
4. The Narcissist: “This final hare is perhaps the most dangerous. The Narcissist views church ministry through the lens of his own personal narrative. He sees congregational renewal and reform as the stage for acting out a self-centered script. Maybe he dreams of being the guy who helps the stodgy traditional church become cutting edge. Or perhaps he fancies himself an activist who confronts the complacent suburban church about engaging the poor.”
5. The Uniquetist (my own): The Uniquetist (pronounced as unique-a-tist) is the person who wants to always be different. This person wants to be unique and will almost do anything not to be like anybody else. As a result, this person ends up forcing his church into that mould too. The result of this is that you have a church that no longer looks like a church, but a club in the world.
6. The Listening-To-Godist (my own): The Listening-To-Godist’s view is that God is speaking endlessly and we must listen all the time, just in case we miss out on something. This pastor, or group of pastors, will, perhaps several times a year, go away for 2 or 3 days just to hear from God for the future. While this is admirable (wanting to know what God wants us to do), it also creates the idea that God may just change His mind from what He said 3 months ago. Is God so double-minded that he is going to change His mind every couple of months? Or, perhaps this person simply is not sure that he has heard God correctly the first time (or the second, third, fourth, . . . time).

I suggest you visit the eJournal for several articles that may just answer some of your questions.

Received more revelation from God than in 20 yrs of "going to church”

I saw the subject line above on Twitter. The full tweet behind the subject line is: “I havent listened to/heard a ‘sermon’ in 3 yrs but have recvd more revelation from God than in 20 yrs of ‘going to church’...” Obviously, there could be several ways to look at this. The problem is that this message was re-tweeted by at least two people by the time it reached my Twitter page.

It could be that this guy lives somewhere in the forest with one church around, and unfortunately it is a liberal United Methodist church. But, this is highly unlikely.

It is difficult to get enough information from only one tweet (a Twitter message that cannot be longer than 140 characters), so I could be summing this up incorrectly. However, it seems to me by the way the quotation marks are used that the message is based on some form of pride. When church members no longer get any “revelation” from the sermons at church, several factors could be involved. Here are just a few:

1. The pastor has lost his way.
2. The member has outgrown the pastor.
3. The member has been infected with the “pride” virus.
4. This local church has literally gone backwards.
5. This local church is not adhering to the truth of the gospel.

I am sure there could be many more reasons why this person has received “more revelation from God than in 20 yrs of ‘going to church’.”

Pride is a deadly sin. It truly is a sin that blinds us. We no longer see ourselves as we truly are. We start looking down on people, critiquing preachers to see if they have dotted every ‘i’ and crossed ever ‘t.’ Suddenly you see faults in everyone, that they simply do not know as much as you do, and aren’t as meticulous as you are! Pride will drive you to loneliness. You will end up in a church for 20 years, not receiving any “revelation” at all, since you know better! Someone once said that Satan’s number one weapon is pride, while God’s number one defence is humility.

Erik Raymond wrote a short but insightful article on pride called “You cannot domesticate pride.” Another great article on pride is by Jeff Keeney called “The fifty fruits of pride: A self-diagnostic.” It is always good to check ourselves in relation to pride, and these two articles make a good start toward that end!

When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with the humble is wisdom.
Proverbs 11:2

Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.
Proverbs 16:18

and finally…

Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders.
Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another,
for "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble."
1 Peter 5:5

Does your church celebrate the gospel, or its own uniqueness in this world?

Trevin Wax, author of Holy Subversion: Allegiance to Christ in An Age of Rivals, and blogger at Kingdom People, has written a very thought provoking blog post at thegospelcoalition called What You Celebrate as a Church Is Just as Important as What You Believe. Wax opens his blog post with the following paragraph:

"What your congregation celebrates corporately is just as important as what your church affirms doctrinally. Celebrate the gospel, and cross-cultural ministry will bubble up in surprising ways. Celebrate your church’s preferential distinctions, and your congregation will become an insular group of like-minded individuals."

In this article Wax gives us two fictitious examples of people having to leave their current churches when they move away to other cities, and how their churches' distinctives made it close to impossible for them to find new churches where they could feel "comfortable."

How to get apologetics in your church

Apologetics315 has started a series on how you can get apologetics in your church. So far they have done 15 sessions and is available on their blog here. It is also available as MP3s or you can subscribe to their podcast feed.