Primal Church
Mark Tidsworth, Team Leader
Crises are like that…they sift us, break us down, strip away the fluff, and reveal our core.
John the Baptist anticipated this, predicting the one to come would bring a certain kind of crisis to those he encountered.
“His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
Luke 3:17, NRSV
When people encountered Jesus, they found someone who could move right to the heart of the matter. People rarely stepped away from Jesus without greater clarity. In this way, encountering Jesus served as a crisis, a wake-up call. People discovered what they were really about; discovered their primal essence, through encountering the Son of God.
During these Coronavirus days we aren’t church as usual, to make an understatement. Church leaders are making decisions every day on how to be church NOW. We are reinventing how we are church as we go. Much of what we used to do simply doesn’t apply, belonging to another time and space.
So this is the opportunity in this crisis – to go primal; to discover what’s essential about us as church. The chaff is burning away due to the strange circumstances of our lives. What’s real, life-giving, and enduring is rising. This is our opportunity to see what’s essential to our life as church, allowing the chaff to blow away in the wind or burn up with the virus.
This is the current work of every church, identifying and living into its true identity during this crisis. This Coronavirus is stripping away much of what we used to do, inviting us to clarify what’s essential. Our hope is to come out of this crisis renewed and invigorated as robust expressions of church.
To get there, the following three questions must be engaged and answered.
Who are we?
This is the identity question.
We are disciples of Jesus Christ.
Who are our partners?
This is the companionship question.
We are the Body of Christ, communities of disciples gathered around Jesus Christ.
What are we about?
This is the mission question.
We join God’s mission to bring the kingdom to earth, as it is in heaven.
Parenthetically, this is what our people really need from church leadership right about now – clarity. No, we don’t want to double-down on exactly what we do as church, recognizing that is emerging as we go. Yet we do need to be clear about our identity, companioning, and mission. We are disciples who are one body with one mission. Clear communication about these three enduring and primal aspects of church will comfort and strengthen disciples during this crisis. Increasing our clarity on these three primal essentials positions us to emerge from this crisis ready to move ahead.
Previous generations have lived into opportunities like this, labeling the outcomes as reformation or revival or renewal. Now is our opportunity. May we go primal in these days, claiming what is enduring and wonderful about being church.