After completing a 3-week evangelistic series in Feb-March 2020 Bundoora Church shut down, along with the rest of Victoria, due to the pandemic and, like everyone else, we looked to the future to make some important decisions to navigate uncertain circumstances.
Due to an unprecedented awakening amongst church members on the pandemic and Bible Prophecy we were able to embark on a months-long study into Daniel and Revelation, helping members and visitors to understand how events in Bible prophecy related to what we were experiencing. This helped people see that the pandemic was not the final sign before Jesus’ coming but certainly a significant turning point in history.
We found that through preaching relevant topics that sought to help people focus less on their fear and more on Jesus, the Overcomer of our fear, we could minister to people giving them hope and certainty in uncertain times.
Technology wise, we chose Zoom as opposed to a livestream because we knew that through Zoom we could keep people from church engaged and involved in the weekly worship. There could also be time to interact and fellowship online which we saw was the greatest need given the lockdown and social isolation. Keeping people connected and not disengaged from one another was absolutely vital and helped us greatly in 2020.
During the week we created more ‘touch points’ for people from church to keep connected. We noticed a greater desire for people to connect as a church body during Covid as people sensed their need for one another for support more so than ever. Tuesday nights we ran our weekly prayer meeting; Wednesday nights we ran workshops using courses put together by the HopeLives365 website run by Pr. Mark Finley’s team and other Pastors/Trainers from around the world. Workshop topics included Christian Finance – people were interested in knowing how to better manage their finances if there was a need to move further away from the city; Time management; Healthy Living, etc. Why was this important? For our young church plant especially we knew we needed to come out of Covid stronger with a trained leadership team on the other end. On other nights of the week we had evangelistic Bible studies taking place.
Our experiences in 2020 helped us prepare for the future! God surely does bring good out of bad when we listen to Him…