Church With No Maps in Lockdown
This sermon can be listened to here
Gate Pa – 12th Sunday in Ordinary Time- Year A - 2020
Readings:
Psalm Psalm: 86:1-10, 16-17
First Reading: Genesis 21:8-21
Second Reading: Rom 6:1b-11
Gospel: Matt 10:24-39
What I want to say:
We have spent 10 years hearing about not having maps for how to do church anymore. We certainly had no maps for doing church over the last 3 months. We had to make it up as we went.
What I want to happen:
What was your best experience of church during the lock down
What was the hardest thing
What was the gift of that time
What three wishes do you have for the future as a result of your lockdown church experience
“What do you see as the long term positive and negative effects of COVID-19 for your parish?”
The Sermon
1. Introduction:
Couple of years ago Bishop Andrew used Canoeing the Mountains: Christian Leadership in Uncharted Territory by Tod Bolsinger to help us think about how to be church in this post-modern secular world we find ourselves in.
None of it was new.
10 years ago Bishop David invited Alan Roxburgh, the author of Missional Mapping, to speak at our clergy school.
His message was simple
The maps we used for so long to build good churches no longer work. And they haven’t for some time.
Our assumptions about our place in society are no longer are valid.
And since I came here 8 years ago, I have talked about it as well.
We are like those 2 women last week, lost on the motorway in a borrowed car, only we have not friends to phone.
But we have had no idea what to do about that
It is hard for us to imagine doing church any other way.
Until now
2. Lockdown
3 months go everything changed overnight
One week we were preparing for an AGM
And then we were planning how to be church in lockdown
No maps
No one given us help on what we might do
We had to work it out ourselves
Thankful for work of vestry and number others helping us create new maps
New ways of being
So, what can we take into the future?
I have some questions
Find some people to talk to
· What was your best experience of church during the lock down?
· What was the hardest thing?
· What was the gift of that time?
· “What do you see as the long term positive and negative effects of COVID-19 for us as a parish?”
· What three wishes do you have for the future as a result of your lockdown church experience
3. AGM
2 final comments
a. We need to take these learning into the future.
- They are helpful hints for us
b. It would be easy for us to fear for the future
honest we have good reason to if we look around.
I want to invite us to not give into fear
But to hold hope
Last week and this week we have heard some hard stuff Matthew gospel
Describing what lay in story for those disciples
And those who would become disciples in the future
We, like them, have been invited to share in Jesus’ task of bring kingdom of God in the midst of humanity.
I’ve talked about what that might involve in the pew sheet.
Jesus in Mathew wasn’t saying it to put them off
He said those things within the wider theme of “Do not be afraid”
I am with you until the end of the age
As we take our learning into the future
Let us not be afraid
But open and faithful
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