In the midst of the CoVid-19 pandemic, SDA churches all over the world have stopped having services on Sabbath. A lot of our churches have given their members weblinks and reading materials and the address to which to mail their tithes and offerings and said "See you later." However, many of our churches have, at this time and for this crisis, chosen to invested the rather modest funds needed to purchase cameras, computer and sound gear needed to livestream church services rather than simply shoving their flock over to Amazing Facts, 3ABN and the Hope Channel. While these are worthy sources for religious instruction and comfort in this difficult time, they lack the personal impact of remaining connected to your brothers and sisters.
When this emergency is over, the churches will still have the equipment to livestream services and should be able to do so economically. I wonder if perhaps God will use this crisis to nudge His churches into using this technology to reach out and provide a link to others beside those who show up each Sabbath. I'm thinking of the elderly and disabled shut-in members and those who have for one reason or another drifted away from our fellowship. Perhaps this is an opportunity for our churches to provide a more subtle way for lost and isolated Christians to rejoin the life of their churches.
In my town in Texas, they did a survey of church membership in the city by denomination. We discovered to our shock that though we have 3 churches in the city, the number of people who listed themselves as belonging to our denomination was over twice the number of people on the books and who were coming to church.
We have sadly neglected our shut-ins and strayed lambs. I've been made acutely aware of this in the past few years as my wife and I have found ourselves becoming shut-ins due to her disability. Amazing Facts has been a blessing, but it is no substitute for being able to connect with our church family. There is a huge field out there to be harvested. So many people have drifted from the church over the years simply because they missed a few weeks and nobody noticed.
With social media, live-streaming, email and telephones, a whole field of mission has opened up that we are really not reaching. Maybe you aren't confident enough to do Bible Studies or you don't have the stamina or courage to "pass out literature" to perfect strangers. But how hard is it to work with your church's website or social media page to answer messages from people who saw services on the Internet? What a great way to follow up with isolated, lonely, elderly, disabled and ill church members. How hard could it be to follow up a comment on a post on the church Facebook page with a phone call and a simple "How are you doing?"
Jesus told the story of the ninety and nine in which the shepherd turned and headed back out into the night to find a single sheep who had strayed. My God, why have we forsaken the vast flock out there who have gotten lost from our fellowship? Perhaps God is giving us a high-tech flashlight and a shepherd's crook in all this scary pandemic in order to encourage us to gently seek out our lost sheep and bring them home - or at least to offer them a little comfort and a sense of belonging to their home church again. What a nice mission that would be and so easy to set up.
© 2020 by Tom King
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