What’s in store for the future of the Australian Church? How do we best prepare for a future that seems to have so much uncertainty around it?
The pandemic meant that we had to adapt, we had to allow for change to occur so we could continue gathering as the body of Christ. In Australia, we saw churches turn to online platforms or to smaller in-home gatherings. We continued to pray and gather the best we knew how, we saw the Holy Spirit show up in ways that we haven’t seen before, but it worked!
At Alpha, we’ve seen thousands of Australians try Alpha in the midst of the pandemic. We saw that the hunger to know God has not been suppressed, in fact, the hunger for God has only grown. We’ve seen churches and denominations come together in the mission for evangelisation within Australia.
But as we move back into our old ways, how many of our adapted practices do we take with us? On a recent podcast with Mark Sayers, Mark talked about the shift into the ‘environmental’ way of thinking, a shift that had to occur to allow churches to continue to run through the changing restrictions.
But as restrictions start to ease what practices from our response to COVID do we continue to let influence how we gather?
Mark Sayers addresses a similar question in the Rebuilders podcast. He talks about how the reality of the past two years has meant that we are in a transitional phase and our congregations are feeling the changes. We as the body of Christ, will need to keep continuing to adapt to our environmental changes, however, we need to remember to keep defining our key principles; discipleship, Evangelism, Kingdom, Renewal, Revival, and Growing people in Jesus. We need to remember to continually allow the Holy Spirit to enter into each environmental change that may occur.
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