Times have changed. People are staying home from church services in record numbers \u2013 and blaming the COVID virus. History has shown when we are forced by circumstances to change, we eventually get comfortable with the change, and even prefer the new methods to the old. John Cage, an American composer, artist, and philosopher, confessed, \u201cI can’t understand why people are frightened by new ideas. I’m frightened of old ones.\u201d Most churches I know have recovered approximately half of their pre-pandemic attendance, while experiencing positive numbers of online viewers. The fear is that folks have become so comfortable worshipping at home, in their pajamas, seated in their recliner, sipping their coffee that they will not choose to return to personal worship attendance. If that happens, churches will need new ideas. Ralph Waldo Emerson, wrote, \u201cWise men put their trust in ideas and not in circumstances.\u201d What will the post-pandemic church look like? Most will need to learn how to do online worship with greater excellence. We may need to train telephone and media counselors to deal with online responses during the worship service and especially during the response time. Some facilities may need to be reconfigured. More emphasis on home groups could be needed. A study of effective media ministry ideas could be time well spent. I once taught a Seminary course entitled, \u201cThe Use of Media in Evangelism,\u201d but it was an elective course and few students saw the need to register for it. Seminaries and Bible Colleges may need to reinvent that course or one similar to it, perhaps make it a requirement. The future could be very different from the past. We\u2019ll need to pray our way through it. Which reminds me that according to my research for America\u2019s National Prayer Committee, approximately 95% of Seminaries and Bible Colleges do not have a separate course on prayer in their curriculum. It\u2019s time to add such. Only then will we be able to understand Paul\u2019s wish for young Timothy, \u201cMay the Lord give you understanding in all things\u201d (2 Timothy 2:7). <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Times have changed. People are staying home from church services in record numbers \u2013 and blaming the COVID virus. History has shown when we are forced by circumstances to change, we eventually get comfortable with the change, and even prefer the new methods to the old. John Cage, an American composer, artist, and philosopher, confessed,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-morning-manna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2847"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2848,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2847\/revisions\/2848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}