I am a part of a small but growing church in my city, called Radiant. Our identity as a church is that “we are a family of servant missionaries learning to be and make disciples”.
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Early Covid
During the first several months of Covid our church didn’t hold services along with many other churches. Our worship team and elders recorded the sermons and music for individuals to listen to either live or on their own time. But during that difficult time, our church was still living and active. We were still connecting and growing. How was that possible?
Church Set Up
Our church is set up to have smaller communities within the large group. We call these Gospel Communities or GC’s for short. And within those smaller communities we have even smaller groups of the same gender. We call these DNA’s which stands for Disciple, Nurture, and Advocate. The idea is that this would mimic Jesus’ example of disciples.
Jesus had lots of followers, but he had 12 main disciples, like our GC. Inside of that group of disciples he had 3 who were closer than the others (Peter, James, and John), like our DNA’s.
This set up has served our church family well. It allows each group to truly be a family inside of the church. We are able to come around each other and help those who need it.
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Summer 2020
As summer approached and Covid was still a concern, our church opted to meet at parks outside. This allowed for everyone to have space and breathe fresh air, while still being able to all be together. Our church was able to meet in fields just like Jesus had when he taught sermons.
Our GC’s and DNA’s had been meeting virtually and now could finally meet up in person. While Covid complicated things, our church was able to connect on a smaller level throughout the pandemic.
When winter came and we had to meet indoors, each family would sit 6 feet away from another family. Many were concerned about meeting indoors and continued to meet virtually.
We now have transitioned back to only having a podcast of the sermon posted online instead of having a video recording of the entire sermon. This is what we did pre-Covid.
Other Factors
Following the pandemic our church also endured some major changes.
First our church’s building was sold, we were renting the space. This resulted in another church opening their doors to allow us to have our services in their building in the afternoons.
A few months later our lead elder moved to to the lower 48 (contiguous U.S.) with his family. Our church is led by a group of vetted elders called by the holy spirit. No one elder is more important than the others. Instead they all use their strengths as God has gifted them. The lead elder functions as the mediator of elder meetings and in particular, this elder who moved away, was the primary speaker on Sundays.
Even through all of this change, our church family has stayed strong.
Our Elders repeatedly say “we don’t want you to come to church we want you to be the church”. Our church isn’t a building, we are a people. It’s who is meeting. We don’t go to church, we meet up and are the church.
