Post-Easter, Post-COVID: Entering New a Phase of the Church’s Life

It might sound optimistic to title this newsletter “post-COVID.” Indeed, we don’t know the future, and things are not yet back to normal! But in hope that the complexities of last year are diminishing, we are planning ahead. We don’t know everything that is to come, but our hope is a year of healthy development for this young church. As I have looked back on the last year, I have been deeply grateful for what has occurred, and I look forward in hope to what lies ahead.

I was challenged a couple years ago with the idea that a church should always be striving, as a body, to develop vertically and horizontally. Vertical growth looks like people more eager to pray, more eager to worship, more desirous of the presence of God. This should happen not just to us individually, but as a body, and so a healthy church consists of a thick connection of people seeking the presence of God together. As I survey the last year, we have seen this! Horizontal development looks like serving those in need, spreading the gospel, and discipling Christians who are young in the faith. Again, this should happen as a body, and again, as I survey the last year, we have seen this occur! Prayer walks, conversation partners with immigrants, intergenerational triads, youth catechism—a lot has happened during COVID!

The question I have set before the governance team and staff is, “How do we need to grow vertically and horizontally, as a body, in a post-COVID world?” Some of the practices of the last year will transfer, but others won’t.

We know a few things. We know that now is the time for development in how we disciple the next generation. From nursery to college, we want to lead the next generation deeper into the faith. We know that we need to move forward in external ministry. We know that the world we live in increasingly doesn’t think in Biblical ways, and so we need to teach people how to navigate our culture gracefully and faithfully, with minds and hearts renewed by the word of God. As we work on these areas, expect to hear “steps forward” from us!

One major step forward is logistic, but it will open the door to many other things. We are in serious conversation with Cambridge to move our service to 9:00am and set up a semi-permanent presence at Cambridge. We hope that this transition occurs in May and are expectant that it will make the church more accessible to families with children. This will enable us to have activities and classes for the youth and have fellowship time for the adults after church. It will also mean church offices and a fixed children’s classroom. We will keep you posted on this transition!

As we move forward, please don’t stop praying for the church, and please let us know if you have ideas for our development.

In Christ,
Steven+