Yeshua Explored
March 14th 2022
Hybrid church?
Rebuilding God’s house
(This series of articles was written at the beginning of the first lockdown in March/April 2020)
Previous articles are still available on the Premier Christian radio website – https://www.premierchristianradio.com/Blogs2/Yeshua-Explored – (until they finally pull the plug!)
You’ve had a taster, now it’s time to really chew things over. Hybrid Church? What’s that? It’s going to be a degree of guesswork (hopefully of the sanctified variety), with as much leading from Holy Spirit as I can manage, bearing in mind the cracked old vessel He has to work with!
I see it as a dynamic, a synergy, between two things, one old and one new. Drawing from the observations made after Foundations 13, it was clear that God has, in His wisdom and mercy, provided a new way for individual Christians to grow in Him and to fulfil their destinies within the Body of Christ. Flockdown has torn down the “middle wall of partition” (to borrow a phrase from Ephesians 2) between the Creator and His Creation – the artificial barriers created by the structures of our Christian world – and allowed us all to experience not just the breadth and depth of teaching and testimony from all corners of the Body of Christ worldwide, but also experience Him and others from the safety and comfort of our own armchairs. This is the new thing (and being new, the only way to convince the naysayers is to get them to experience it firsthand). The secular world has taken a lead on this and have seen how well things have functioned during Lockdown and, in order to save costs no doubt, have moved their focus onto the virtual world. Twitter has already told its staff that they don’t need to return to the office again, Cambridge University have declared that all lectures will be online for at least another year and Facebook have said that up to 50% of the workforce could be working from home in the next 5-10 years.
The old thing is human contact, something that must never ever be neglected, especially once the COVID-19 restrictions are gradually lifted.
… not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching. (Hebrews 10:25)
The formula is a simple one. We continue doing the old thing, in terms of meeting together, but perhaps we see it as a new start, by tearing up the rule book (the traditions of man) and revert to the original template (the Bible). This may be a daunting task and it certainly would be if it wasn’t for the new thing, our virtual treasure-trove of resources.
“Go up into the mountains and bring down timber and build my house, so that I may take pleasure in it and be honoured,” says the LORD. (Haggai 1:8)
So we rebuild God’s house with the timber available to us. All we need is a starting place.
To be continued … This is an extract from the book, Flockdown: Is the Church out for the count?, available for £5 at https://www.sppublishing.com/flockdown-263-p.asp
