This is the time to shine

Bud Brown March 26, 2020

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During this time of uncertainty, this is a time for your church to shine! And what a huge open door to significant change.

Time to shine

As leaders, we should be leading and equipping our congregation to minister to the fearful, the needy, the isolated in your church’s area of ministry. Some ideas to stimulate your thoughts in this direction:

• Church members talk to their neighbors with offers to share if the neighbor’s supplies (food, etc.) run short.
• Ask your neighbors how you can pray for them. 
• Offer to do grocery shopping and pharmacy runs so the elderly don’t need to go out.
• Neighborhood meetings (be sure to keep the meetings ‘safe’) to discuss how to help one another, to solicit prayer requests and perhaps even discuss where our real hope lies.
• Use the church van to deliver items from the church clothes closet or food pantry to poorer sections of town.
• Advertise a 24/7 information and service hotline on Facebook.
• Revise your preaching calendar to mobilize the congregation by preaching texts that teach the Christian’s duty to the neighbor.
• Take every opportunity to improve your preaching while you’re livestreaming or using Facebook Live to broadcast your services.
• Be sure to include the worship and singing in your broadcasts. After all, these are “worship” services, not just preaching times.

Time to change

In conversations with many pastors these past few days a common theme has emerged: we have to start doing things different. Among the things I’ve heard discussed are:

• Preaching shorter sermons (really, pastors are saying that!)
• Better quality worship services
• Trying to livestream
• Ramp up online giving
• More robust communications protocols between the church and its members
• Putting new (or “new to you”) technology to work or upgrading equipment.
• Reducing the number of board and/or governance meetings.

The list goes on and on. Lots of pastors are considering lots of changes.

We’re in one of those rare liminal¹periods, a threshold or fulcrum between the “old” normal and a yet-to-emerge “new” normal. Although relatively rare, they offer change agents wide open opportunities to implement changes, to experiment and to move toward a better state of affairs–if you manage it wisely! A couple of areas where you may be able to introduce permanent change to your congregation:

• Start asking for and featuring prayer requests that are submitted in behalf of the unbelieving community.
• Cancel Wednesday night and Sunday night services if you still offer them and ifyou have been itching to pull the plug on them.
• If you cancel, substitute a monthly (or bi-weekly?) all church prayer gathering that is devoted to praying for the lost, the gospel receptive and for the church’s wisdom in taking advantage of this time.
• Train people how to stay informed of church activities by reading the website, watching for emails, Instagram or Facebook posts. When church services resume (if you do decide to go on hiatus for a while), eliminate platform announcements when the church starts meeting again for worship.
• Cultivate spiritual growth in your congregants. Ask them to meet in prayer teams virtually (by phone or video) in which they pray for one another and for spiritual growth. If you cancel Wednesday night services, you could use a “reading club” model; have everyone read a book that you think will motivate their spiritual growth, then host an open discussion by video conference.
• Ask church members to prayer walk their neighborhoods.

I’m sure you’ll come up with better ideas than these. I only suggest them to get your creative juices flowing. But remember this key—a change in behavior is the quickest and most powerful way to make real, cultural change in an organization.² 

So use the opportunity presented by COVID-19 to get your people involved in new behaviors. While they are doing that, you’re gently and wisely guiding them into the cultivation of those new values or at least of moving those aspirational values into the “actual” column.

My colleagues and I are praying for you. Now, go out and seize the day!

1. The term refers to a transitional stage, as in “the liminal state between life and death.” It is a period in which the old is passing away but the new has not yet arrived.
2. See Katzenbach et.al., 10 Principles of Organizational Culture.

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Bud Brown is an experienced ministry leader, writer and educator. He is co-founder of Turnaround Pastors and co-author of the ground-breaking Pastor Unique: Becoming A Turnaround Leader. He brings special expertise to change leadership in the local church, mentoring pastors to become revitalization leaders, training churches how to find and recruit the best talent, and training leadership teams how to achieve their shared goals. Learn More »

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