Reopening the Church Building
Yesterday we released the news that gathered services are coming back on Pentecost Sunday! If you missed it, that’s the headline right there.
We’re going to be opening up our building again on Sunday 23rd May for our evening Sunday Night Worship livestream. There are several details still to be announced, including the start time, but for now we can say with some excitement that we are going to be back in the building!
If you saw the announcement video – either during our service on Sunday or on social media – you may be wondering why we’re doing things the way that we are as opposed to just coming back for morning services straight away. There are a few different reasons, which I’ll address in this post.
We’ve Never Been This Way Before
It’s been more than 400 days since our last in-person service. We’ve had to innovate during that time and learn lots of new ways to do things. There have been successes and failures; there have been joys and struggles. Through it all, we’ve had a firm conviction that God is calling us to do something new. The sudden closure of our buildings and the cessation of normal church activities came as a shock to pretty much everyone, but as the dust settled and we got stuck into things, we (and by we I don’t just mean Dewsbury Elim, but many church leaders) began to sense that God may want to use this time of disruption to shake the church up and point us in a new direction.
One of the questions I’ve personally been considering and will continue to consider is: “If all we had was the New Testament – no church history or traditions – what would our church look like?” There’s a great deal of what we used to do before lockdown which was simply “what we do around here.” If we’re honest with ourselves, we’d settled in some ways into a way of doing things which wasn’t necessarily fulfilling the mandate Jesus gave us to make disciples of all nations.
As we look to reopen the building, we still don’t have a clear picture of what this new thing is that God is doing. Therefore, we’re not going to launch back into what we used to do, or we risk settling back into old patterns and missing what God is doing now. This is going to be a period of learning for all of us; it may be uncomfortable as our concepts of what church is are challenged. Our mission remains the same; the model of how we go about it should always be open to change.
We Need Teams
Online church is here to stay. One of the things we can be sure of is that we will continue to try and engage people online. We have worked hard during lockdown to install new equipment and systems in our worship space which will help us to facilitate a “hybrid” model of church which is both online and in-person at the same time.
This presents us with some exciting opportunities for more people to get involved in the work of ministry. Whether it’s learning how to operate our camera, running the livestream, being an online host on-camera or in the chat, there are loads of ways for people to minister going forward. We will provide all the training needed to get you going on whatever area of ministry you are wanting to explore, but I’m sure you can appreciate this doesn’t happen overnight. Right now the number of people trained and able to run our tech ministries is very small, so starting small is essential to give us time to train more people for this ministry.
Would you like to get involved? Contact office@dewsburyelim.org.uk to find out more.
Everything is Subject to Change
They say that change is the one constant in life, and we’ve certainly seen that over the last year and a bit! All of our plans are contingent on the government’s roadmap for exiting lockdown going ahead as scheduled. We are keeping up to date with the latest guidance both from the government and from Elim HQ, as well as keeping an eye on infection rates locally in Kirklees.
We are hopeful that everything will continue as it has been so far. The vaccine rollout by the NHS is incredibly promising. Even so, one of the things we’ve learnt through the pandemic is to hold all your plans lightly!
I imagine some people will still have a lot of questions about all this. As I said in the announcement video, please bear with us as we work out all the details. Let’s be excited that new things are on the horizon! God is stirring something not just in Dewsbury Elim but across the Body of Christ. It’s going to be an interesting few years as we discover what that is!
