When Covid 19 hit the UK back in 2020, where did the Church go? Did we lose our vision and our hope? No, we adapted and we changed the way we were. Our services appeared online and our presence in the towns, villages and cities were more apparent than ever. We got innovative and ingenious!
Being Church doesn’t stop as you exit a building. Being church does not cease when you walk into your home or into your work place. Being the church never stops. Being church is inbuilt, it is who you are when nobody is watching and indeed, when people are watching. We carry what we’ve heard and experienced in a Church with us.
The mind-set of ‘we need more people in our pews’ or asking the Children’s worker ‘when will we see some of your toddler group families on a Sunday?’ is neither helpful nor an accurate representation of how life really is these days.
Sundays are not what they used to be. Shops are open, children’s activities are in full swing, adults work. The Church is no longer the only thing to do on a Sunday. With this being the case, we need to be church all week. All our activities and all our comings and goings, are a representation of church.
Is that toddler group not church? Is your messy church group not church? The knitting group where 4 older ladies meet to pray and knit, is that not a form of church?
Our job, given to us by God, is to create a safe, loving, nurturing environment where people can come and be themselves and see the glimmer of Jesus through us as we go about our daily life.
Connecting with our community throughout the week is as vital as your Sunday morning if not more so. We bring ourselves, we bring love and we bring hope. This is Church.
Hope is an encouragement that we have a guaranteed anticipation of good. We have the everlasting hope that God has given us through His promises. When life hits us with various blows, as life does, we can eagerly trust that God has authority and power over all.
How can we bring this hope into the ordinary, everyday chaos of life? Being the carrier of hope is not as tricky as you think. A hope carrier is a follower of Jesus, a follower with a mindset on changing the doom and gloom of everyday life. A hope carrier is a person that sees the everyday world as their mission field. Their family, their work, their school and their friends are their mission work. A mission to provide the love of Jesus in the ordinary.
As you walk into your day, walk with hope. Hope filled mind, hope filled heart, hope filled being.
Now is the time to grip that hope tight and remember how good God is and how he is working through us in our communities.
What do we do after a Sunday morning Church service? Does who we are as a church family change? Are you the same person on a Sunday as you are the rest of the week?
Lorraine Orr – Mission Director, Fife Presbytery
