Sunday Worship In The Coronavirus Period
02 Apr 2020
Right now, we are in uncharted territory as the church.
I am not an excessively emotional person, but the evening before the first Sunday we didn’t gather I was overcome by the thought of churches closed - not just across the UK, but across much of Europe and the USA. There are obviously good reasons for this, and there is some precedent for this in some places and at some times where plagues took hold, but the worldwide impact of this is staggering.
What are we missing when we don’t gather? Obviously we are missing each other. I know we have been in contact a lot over the last few weeks, but there is something deeply inhuman about being separated physically from each other. We are embodied beings and that is very important.
In his letters the apostle Paul wrote longingly of his desire to be with the churches physically. The Lord Jesus Christ became flesh and dwelt amongst us. To be cut off in this way is very difficult.
However we are also missing something even more serious. The usual way the Lord builds up his people is through what has been described in reformed theology as His “ordinary means of grace”. That is, the preaching of the word of God, prayer and the sacraments, through which the Lord feeds and strengthens us.
These come in a very physical way, through the gathering of his people together and through the public ministry of those he has set apart to do this task. This cannot be replaced by TV or the internet, or even our own personal quiet times. The fact this has been removed from our lives during this period is a loss that we must take seriously.
So how then do we worship on the Lord’s day if we can’t gather, and if we don’t have access in the same way to his ordinary means of grace? We must not despair. The Lord gives himself in extraordinary ways in extraordinary times and situations!
The Bible is full of such examples, whether it is Israel in the wilderness, or David on the run, or Elijah in hiding, or Paul in prison. Across the world even during our own lifetime he has been building up his persecuted people who may have never been able to gather publicly. However the Lord’s extraordinary grace should always leave us longing for his ordinary means to be returned to us.
This does mean though that whatever we do on Sunday isn’t “church” in the strict sense of the word. It cannot be gathered worship if we can’t gather, it isn’t truly preaching if the preacher is not in front of you and we certainly can’t take the Lord’s supper together.
However we can make sure we are worshipping the Lord in our own homes, whether we are alone or with our families. We can give thanks for the availability of technology that can mean as a minister I can still open God’s word to you (in a slightly different way).
We haven’t gone down the “live streaming” route as a church. There are a few reasons for that. The first is simply technological. This all happened so quickly that I didn’t have time to set it up!
The second is personal. I’m just not convinced about the value of you all watching a screen of me singing! I wouldn’t want to inflict that on anyone. I’m also more “myself” recording an audio of a sermon, than I would be attempting to preach in an empty room into a camera.
The third reason is theological. While I don’t want to criticise other churches who are doing things differently (we all had to make very hard decisions almost instantly and have all done so with the very best intentions), I felt it was right not to try and attempt to pretend that Sunday’s are the same. We cannot be together and that is a tragic thing.
The danger of doing everything on a screen is that it can very easily become a performance, and we can easily slip into the mode of feeling like we are watching TV. The reason for supplying an order of service is that we all work through it - saying the bits that are given, praying or leading our families in prayer, joining in with the hymns on the You Tube clips, and prayerfully engaging with the recorded sermon audio rather than sitting back and watching a sermon. It takes more effort to engage with - and that’s a bit deliberate!
During this period as the Minister I will be supplying the recorded sermons, and you’ll see I haven’t included my texts for this month. I will follow a series, but I’m aware that at the moment events in our country and in our lives can change quickly so I want the freedom as a Minister to be lead by the Lord to address that biblically rather than rigidly sticking to a schedule planned in advance.
It would be presumptuous and foolish to attempt to read the Lord’s mind in all of this. We simply don’t access to his reasons! However, as we have been learning on Sunday mornings during the few months leading up to these events, he is God and we are not. His ways are not our ways.
We can and must trust that he is good, that in everything he does he is fully God (he is “simple” - which means he never stops being love, holy, just, etc), and that in everything the Lord Jesus Christ will be glorified.
It is appropriate though to consider this as the Lord’s discipline, in the same way that every hardship we go through is his discipline (see Hebrews 12 and James 1). This doesn’t mean he is punishing us (every punishment has been taken for his people by Christ at the cross). Rather, he uses everything to disciple us, to make us more like Christ, to cause us to put sin to death and to love him more.
So it is appropriate to use this time to come before him and ask him to search us, especially about our attitude to him, and to worship of him. Have we taken for granted the freedoms we enjoy? Have we taken seriously what he says about honouring his day and using it for rest and worship? Do we delight to gather together, hear his word? Have we taken the Lord’s supper seriously?
Obviously we long that what is happening in our world will lead everyone to cry out to the Lord, to seek him and be found by him. However, the Bible makes clear that “judgement begins at the household of God”, and that so often in the Bible the Lord draws his people back to a deeper repentance and trust in him. Let’s pray that he does that with us (his church) during these days.
And there’s an exciting possibility in all of this. History shows us that revival always begins when the church get extraordinary blessing from the ordinary means of grace. The word is preached and the church (first) is revived - which then spills out to the world.
What might the Lord do when we meet together again if we come longing for him? Obviously we cannot presume or expect this, but surely now of all moments in history we can be praying for it?