20/20 Vision
2020 was an anticipated year for the Church. 2020 was to be a year of vision, a year of revival, a year of movement. Then came COVID-19. And the tragic death of George Floyd. And monumental natural disasters. From big-scale tragedy to minute disappointment, 2020 has given us more heartbreak than victory, taking more than it has given – or so it’s easy to believe.
Amid overwhelming stress and deep sorrow, it’s easy to convince ourselves that 2020 is turning out to be anything but the year we prayed for. On the other hand, maybe– just maybe – 2020 has been exactly the year for which we prayed.
2020 stripped us of the comfortable and destroyed our expectations of entitled “normalcy.” It exposed deep-rooted sin, division in the church and corruption in our world. But for all the turmoil, 2020 has given us exactly what we have asked. More believers are on their knees in prayer. Revivals are rising up across our country – including at the very intersection where George Floyd was killed – and people are rediscovering Jesus or finding him for the first time. The local and global Church is unifying its mission and reaching out to the hurting, the hungry and the lost.
Pastors and Christian leaders alike have risen the possibility that perhaps God is allowing us the opportunity to make room for Him again:
Ryan Delling a Christian ministry leader in New York recently shared the following on his blog, Delling Ministry “I want to suggest that what is happening in this season of pause is that the Lord, in His wisdom and grace, is exposing areas of skewed structure and that He is doing this to prepare us for an immediately-following great revival. He is doing this at every level simultaneously in the Christian world: in our church structures, ministries, finances, priorities, and personal spiritual lives. We have built the American church by using the structures of the world. We have ordered our lives around productivity, busyness, and success. We have looked out for ourselves and not our neighbors. We have talked about the gospel and not lived it out in our own families. As churches and pastors, we are so busy building our own ministries that we have no concept of the Ekklesia (the regional church). And suddenly, in a matter of days, everything stopped. Things that were causing our vision to be clouded in these areas were all stripped away and all at once.”
A Barna Webcast titled “Caring for Souls in a New Reality” also highlights the good coming from this year of crisis:
“I think part of the benefit—if I could put it that way—of a crisis is that it reveals the flaws and the weaknesses that we’ve [as the Church] tolerated over the years,” said Soong-Chan Rah, Professor of Church Growth and Evangelism at North Park University. “When a crisis like this hits, we’re forced to face some of these challenges that we’ve allowed to fester for many years.”
“I think one of the really positive things I’ve seen is the emphasis on ‘the Church is the people and not the building,’” Bobby Gruenewald, Pastor and Innovation Leader at Life.Church points out. “People say those words a lot of times, but until you’re forced into this reality, I don’t think people fully comprehend that. I see pastors really embracing this notion that this is not our building anymore, it’s really about the flock, the community and the people that are there.”
One thing that has been made clear in 2020 is the faithfulness of God. Amid chaos, He is there. In the aftermath of tragedy, His love and truth remain. He is at work in the life of an individual and within His body that is the Church.
May we learn to see the year 2020 with gospel-informed clarity and allow the Lord to work even beyond our expectations or plans, and in the depth of our sorrow and distress.
