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By Sonora L Myers  Malachi and I had sent mom and dad to enjoy a romantic meal for their anniversary which they had forgotten about until an hour ago. Left to buy dinner for ourselves, we decided to head back to the little döner restaurant with the scabby, stray cat that we’d eaten at the day before. We had stopped a moment outside of Starbucks when two small boys approached wanting to sell us cheap, blue, foam flower crowns. The city was so full of beggars and small children selling crafts and packets of kleenex that I had begun to grow insensitive to their presence. So when the small boys asked if we would like a flower crown, I quickly brushed the offer aside with a polite Turkish ‘tsk’ and said, “Biz iyiz” (we’re good). Surprised that we ‘foreigners’ could speak Turkish, they inquired about how two Americans knew their language. I was tired - emotionally, physically and mentally. This evening was our last day of our month-long sojourn in Europe and Turkey. After weeks of exerting my poor Turkish skills to their maximum communication and comprehension levels as we reunited with old friends, helped a church minister to many small villages in the earthquake zone and played with the kids on Gypsy Hill, I had little capacity for a chit chat with these two children. Shrinking back, I stood and zoned out as Malachi answered their probing questions. I was mindlessly waiting for them to leave us in peace so we could go and enjoy our dinner when, as I stood there, passive to anything but my own tired brain, one of the little boys broke from the conversation, approached me, and in one swift motion reached up and placed a foam flower crown on my head. His childish little face lit up in the sweetest smile as he said, “Bu senin için abla” (This is for you big sister). And just as quickly as they had appeared, they were gone, drifting around the corner and into the crowd. I stood stunned for a moment and then it was like I woke up from a long slumber to where I was - Kuşadası, Turkey, to the people rushing around us on all sides, to the beauty, to the need, to my utter desensitization to life. I stood in the insecurity I felt by my blundering attempts to communicate in a language I hadn’t spoken since I was six, in my feeling of vulnerability and fatigue and the need to remain dignified and not look foolish. I had built up walls around my heart, had taken up my home in a cold brick castle rather than humbly accepting the warm hospitality of the country and people of Turkey. I had allowed my own limitations to limit my heart. Rather than becoming personal, I withdrew and became private. I closed my eyes to my presence in a place full of people that God desperately wanted a relationship with. I didn’t put myself in the Lord’s hands, trusting that he would protect me and use my vulnerability but rather, I protected myself at the cost of losing sight of what mattered most. I choose security over generosity. I acted out of a place of scarcity rather than leaning into the rich abundance of God. I still have that flower crown. I keep it as a reminder to be generous, not just with my money but with everything; my time, my attention, my energy, myself. I keep it as a reminder to live out of humility in the security of the Lord rather than self-forged walls and a castle with closed gates. If you found this article helpful, pass it along to a friend who you think may benefit from reading it.
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 Remember Covid? Pastors and churches across the country stepped into uncharted territory those first weeks of March and April in 2020. I prayed daily for my pastor friends and can only imagine the levels of stress that piled up around them as they led their respective churches through the Coronavirus crisis. With Sunday morning services needing to be cancelled, it left many scrambling to figure out how to do church. Because so much of what we do focuses on the Sunday morning service, this posed a very real challenge for church leadership. What do we do when our weekly hour and a half long service is no longer an option? That is the question everyone was wrestling with in those early months of the Covid crisis. I sometimes wonder now however if we missed an opportunity. It seems we've jumped back into business as usual and I'm wondering if there was another path to explore. I recently read an update from a Christian working in a Muslim majority country in Central Asia. They’d been working diligently alongside a local pastor to grow a small church made up of former Muslims. The group had found favor with a local property owner and had been meeting in a storefront building on Sundays for several years. Every Sunday the church of just over fifty gathered to worship together, to listen to the preaching of their very gifted pastor and to fellowship with one another. All that changed when the building owner began to come under increasing pressure from the local Muslim community. Even though he appreciated the monthly rent, he eventually decided it just wasn’t worth it and asked them to move out. What did they do when their weekly hour and a half long service was no longer an option? They didn’t have the option of streaming the pastor’s preaching and they knew they wouldn’t be able to find another building big enough for their needs. How could they go on? The pastor and elders met and realized that they were going to have to shift away from the larger group weekly gathering. They would need to meet in many smaller groups in peoples’ homes. Rather than centralized teaching, the teaching would need to be spread out among a number of young leaders. The pastor took the time he usually invested in preparing his sermon and instead began to invest that time in preparing men. While it has been a challenging time, it has also been a time of real growth. In the smaller group settings, people have found it easier to share, to interact and to practice the "one anothers" of scripture. Young leaders, given new responsibility and a lot more time with the pastor or an elder have matured quickly. One of the most exciting aspects of this shift to smaller groups meeting in homes rather than an official church building, is that members of the church have been more active in inviting their friends and neighbors to attend and non-believers have felt more comfortable to come and visit. More Muslims are both seeing and hearing the gospel than ever before and the church is growing - both spiritually and numerically. This church still finds a place to gather everyone together once each month for a larger gathering where they worship and celebrate and yes, listen to their pastor’s preaching. They are figuring things out as they have learned in a new, personal way the truth of Paul’s words in Romans 8:28, “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” I hoped and prayed that the Coronavirus crisis would end quickly back in 2020. But I also prayed that God would shake up His church, refine us and teach us to walk in new, fresh (but very old) ways. I had hoped it would be an opportunity to learn from the church in Central Asia and China and Iran -- churches that cannot have large gatherings but rather come together in homes to “dedicate themselves to the apostles teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” Don't get me wrong - I love my local church family and our church and I don't think the legacy church is going anywhere or needs to. I just wonder if there are other ways to do church that more reflect Jesus' focus on disciple making rather than just a holy huddle. Are there hybrid models we can discover or create? Can we reimagine a church that is less about gathering and more about going? As I wrestle with scripture I suppose I'll always wrestle with these questions and my hope is that this article will help others begin to wrestle as well. Practical Handles Here are a few resources I’ve found helpful to begin to have a handle on how to help our congregations gather in smaller groups in homes.
The Coronavirus was challenging, there can be no doubt about that. It may be a challenge unlike any we've faced in our lifetimes though I suspect there will be more to come. It may not yet be the time to consider new ways of doing church in North America, but it seems there is an opportunity to discover new rhythms, new methods, new wine skins that may lead to greater levels of fellowship, faithfulness, disciple making, evangelism and maturity. And looking at the data coming out of the Barna Group and Pew Research, we could use greater levels of all of those. If you found this article helpful, pass it along to a friend who you think may benefit from reading it. |
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