What a time we live in.

I can’t remember a time in our country’s history being this divided over so many things:

Mask/No mask
Real/Hoax
Red/Blue
Black/white
School/No school

Every single issue has become this no holds barred, fight to the death that seems impossible to make sense of.  Every single person has been pushed to their limit. Tension is at all-time high.  It appears that nuance and civil conversation has become extinct.

Every institution, organization, business, and school has been forced to rethink and reimagine why they exist and how they operate.

And the church has not been immune to any of this.

Barna Research has been studying the church through this whole pandemic, and the numbers are pretty depressing. The average percentage of in person attendance is 20% of normal. 2 out 3 active churchgoers have told polls that they will probably not return to the building until a vaccine is discovered. 82% of churches across the nation are reporting a decrease in people engaging in church – both online and physical.

Is this a hopeless situation?
Are we now just supposed to huddle up, study the end times, and just wait on Jesus?
Are we supposed to work twice as hard to get church ‘back to normal?’

Here’s both a freeing and a terrifying thought… Maybe ‘normal’ wasn’t quite right to begin with. Maybe what this pandemic exposed are the weak places where we – and the church – need to reset. This could be the time for a reimagining and rebooting of our faith, our reason for existence, how we should live and how we engage the combative culture around us.

These are deep, foundational questions that we need to answer again. And we don’t need hot takes or ‘expert analysis’ on these. We need to hear from the very heart of God.

The church in Philippi had to navigate all of this… and Paul says they did it well. Paul lays out all of this in his letter to the Philippians. What is the Gospel? Why do we need a gospel? What does it mean to be a saint? What’s the point of the church? As a Christ-follower, how am I to interact with my culture? What is my model for behavior? How is the church supposed to navigate the complicated waters of a highly combative culture?

Let me invite you to hit the pause button and gather around this book of Philippians. Let’s allow God to hit the reset button in our life.