Church During Pandemic

This was a social media post in March of 2020 when the churches stopped services during the beginning of the pandemic.

Is church cancelled due to the coronavirus?

Well that depends …it might be. What do you mean exactly by church?

Modern Christianity (from my experience) is most confused and immature about what is the church (ecclesiology).

Even Christians who seem to have good explanations about church, who are pros behind a mic or a keyboard. Marching around like they own the place, who preach sermons about this very topic. Rarely behave according to what they preach about the ecclesia. They can’t, it’s too costly.

It seems to me that in ecclesiology we are infants, newborn. (Catholics, Protestants, Evangelicals, Pentecostals, clergy and laity) all newborns together… laying around goo goo ing at one another. Can’t yet crawl or roll over or get our own milk bottles.

I think this Covid19 pandemic is shining a fresh light on this fact.

Church is not an event.

Church is not a meeting.

Church is not an experience.

Church is not a traditional show or a contemporary show …of singing and oration.

The ecclesia that Jesus is building (and he has all the time in the world to build it) does not need fancy buildings or high tech buildings or large crowds. In fact I’m convinced he not only doesn’t need them he doesn’t want them. This is because he has something better and superior to that.

Real ecclesia (Church) can only be “cancelled” if Christians are no longer living or no longer Christians.

The church (ecclesia) is a Jesus-following people. A collection of people who form a body which exprssses the life of Jesus Christ.

Not expressing him by putting on constant evangelism/ self-help shows for one another.

It’s a Jesus-people from another kingdom entirely, who share their lives together, periodically their needs and their excesses, and who periodically gather to express him together.

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Why We Should Listen to Everyone

This was first posted to my social media wall on March 1, 2018.

I’ve found this quote to be very true. I’ve also benefited from not disregarding people I really don’t like to be around. Just because we don’t like someone doesn’t mean we should not listen to them or that they don’t have valuable things to say. Especially if they follow Jesus Christ, listen closely to everyone.

I know people who don’t like me all that much and it seems they go out of their way to ignore, to cold-shoulder and to disregard me. Truth is, I really have no ill feelings toward most of these people and I know I could help them if we had a better relationship.

Sometimes when we don’t like someone, the feeling is mutual, but at other times the feeling is not mutual and it is just one-way. Either way we would be wise to get in the habit of listening for the Lord speaking through his followers. all of them. Those talented, and those not talented. Those like us and not like us. Those we like and those we don’t like. Those who like us and those who don’t like us. Be looking and listening for Jesus Christ in all things and all people. He is worth finding, no matter where we find him.

If we listen and hear nonsense, we just discard it. But if we listen and hear Jesus our lives are enriched greatly.

Listen for Jesus speaking through people you don’t like, and in ways that you don’t expect.

Adam Collier March, 2018

Spiritual Ministry or Merely a Sunday Job

Do you have a Sunday job fulfilling and enabling someone else’s ministry vision? Sunday jobs we call ministry are very often impatient abandonment of true spiritual callings.

When we first become a Christian there is no problem in doing blindly what we are trained to do. But then we mature and grow up! If we will allow it.

True callings are only brought about and fulfilled by a free and open community of Jesus-seekers. Communities where people are equal, who share life together …and not just communities who put on weekend sermon events. An organization without hierarchy, without one-way relationships, no celebrities here, no guilt trips, no striving for the attention of the great man in charge. No building up of status and credit in the hierarchy and with the man, for time served.

Pastor-seeking and pastor-centered organizations (which seems to be all most Christians want) and which have custom roles for people to fill like Sunday jobs. Jobs which relieve guilt, or fulfill obligations that are artificially placed upon us by those more ambitious and more influential (obligations which are NOT from the Lord).

These Sunday jobs are an abandonment of our true, collective and individual spiritual ministry and callings.

“Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, who has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter (not of obligation, not of guilt trips, not of fitting in, to some organization) but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.”‬

2 Corinthians 3:5-6

The nature of Christian ministry is not self-help advice-giving by those with speaking or leadership skills. It is not even a ministry primarily in filling heaven. Our ministry is a ministry of a new covenant and as we gather and sharpen one another, come to know the mind of Christ together. We are together made into ministers of the new covenant between humanity and our creator.

Serving in Sunday jobs might get us a social life, at best, but a social life is not important compared to pleasing Jesus and fulfilling our callings.

Sunday-job ministry attitudes kill real spiritual ministry and spiritual lives, if we allow them to. This hurts the Lord’s place in the earth, and it hurts those who otherwise the Lord might touch through us.

We feel idle and get impatient and disempowered, compared to those on stage. We question within “we’ll I got to do something… right?”

Instead just seek, just respond in obedience, just gather with Jesus followers. He will take it from there. He really will.

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