We are in the height of extreme discomfort. The first cause is Covid-19, the second cause is the national strife from our recent elections. Combine those with the uncertainty of the future, and you have a lot of uncomfortable and miserable people. THEN you add the rules and regulations of the Church and you have most people who don’t see the Church, nor it’s teachings, as relevant to the circumstances of our day. 

But is it relevant?

I would suggest that it is precisely in times like these where the Church can and should be most relevant. One needs only to study church history over the centuries and see times like the Dark Ages when the political institutions fell apart, and the Church was there to care for the people. 

While Jesus did (and does) allow the crumbling of those political institutions that provide stability for the people to fall, He has always been there to pick up the people and rebuild. I believe we are in one of those times today where the world has been left to its own methods of operation and finds itself in utter chaos. 

And now God will look to His Church to become the solution. He is not looking to the institution, but to the people. He desires to mobilize His faithful, through the indwelling guidance of the Holy Spirit, to rise and become a light in this darkness. You see, the people are not encumbered by the political quagmire that has caused the wheels of the institutional Church to come to an almost grinding halt. 

Where the Church may find itself incapable of functioning, the people can move freely. What they lack is the leadership and vision of what to do. For years they have been trained to “wait until Father or a staff member tells them what to do”. It appears that they lack the vision and instructions, because there is no program for Covid-19. For years the people have been trained on written instruction and now find themselves looking for someone to guide them.

I am not proposing that the institutional Church has become irrelevant. What I am proposing is that we go back to informing our disciples with the knowledge of how to draw close to the Holy Spirit, learn how to listen to His voice of instruction and become dependent on the Spirit to guide them through these and every other difficult time. 

Ask any person in ministry today about how they operate their office of ministry, and, if they are truly serving Jesus, they will tell you that they depend on the Holy Spirit to flow through their efforts. If this is what the ministers do, then why are we not training our people from their earliest days on the ways of the Spirit?

The time has come and gone for the pastors and leaders of the Church to cast vision of moving forward instead of sitting back and waiting for the state to give us our marching orders. What are our marching orders from God? What does He want us to do? 

We have the same Holy Spirit as the Old Testament prophets. We should be seeing the signs of the times and proclaiming the time to draw intentionally close to the Lord. Now is the time to grow closer to God, not sit and wait for Covid to end. Now is the time when each person in the pew needs to renew their commitment to the Lord and live the truth of their baptism. 

Those of us in leadership need to have the warning horns blown that call the people to assemble and help them understand the threats coming in the future and their need to get spiritually ready. In these days where no one is happy, we should be focusing our attention on the Lord. Otherwise, many of our members present before Covid-19 will not return but will look only to the world for their salvation. 

The Church of Jesus Christ will always be relevant when His faithful operates in the anointing of the Holy Spirit.  It is when we cease to operate in the life and power of God that we work under our power, limited by our weaknesses, compromised by our sin. 

Many of our faithful people are bound, and they are giving themselves to all the vices available to them to cope with the current struggles of our day. What will happen when it gets worse? Who among them will stand ready to help others or new people who wish to discover the Lord? Only those who HAVE BEEN PREPARED! So let us raise a call to the faithful that now is the time to grow spiritually. Come back and get spiritually strengthened!!