Churches Without Buildings

My husband and I are planting a church in northwest Denver. As a church planter, I cannot fathom all of the residual effects the novel coronavirus will have on our society, but I do see some excellent learnings for the church in it already. If you have been around a church at all, most likely you’ve heard some pastor say that the church is the people and not the building.

We call our Sunday morning services “gatherings” for this very reason. It’s a gathering of God’s people, the church. The isolation caused by the novel coronavirus virus has put an exclamation point on that idea in a most forceful way. We still regularly say we’re “going to church,” but many of us don’t mean that literally. We mean we’re going to the place where the church is gathering, which for most of us means online for the time being.

Gatherings without People

Beginning in mid-March, many churches ceased gathering in person. Many chose to pre-record services and then watch them together virtually with their congregations via social media. Some of us chose to do simple, live online services from our living rooms. Some churches chose to provide resources to their congregants via email and opted out of meeting virtually altogether.

I’ve never been so grateful for technology. I’ve written before about how gracious our Creator was in allowing his creation to create. I imagine it brings him such joy to see us both putting the vulnerable first by following the isolation guidelines while also continuing to point people to Jesus.

The hope of any Christ-following pastor is that his church members don’t need him or her. The hope is that we mature into a people who follow Christ on our own, and that the role of the pastor is simply that of a mentor or guide to enhance our discipleship. Unfortunately, the reality of most of our churches is that our people are still growing into spiritual maturity.

We don’t need an in-person Sunday gathering to point people to Jesus. However, gathering with other believers is such a sweet and life-giving part of our life with Christ. I have loved seeing how churches have adapted to meet this need.

Virtual Discipleship

Discipleship cannot be decoupled from the concept of relationship. We must build relationships with others in order to disciple them and to be discipled. This typically occurs within the context of a physical relationship. It’s the people we hang out with on the soccer field. It’s the time we spend with our neighbors. It’s the coffee we have with friends.

Our current state of self-isolation makes this hard, but there are options. Within our church, for example, we have a missional community that meets on Monday nights. We usually have dinner and then talk about the gospel for about an hour afterward. Right now, we have dinner with our individual families and then we get on a Google Meet video chat for an hour. It’s not the same, but it’s better than nothing.

I have two amazing girlfriends who live in different states. I had been doing Bible study with them virtually even before this virus. We talk about our book or study, and then we talk about how we can be praying for each other. It’s life-giving to connect with them every other week—and all the more so in our current situation.

I know everyone isn’t on social media, but I find it to be such a connecting place right now. We have a Facebook group for our church members, and I’ve seen that posts are far more regular now that we can’t be together physically. We post prayer requests and updates on how we’re feeling. It’s so nice to be able to pray for each other.

Virtual Care for Others

Caring for the physical needs of others is perhaps the hardest thing to do virtually. It requires, in most cases, that you have relationships with your neighbors or others in your community already in place. Of course, we can always give money to causes helping others, but as far as relational care goes, we must get creative.

I’m part of a neighborhood moms’ group text, which has been a helpful venue for discussing how we’re all feeling and what grocery store ingredients we are missing for our dinner recipe. We even did a virtual yoga and happy hour meetup last weekend.

I have phone numbers or email addresses for most of our neighbors and have made sure they all know we’re happy to run errands or share food as needed. We also do a fair amount of street to porch yelling. It’s nice to have real conversations!

[Tweet “We can follow Jesus even without the physical gathering.”]

We were meant to be around people. We were created for community. Churches are meant to be groups of people who gather together physically. I hope we are back together physically soon, but there’s a lesson here for us as well. We can follow Jesus even without a physical gathering. We can still worship him. We can still disciple each other. We can still pray for each other and build relationships with our neighbors. Jesus is not limited by the physical.

Amy Wiebe is a Jesus follower, wife, mom of three, church planter, finance director, and lover of sarcasm and deep conversation with friends. She also loves camping, rafting, skiing, sewing, and having people over. Amy blogs with her husband at fringechurch.com.