The level of intimacy and spiritual accountability modeled by the Early Church and within Scripture cannot be attained by simply attending a single Sunday morning gathering. This can only happen in smaller settings of relationship where we look at each in the eye over a meal and fellowship instead of at the back of someone’s head for an hour during a weekly worship service. This does not dismiss the place of a larger gathering. It simply reorders its preeminence as our most valued and invested gathering. Perhaps this will be one of the valuable lessons we learned in the last 18 months of forced separation.

I believe the Lord is using what many considered a negative to become a positive reordering of His Church. This time of separation has been training us to become lean and spiritually muscular. In that process of preparation, many have come to realize some of our previous models of ministry and the resulting focus of energy and resources required to keep them afloat, will not have the ability to safely navigate us through the challenging terrain we will surely experience in the coming season.