"And there arose on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles." (Acts 8:1)
Dear Crosswind, You may find this email more lengthy than usual but I encourage you to take time to read it. As your pastor, I want to present a treatise that I hope can provide encouragement and even partial answers to questions around these troubling times. Right before He ascended to heaven, the Lord Jesus imparted His vision for the movement of His church. He said: "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth (Acts 1:8)". His desire was for the gospel to advance outward until it reaches the uttermost parts of the earth. The book of Acts records how God empowered the early church by fulfilling the promise of His Holy Spirit and guided her explosive growth: "praising God and having favor with all the people - And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. "(Acts 2:47) However, as the early church grew, they remained mostly gathered in Jerusalem and delayed in realizing Jesus' call to take the gospel to "all of Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth". Until in chapter 8, through the severe persecution wrought by Saul (who later became the apostle Paul), the people of God were scattered to guess where? The regions of Judea and Samaria as the Lord had had envisioned. There, they proclaimed the gospel and therefore the kingdom of God expanded. I call it the 1:8-8:1 phenomenon; what Jesus called for the church to do in Acts 8:1 got traction in Acts 8:1. In the very next chapter, chapter 9, Saul was converted and became the Apostle Paul who took the gospel "to the end of the earth" through His missionary journeys and by reaching first the scattered diaspora Jews. Later the apostle Peter wrote to Christians who were scattered in different parts of the world (1 Peter 1:1). We have heard many times among American churches the vision of "gathered to scatter". But this is the model of western churches, where they establish and grow the church locally and send forth a few missionaries when they have been trained and commissioned; while the focus of growth remained in the local base. In the early church, we clearly see a different model of church growth, the Holy Spirit scattered the whole church through an adverse circumstance - persecution. We see that the church is not the building, nor just a locality of believers staying in one place but the body of Christ that remained united even though physically separated. In the places where they were scattered, the diaspora church gathered new believers into the universal church. In effect, it was not the model of "gathered to scatter" but rather "scattered to gather". This I believe is what has happened with the coronavirus, an adverse circumstance that God allowed to spread in a global scale. The fact that this pandemic was timed in an age of advanced means of communication through the internet shows that while the church is virtually "scattered" through our isolation and separation brought by the lockdown; the reach we have through the internet allowed the church to have a global presence and perform a virtual gathering of souls from around the world. These distant souls are a captive audience to the online gospel because they themselves are isolated and confined because of their own lockdown situation. In His genius and creativity, Almighty God has captivated these otherwise unreachable souls from far flung nations and loosened the soils of the western church model of comfortably staying where they are. He is guiding the global church back on track of "going into all the world and proclaiming the gospel to the whole creation" (Mark 16:15). We can say that by God's prompting: "the church has left the building." We are now the church scattered, but by God's design, we are gathering the lost souls from the unreached nations of the world before the return of Jesus. God be praised! In the midst of the pandemic, He is accomplishing His purpose that will usher in the return of Jesus and establishment of His final Kingdom. Knowing and believing that God is turning even what is evil in the form of COVID-19, to bring about the ultimate good should encourage us to trust Him even through the difficulties and challenges we face in this crisis. I take to heart the words of the apostle Paul: "For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal." (2 Corinthians 4:17-18) Be blessed but more importantly, be victorious, people of God at Crosswind! The grace of the Lord Jesus be with You all through these trying times. Pastor Ramon
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