How Has Your Church Responded to the COVID-19 Crisis?
How Has Your Church Responded to the COVID-19 Crisis?
A Collection of Ideas and Tools from Member Churches
We asked TCT Member Churches how they have adjusted their approach to care, fellowship, and outreach during this time, and collated some of their responses below. We share them here in hopes they will either benefit your local church directly, or you may be inspired to create your own resources. Have questions on how to create your own versions? Share those questions in TCT’s Slack space!
Children’s Scripture Memory Videos, “Sermons for Saplings” Bible Story Videos. See also the Sermon Playlist for an example of sharing pre-recorded video sermons.
Example of sharing pre-recorded audio sermons, and a regular church elder podcast for the congregation.
Sample Family Worship Liturgy provided to congregation
Example Gospel presentation to provide congregation to share with friends
Two helpful articles for pastoral care: One Thing Every Church Can Do about Suffering and What Not to Say to Those Who Are Suffering by Ed Welch, CCEF.org
The Details
More Ideas
Additional Resources
The Light to the Nations and COVID-19
The following originally appeared as a blog post written by TCT Member Pastor Wes Van Fleet, as a message for the members of Kaleo Church in El Cajon, CA on March 18, 2020.
If you are like me, there have been a million narratives coming at you, a billion different thoughts bouncing around your head, and a trillion questions about what all these changes to everyday life mean for you. I personally have a tendency to fear the worst and want to protect my family from any potential threats to them. But I also have a tendency to look to God in these fears and let His voice become louder than all the other ones. As one of your pastors, the question I keep asking God in prayer is, "What would you want from your church during this time of fear and confusion?" As I have prayed and searched the Scriptures, I believe I have found a possible answer and a challenge to us all.
God is unchanging (Heb. 5:8), but our experience of him does change. What I mean is that throughout history, God often shows up in unexpected ways. At the Red Sea when the people of God were being trapped between the sea and a hostile Egyptian Army, God split the sea and saved his people. On the cross, the Son of God died and all his followers scattered in fear, only to be surprised by his glorious resurrection three days later. Throughout church history, our Triune God has used plagues to bring people to himself. He has used the death of martyrs to expand the gospel to the nations. We have a God who is not trying to figure out how to adjust to the COVID-19 outbreak, but is intimately involved with his people in this whole process.
In Isaiah 58, God is confronting his people for observing his Sabbath rest and fasting with the wrong intentions (58:1-4). True Sabbath rest and fasting is meant to be a means of worshipping God by resting from producing, while also seeking justice and love for neighbor (58:5-14). In fact, with the looming darkness of COVID-19 and the surrounding rainclouds above us, look at the brevity of Isaiah 58:10: "if you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday."
The people of God have always been saved to be sent. Read that again: the people of God have always been saved to be sent. Throughout Isaiah, God calls his people back to covenant faithfulness, which is often paired to be a Light to the Nations (42:6; 49:6; 52:10; 60:3). And this call to be a Light to the Nations continued into the New Testament (John 8:12; Acts 13:47; 26:23), and continues with us today.
So, how do we become a Light to the Nations when confined to our houses? How do we become a light to our neighbors and unbelieving friends when a simple sneeze or touch could potentially spread the virus? There have been an array of opinions on this. Some believe we need to ignore all of this and "just obey God." I'm not sure that it is true or helpful. If we were being called not to gather as churches because of our faith, it may be a different story. But we are being called to not gather so we can help slow down and stop the pandemic. Others believe we must hideout and not face the public whatsoever. I also am not sure that this is true or helpful. There are creative ways to Sabbath, fast, and be a Light to the Nations. What appeared to be the darkest day in human history (Matt. 27:45) was actually the Light of Nations himself being lifted up to bring rest and satisfaction to all who would believe (John 12:32). Will we use this dark time to point to our Glorious King and Savior?
Herein lies my challenge to you, Church. I have comprised a list of things you can be doing if you are working from home or spending more time at home than usual:
1. Pray. How many times have you thought to yourself, "If I had more time and less distractions, I would pray more?" Right now we are in a confusing time but we have unlimited access to the throne of God (Rom. 5:1-2; Heb. 4:15-16).
2. Pray for Revival. I have been overwhelmed with the hope and longing that God would mobilize us by the power of His Holy Spirit to seek ways to love our needy neighbors. In a dark time like this, the church can be a Light to the Nations in a way that causes unbelievers to ask questions (1 Peter 3:15). Wouldn't it be a shame to look back on this time and see that we drowned out our fears with Netflix instead of being a Light to the Nations?
3. Check-in. Use this time to download Zoom, Marco Polo, or Facetime to connect with brothers and sisters in the church. Read together, pray together, cry and laugh together.
4. Share Wisdom. If you are a homeschool mom, there are more than likely some parents in the church and some neighbors who are freaking out right now as they have become a homeschooling parent. Share resources and help in any way possible.
5. Serve Neighbors. If you are aware of a neighbor that needs something but you are afraid of human contact, use Amazon to ship them something they need or something that can cheer them up.
6. Worship. If you are a parent and have never really had the time to lead your kids in family worship, start a new rhythm. Ten minutes in the morning or at lunch. One Psalm, one song, and a time of prayer.
7. Make a Schedule. Create a daily schedule of rhythms that can accomplish needed tasks, make time for worship, and provide some kind of online community. Free time can often lead to sloth and lust and we must be active to not fall into these.
8. Spend Time. We have been spending time, in person, with our neighbors. We are safe about this and I know this isn't for everyone. Our neighbors have made us cookies, and we have gone to the store and got needed items for our neighbors. If this is doable, do it.
9. Marvel. Right now it is raining like crazy. Get on some old clothes and go walk in the rain (umbrella is optional). Go dig up worms, get dirty, and be a kid again. Marvel at God's creation.
10. Download RightNow Media. This is an incredible resource for which our church has a certain number of licenses. This will help with Bible Studies, provide sermons, etc. Contact the church office for more info.
Church, what if God is using this time of worldwide change to draw a host of people to himself? What if this is a time for our neighbors to know that we are not a people of fear but a people of hope? This is an incredible and exciting time to be alive. We have a message that can give hope and eternal life to those who are afraid and dead in their sins. Let's not waste this time, beloved.
Pastor Wes
TCT Roundtable Discussion: Pastoring Well in Uncertain Times
TCT Roundtable Discussion: Pastoring Well in Uncertain Times
00:00: Introductions
07:30: Keeping Our Eyes Fixed on Jesus in the Midst of COVID19: Meditations from Hebrews 12:1-2 by Jordan Thomas
23:06: Resources available for shepherding well at tctnetwork.org
24:58: Q&A across the regions on practical ways to shepherd well
26:25: Are you continuing to preach through your current sermon series or have you placed your current book or series on pause and started something new in this time?
28:19: Are you live streaming only the sermon or the whole service? Are you administering the Lord’s Supper over live stream, and if so, how?
32:04: Video conferencing vs live streaming services
33:33: Ways to strategically offer soul care; plans in place regionally
44:44: Ideas for evangelism or Easter Service
50:55: Has Shelter-in-Place changed your ability to live stream?
53:08: Weddings and Funerals
56:34: Where are you meeting for Counseling conversations?
58:27: Further thoughts on “repeated weddings” at a later time
1:02:57: Feeding the homeless
Additional Resources
What Does Christian History Teach Us About Coronavirus?
Plagues, Pestilence and Pandemics: What Does Christian History Teach About Coronavirus?
Authors: Glen Scrivener and Dan Rackham, SpeakLife.org.uk
Portions of the above video are captured in blog format at The Gospel Coalition here.
Additional Resources
Pastoring Amid Pandemic: Counsel from a Pastor in China
Pastoring Amid Pandemic: Counsel from a Pastor in China
Author: Mark Collins
Published: March 18, 2020 at 9marks.org.
Additional Resources
Coronavirus and Historical Christian Responses to Epidemics
Coronavirus and Historical Christian Responses to Epidemics
Author: Earnest St. Victor
Published: March 9, 2020 at GoFarzio.com.
Additional Resources
Center Church: Gospel Contextualization Q&A
Center Church: Gospel Contextualization Q&A
Author: Tim Keller, Redeemer City to City
Additional Videos
Serious Joy in Global Missions
Serious Joy in Global Missions
2019 Eternal Joy Conference, Memphis Session 11
Speakers: Dr. Doug Landrum
Additional Sessions
Hyper-Calvinism & Christian Hedonism
Hyper-Calvinism & Christian Hedonism
2019 Eternal Joy Luncheon Q&A with John Piper
Speakers: John Piper
Additional Sessions
Treasuring Jesus in Church Revitalization
Treasuring Jesus in Church Revitalization
2019 Eternal Joy Conference, Memphis Session 5
Speakers: Matt Moore and Jeremy Wright
Additional Sessions
Treasuring Jesus for Church Planters
Treasuring Jesus for Church Planters
2019 Eternal Joy Conference, Memphis Session 1
Speakers: Kenny Stokes, Jordan Thomas, and Tim Cain
Additional Sessions
2019 P&W Retreat: Jesus Saves Sinners!
Treasuring Christ Together Network
Pastors and Wives Retreat 2019
Kempton Turner: Jesus Saves Sinners!
Additional Sessions
Quickened to Witness | Amy Pope
When I began talking to my friend about the Gospel, Jesus changed her heart and impacted her life more than my mere message.
Have you ever been so ecstatic about the opportunity to baptize a dear friend who has come to faith in Christ Jesus? I recently baptized my friend and she stated, “I’m no longer a slave to sin!” Romans 6:11 tells us, “So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus." She now affirms her proper identity, dead to sin and alive in Him. But as the wife of a church planter and pastor, I know that many of us can attach our identity to the wrong things. For instance, have you ever been tempted to put your identity in the numbers in your church attendance? This can be a weekly, monthly, or annual struggle. If it is not this it can be any other ministry that comes with this rigorous Christ-centered work. Dear Friends, I want us all to remember our only boast is in Christ and His final and decisive work! He brings the people to the point of them realizing they need a faithful shepherd. We must regularly remind ourselves we are temporary shepherds, and if we are truly honest with ourselves, we know we fail in comparison to Christ.
My new believing friend came to our church, not because of anything I did or planned. She was working with a woman at a beauty salon who decided to start attending our church with her family. Striving to be a faithful witness with the few she had been given she invited her to come with her. This reminds me of how Jesus remained faithful to the Mission the Father gave Him to do with a few: Peter, James, and John. He didn't let the numbers of His followers dictate how successful He was as a shepherd. But rather He would lay down his life for them.
Isn’t our highest calling to treasure Jesus more than anything? Our Savior tells us when we are striving toward that end we will also fulfill the second greatest commandment, “you shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Lev 19:18). When we are tempted to trust in the newcomers for happiness, we must remember the Lord has given us a great way to impact the Kingdom for Christ by investing in the few. Some of those people will be unbelievers who walk in the church and simply hear a faithful message. Yet, He has chosen us all to empower the believers to reach these few with faithful discipleship.
When I began talking to my friend about the Gospel, Jesus changed her heart and impacted her life more than my mere message. Jesus used the faithful message she consistently heard from our Sunday Gatherings, our Refuge Community, and in my personal time with her to soften her heart of stone (Ezek 36:26-27). So remember when you have labored for long hours preparing your sermon on Sunday morning, the countless conversations you have had over coffee, the many tears you have to spend with others through prayer, or any other forms of faithful ministry, this is the kind of death Jesus called us to carry out today (Luke 9:23). You've died to serve your Lord, the Chief Shepherd (II Cor 5:14-15). He has entrusted us all with His sheep, and we are to tenderly and ruggedly die for them by laying down our lives for them as Christ did. Has Christ brought you near to Him to merely tolerate you? NO! He lived among us, faithfully obeyed the Father to the point of death (Phil 2:8), and saved us from Satan, sin, and death. Specifically to pastors, you have a great high calling to guard and, "shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you” (1 Pet 5:2).
Christ lived His whole life in obedience to the Father and for the sake of others, “and he died for all, that those who live no longer live for themselves but for him who for your sake died and was raised again" (II Cor. 5:15). Isn't this the symbol of baptism, the burial of death of a self-centered sinful lifestyle and instead living for Christ's glory? Dear brothers and sisters, there are continual deaths throughout this life that King Jesus has called us to. Renew your faith today by remembering Jesus Christ has set you free from the death and eternal separation from God the Father. Our standing with God has been restored by Jesus. It does not end there because He promised He would empower us by His Spirit to remind us this broken, betrayed body does not live for itself anymore. Faithfulness to the Word of God and intentional discipleship in your congregation may be the tools He uses to reach the nations. If He has used me, and many others, as an instrument of grace in my friend's life, He can use you too. No matter how big or small the number of those people, you have been chosen to proclaim the Gospel at this church, in this location, for His glory. Do not become weary for He has appointed His faithful few to fulfill His plans for His purposes. Frank Houghton wrote this helpful stanza in his song Facing a Task Unfinished:
We bear the torch that flaming
Fell from the hands of those
Who gave their lives proclaiming
That Jesus died and rose
Ours is the same commission
The same glad message ours
Fired by the same ambition
To Thee we yield our powers
We go to all the world
With kingdom hope unfurled
No other name has power to save
But Jesus Christ The Lord
May we all bear the torch as those who give our lives proclaiming that Jesus died and rose. We have all been called to go into all the world with a kingdom hope unfurled. Neither your name nor mine has the power to save; no, that only belongs to Jesus Christ our LORD.
Amy Pope
Amy Pope is a humble servant to King Jesus and TCT pastor's wife at Refuge City Church in Dayton, Ohio. Follow her on Instagram @amympope18
Quieted to Witness | Nathan Knight
Personal and corporate strategies of wartime living, courageous witness, and social action to show the supreme value of Christ to fallen people and fallen culture.
I am one of the fortunate ones. Having been sent out by North Wake Church in Wake Forest, North Carolina I was able to sit under the ministry of Pastor Larry Trotter, otherwise known as the “Baptist monk.” Larry is one of the few that carefully pays attention to Jesus’ example of prayer and solitude for the sake of the mission.
He once told us of the need to regularly pull away for prayer and solitude retreats for if we don’t, we’d get “wobbly.” I can't tell you how many times I have been snappy, grumpy, or just spiritually or emotionally tired wherein I evaluated why and recalled this counsel. You can only imagine how this might negatively affect my attempts at witnessing to others the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
The fifth dimension that The Treasuring Christ Together Network emphasizes is this need to witness. We define it this way:
Personal and corporate strategies of wartime living, courageous witness, and social action to show the supreme value of Christ to fallen people and fallen culture.
You can practically feel the energy of this sentence. “Wartime living,” “courageous witness,” and “social action” are daunting tasks, to say the least. To live this way in order to testify to our neighbors and the nations the greatest news of all requires much of us, therefore it likewise demands our souls be quieted. We cannot properly extend ourselves if we are persistently exhausted.
In Matthew 14:23 we read that “after [Jesus] had dismissed the crowds, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone.” In Mark 1:35-39 we read of a similar incident of Jesus pulling away early in the morning and then coming out to preach to the crowds.
Evidently, our Lord saw the need of having His soul stilled before His heavenly Father as He prepared to go to the crowds and when He left the crowds. Surely, this pulling away to pray was petitionary, but also quieting to the noise of preaching. It likely reminded Him why He was there in addition to strengthening His resolve to continue on in the difficult task of preaching the Gospel.
Note also, these instances weren’t momentary. In Matthew 14:23 Jesus was there so long that night came on. In Mark 1:35-39 He had been there early in the morning while it was still dark. This reveals to us the need to not only pull away to be quieted, but also that quieting takes time. Our souls don’t have brakes like our cars that we can merely step on and stop. They are more like flywheels that need both the removal of motion and time for the wheel to slow down. If we are going to be effective as a network in witnessing we must do as our Lord did and quiet our souls so that we will not be “wobbly” and ineffective for the call to wartime living.
Not only is this important for pastors, this is also important for pastor’s wives. They are constantly on the go helping and engaging wartime witnessing themselves. From late night feedings to early morning discipleship meetings all the way to exhausting conversations with their husbands who like to sometimes verbally process the difficulties of their jobs. Pastor’s wives must also have their souls quieted in order to effectively witness to others for Christ.
Let's consider a few ways we can quiet our souls for the purposes of witnessing both personally and corporately:
1. Personal Private Prayer: The life of Christ and Acts 6:4 would indicate to us that one of the most important things we do as leaders in the church is to pray. Simply put, if you are not praying, you are not communing with God. And if you are not communing with God what might this indicate about your witnessing?
Try and find a quiet spot at a time where you know you will not be disturbed and consistently give yourself to prayer. That may be an actual closet or it may be getting to your office early or waking up early before the kids get up. Use the Psalms or other prayers from Scripture in addition to resources like Valley of Vision or Prone to Wander by Barbara Duguid and Wayne Duguid Houk to assist you when it's hard to begin.
2. Meditation: I've found that by adding the step of Scripture meditation in between my Bible reading and prayer time has assisted in quieting my soul for witnessing. It tends to warm my soul and quiet me down and lead me into prayer more naturally. That singular thought or verse I meditate on tends to find its way into conversations and prayers as I go about my day.
3. Personal/Corporate retreats: Whether it be a half day or a full day, pulling away from your regular context as an individual or with others once every 4-6 weeks is ideal in quieting our souls in order to be an effective witness. Find nearby parks, go on a hike, or sit in an art museum. Provide enough time to let that flywheel slow down. Most often the hardest part of slowing down is that first hour. Therefore, extended time is needed to get the most out of the exercise.
4. Corporate prayer: Whether it be the prayer gathering before church each week or in members meetings, I have found listening to the prayers of my covenanted brothers or sisters pray for others often stirs my soul and fills me up. They do the praying for me as I listen and drink in their petitions to God for others.
5. Turn off the screens: We have a beautiful view off of our porch that overlooks NW D.C. that my wife and I sit on each night in the warmer months. We put down our phones, turn off the TV, and light a couple candles, and sometimes play beautiful music softly after the kids go down to sleep and we just talk. I enjoy watching the trees sway back and forth against the breeze and I often stare at the moon or the few stars we can see in the city. There is something about those quiet moments wherein I look to creation and am reminded of my smallness as I speak with my wife whom I love that naturally stills me and gives me strength for the next day.
Whatever it is, brothers and sisters, quiet your soul so that you do not become “wobbly” and tire in the task of witnessing. As a network, we emphasize these things so that we might be in our communities courageously witnessing for the long haul.
Nathan Knight
2016 P&W Retreat: Quickened Hearts
Quickened Hearts
Jordan Thomas
2016 TCTN Pastors & Wives Retreat
San Diego, CA
Lighting a Candle Not Cursing the Darkness
A Video from the 2016 BCSPasCon
Speaker: Steve Timmis