We have spent much of 2020 dealing with a world-wide pandemic that has impacted many aspects of our lives including the church. Churches have scrambled to continue providing worship services in-person and online and have sought new ways of conducting Bible studies and small groups. In some states churches have been forced to close for a season. Church camps and other church-related entities were forced to cancel many of their activities resulting in financial challenges. It has been a difficult and challenging year. While many are looking forward to the end of 2020 there is no guarantee that 2021 will not present even more challenges. Rather than sitting back and waiting until things return to "normal" I believe there are four things the church must focus on as we move into the new year.
The first of these is prayer. We talk about prayer more than we actually pray. One reason we don't see a spiritual revival in our country is that we don't pray as we should. When one studies the great revivals of the past it becomes obvious that each of them began as a result of prayer. We need to pray bold prayers asking God to move across our nation to bring healing and revival. We need to pray prayers of confession admitting to our sins and seeking God's forgiveness. We need to pray intercessory prayers on behalf of one another. And as we pray we need to do so in faith believing that God will answer those prayers.
Secondly, the church needs to refocus its commitment to fulfilling the Great Commission. This is the mission of every church. This is our mandate, and yet many churches do little or nothing towards the winning of souls to Christ. The numbers of non-Christians continues to grow while the numbers of Christians continue to become less and less. It seems the modern church is willing to do anything except evangelize the lost. Let's not forget who these people are. They are our neighbors, the sweet grandmother next door who does not know Jesus Christ, the young lady who checks us out each week at the supermarket, the teacher who helped our children learn. They are our parents, our children, our grandchildren, and our best friends. Rather than think of non-Christians in the abstract let's begin to put faces on them and then begin to take seriously the Great Commission and make it a focus of everything we do as a church.
Thirdly, we must be open to radical change. Many churches don't like any change; now I'm talking about radical change. What kind of radical change? No one knows, but as the challenges the church face increases it will require us to make the necessary changes in order to address them. Not only will the changes we will be forced to make be radical in nature, they must also be made faster than we are comfortable with. I do not believe the church in the future will have the luxury of spending months discussing potential changes in committee and board meetings before voting on it at the next business meeting. In many cases the church will need to respond quickly to grasp the opportunity before it. These changes will no doubt make some people uncomfortable, but they will be necessary in order for the church to succeed in its mission.
Finally, the church must be willing to sacrifice it all. Yesterday, during our invitational hymn the church sang "All to Jesus I Surrender." As we finished I responded that it is often easier to sing the great hymns of the faith than it is to live them. Are our churches really willing to surrender everything to Jesus. Are we willing to sacrifice it all if that is what is required of us? Sometimes we cannot know victory until we are willing to lay it all on the line.
While we do not know what 2021 will bring we can begin now to prepare for whatever it might be by focusing on these four things.
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