A minister believes that the pandemic will lead the world into a new normal. Thus, with the current developments, he shared that the church must implement "radical adjustments" in some of its areas.
"In our current watershed moment, when so much has been brought to a standstill, many leaders believe the church needs to make radical adjustments," Larry Tomczak, a best-selling author and public policy advisor at Liberty Counsel, declared on Charisma Magazine.
He then presented the areas wherein he thinks changes are necessary.
First, "deconstruction."
This is not the same as the current trend affecting many who are leaving the faith. Tomczak emphasized that the current practice of preaching the gospel must be changed in accordance with how the early Christians did it in the New Testament.
"We need to deconstruct our prevalent gospel presentation to highlight repentance, Lordship and the kingdom of God as they are so evident in the Gospels, Acts and Epistles," he said.
"There simply is no biblical basis for a 'Jesus as Savior only' message. The content of our message determines the quality of our converts! And if we want New Testament results, we have to recover the New Testament pattern," he continued, recalling the bravery of the Christians in Acts 17:6-7.
Next, "distribution."
Tomczak said that "God's blueprint" of the Church is revealed in Ephesians 4:11-16, wherein he described it as a "body," not a building. He also stated that the leaders' responsibility is not just educating their members but also equipping them for the "work of service." With this, he pointed out that the five-fold ministry is "essential" and not "optional" so that its every part will be able to accomplish its work.
"Ministry must be distributed throughout the body of believers. Christians, all having God-ordained ministries, must discover and develop their gifts (21 cited in Scripture), then be deployed and distributed outside buildings into life," he further said.
Finally, "decentralization."
As shown by the early believers in Acts 2:42-47, the author said that the church must be decentralized because its purpose is not merely about holding services but also for creating relationships.
"And God is first and foremost concerned with the quality of our work, not the quantity, for it will all be tested by fire in the final judgment to either 'receive a reward' or see it be 'burned,'" he added, citing 1 Corinthians 3:10-15.
He urged the practice of having "plurality in the leadership" through team ministry, as modelled by the New Testament, and warned against the use of "one-man ministry" leadership style, which historically causes ending of ministries.
Tomczak drew his suggestions from his own experience when he and his team pioneered a church in the 1970s. It initially began by teaching about 2,000 young people near the White House, which eventually grew into more than 60 churches in the United States and other countries.
He noted that the pandemic has brought "major intervention" in the church today through decentralization. But as seen in Acts 8, he exclaimed that the change actually resulted in "expansive evangelism."
He shared a couple of ministries that utilized this pattern.
One is the Yoido Full Gospel Church, a Christian church with more than 800,000 members in South Korea. Its founder, the late Yonggi Cho, reportedly disclosed that the key to the congregation's "explosive growth" was "decentralized home cell groups."
Another congregation that practices this approach is the Victory Church, which was launched in the Philippines by Bob Weiner in the 1980s and is now being headed by Pastor Steve Murrel, alongside a Filipino leadership team.
Pastor Murrel estimates that the church, which only began with 150 high school and university students in 1984, currently has 91,000 members with 50,000 weekly attendance and 5,000 fellowship groups.
In conclusion, Tomczak challenged the church leaders to make the necessary changes in their congregations as modelled by the early church in the New Testament, which he described as "a growing, evangelizing and multiplying body of believers."
