Being an adaptable church

There’s a fascinating book that has been doing the rounds recently called The Spider and the Starfish. It’s all about how decentralised organisations can adapt much quicker to changing situations than highly centralised organisations.

The author likens centralised organisations to spiders. Spiders are controlled by their head (like most of us!). If the head is cut off then very quickly the spider dies. Starfish are different. They have no head. And its major organs are replicated throughout each arm. Cut it in half and instead of killing the starfish you now have two starfish. 

Starfish organisations don’t have headquarters.

For those from St Paul’s you might recall in our recent sermon series in Acts we reflected on the adaptability of the early church. This is one of the hall marks of the church. It is a dynamic, decentralised movement that can easily adapt to ever changing situations because our Head is not human authority but the Lord Jesus, whose headship is permanently affixed to every part of his body, the church  

We’ve seen this in Acts as persecution was applied to where the gospel movement first broke out, Jerusalem. The very centralised opposition - the pharisees and saducees - tried to lock down Jerusalem. This resulted in a scattering of the early christians and a decentralisation of the church. Now it was no longer just the apostles who were preaching the gospel, it was everyone. And new gospel outbreaks popped up in unlikely places like Samaria (see Acts 8). 

There are no two ways about it, COVID 19 is a crisis, and one that is rapidly changing the way society functions for the time being. This includes the church. 

Friends I want to remind you that this won’t defeat our church. We know that. We sing about that every week, and we read endless promises in the scriptures that God will never leave us nor forsake us (Matthew 28.20); That our help will come from God, the Maker of heaven and earth. The One who doesn’t slumber nor sleep (Psalm 121.1-3); That Jesus is the bread of life and those who come to him will not go hungry (John 6.35)

And I want to encourage you to be like a starfish. To already begin thinking, how can we adapt to this crisis? 

This is our spiritual strength - something up our sleeve that will help us get through this. Here are some thoughts to get us started:

Creating community online

A small team of helpers is preparing to move our Sunday services online. They will be streamed at the usual times of 9.30AM and 5PM. This Sunday will be a dress rehearsal and from the following Sunday we expect to have our services running completely online. 

It is not the same, by any means. There’s a real grief in not being able to greet one another with a hug and sit and pray to our Father in heaven together as a beautifully diverse congregation of people. 

But there’s an opportunity here too. We can also adapt to share our church community with the broader community. Doing short, for example, devotions online that speak into the felt needs of millions of people right now.

God, in his common grace, has connected people together online in a way that empowers our capacity of sharing our hope - those promises I just reminded you of - with a world that is right now devoid of hope. 

A recent video we put on Facebook was seen by more than 5,000 people. 5,000 people reached with quite minimal effort! We couldn’t fit 500 people into our hall. It’s not the same, but it is an opportunity for us to bless the city we live in right now with the good news of Jesus. 

Decentralising pastoral care - a care network

Crises force you to reassess what’s really important. As a pastor these last two weeks have reminded me that the beating heart of my vocation is the ministry of the word of God and of prayer. To pastor God’s people by reminding them of his promises, by praying with them and for them, and by caring for the flock of Jesus I have the privilege of serving.

Another opportunity before us is to maximise this care by decentralising it.

You may have seen that just yesterday I invited everyone in the congregation to sign up to a care network. The idea is simple. A network of church members who will commit to receiving, and distributing prayer points for those in need. A network who will also be up for helping those most vulnerable and isolated - that may mean a daily phone call to an elderly friend from church, or dropping off some groceries to someone unable to get to the shops. Adapting to this crisis enables us to come back to the basics of what the church does - pray for one another and care for one another. 

The analogy of the spider and the starfish falls over at one point though. We have a head, the Lord Jesus. The one who sits enthroned in heaven. And that’s the key. As long as our head is in heaven he cannot be defeated, and neither can we. In fact his ascension - empowers him to be more present over all the earth through the witness of his body, the church.

The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

Colossians 1.15-20

Let Your Light Shine

2020 has been a particularly dark, dreary and fearful time for many in our city and our nation—from the endless bushfires that quite literally darkened the skies, to a virus that has captured the imagination (and fear) of many. Like it or not, this coronavirus will impact life for the foreseeable future.

In our recent sermon series in the book of Acts we have been exploring the beginnings of a movement that changed world history: the church. The dynamics of the early church and its exploding influence on the first-century world have caused us to reflect on our own engagement with the twenty-first-century world. 

Take the famous story of the conversion of Saul of Tarsus (Acts 9.1–19). In that story there are obvious themes of light penetrating the dark.

Saul sees a light flash from heaven (Acts 9.3) that flaws him, and he hears the voice of the once dead Jesus. But what is most surprising is that rather than condemn him, Jesus commissions him for service. He says of Saul:

This man is my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles and their kings and to the people of Israel (Acts 9.15).

Having seen the light himself, Saul is then required to reflect it to a dark and fearful world.

I remember as a kid being shocked when I learnt that the moon doesn’t have any light in it. There is nothing shiny in it. It’s just a clump of dust and rock (pardon my lack of scientific knowledge). This shocked me because sometimes on a cloudless night, as I stood on my bed and peered out of my window at the night sky, the moon was so bright it would light up the night sky.

Saul is called and commissioned by Jesus to be like the moon. This new way of being for Saul taps into a great theme of the Bible. The prophet Isaiah spoke of one to come who would be a light to the nations (Isaiah 49.6). Jesus came and said, ‘I am the light of the world’ (John 8.12), and now he says to Saul—go and shine as a light to the gentiles.

Saul’s post-conversion life is a life lived for others; a life that reflects the light of Jesus into a dark, dark world. I’ve not met another Christian with a story like Saul’s, but I’m reminded that all of us share a similar story. For all who call on the name of Jesus have seen the light, and we are all called to shine brightly as a city on a hill—to be a new movement with a new way of being.

It seems to me that right now there are some really obvious ways we can reflect that same light that led Saul into a dark, dark world.

At a personal level, we can shine a less panicked, less fearful way of being. When we draw upon the endless spiritual stockpiles that we have in Jesus, perhaps it would cause us to be less panicked, less fearful and more concerned with the interests of others.

This would enable us to reflect a community that doesn’t exist for its own interests but for the interests of others. The church would be less concerned with stockpiling toilet paper and more concerned with caring for the most vulnerable people in our city: the sick and the elderly. What effect might this way of being have on our city? It may just look like a light shining into a dark room.

It’s also worth noting that this way of being is not new for Christians. 

The early church faced a far greater threat in the early fourth century. The world had already been engulfed by a devastating war and famine when a plague broke out around the region of Caesarea. People did what people continue to do—they were gripped by fear, panic and self-interest, and so many fled the city and went into the countryside. There was one group that offered a different way of being: the church. Eusebius, a historian and bishop of the church wrote:

All day long some of them [the Christians] tended to the dying and to their burial, countless numbers with no one to care for them. Others gathered together from all parts of the city a multitude of those withered from famine and distributed bread to them all. 

Eusebius, The Church History, trans. Paul L. Meier (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2007), 293.

If you’ve ever been to a baptism service at St Paul’s, or another church, you may have noticed this theme of light and dark. Baptism is all about commissioning someone to this new way of being. So, fittingly, we end the baptism with this commissioning:

God has called you out of darkness into his marvellous light. Shine as a light in the world to the glory of God the Father.