As the coronavirus continues to ravage communities and the world at large, it is difficult to foresee the future or any positive outcomes for the church of Jesus Christ. In this series of articles, I would like to suggest a few possible positive outcomes after the lockdown. My hope is that these articles might help us to prepare well for life after COVID-19.

I believe there is going to be a greater appreciation for fellowship among the faithful people of God. Before we go on, let me emphasize; this greater appreciation for biblical church life will happen only among the people of God. Talk to any pastor today, one of the most discouraging things in pastoral ministry is a lack of faithfulness in attendance. Our world is hugely distracted. Priorities are all over the place. It takes very little for many of God’s people to abandon church gatherings on a Sunday morning. All the reasons that would have been inconceivable as reasons for missing fellowship a century ago seem to settle well with our generation. A Christian today can miss church because of shopping, laundry, studies, cooking, a minor headache, attending a wedding, visiting the sick, and many petty excuses. One of the reasons this happens is because we have become so familiar with this sacred institution that we now make light of it. We know we can drop it this Sunday and pick it up the next day. We think church gatherings will always be there, waiting for us.  

I believe there is going to be a greater appreciation for our freedom of worship. It is one thing to have the freedom to come and go as you please. It is another to have that liberty taken away from you. Knowing that even if you wanted to go to church, you would not be able to do so. You have been mandated to shut down the church doors with no precise date in sight for re-opening. For genuine believers, who have a clear understanding of the purpose of the gathering of God’s people, having this freedom taken from them is a big deal. There is a greater appreciation for church meetings among the persecuted church than those with total freedom to gather for worship weekly. There are millions of believers today who would do anything in their power to gather with fellow Christians for worship. For these believers, gathering for worship is risking one’s life. Today this freedom has been taken away from us. I hope there is going to be a greater appreciation for the freedoms we enjoy. 

I believe there is going to be a greater appreciation for the one-another ministry. Serious Christians are genuinely concerned about holding fast the confession of their hope in Christ. But they do this through face to face Sunday gathering and fellowship with other saints. False Christians settle for showing up at the church gathering to appease the conscious, sold to dead religion. Given a chance not to gather, they would take that gladly. False professors will accept any church cancellation gladly, with very little sorrow or resistance. Not so with God’s people; the people of the Lord know that to hold fast to the confession, they need the ministry of others. They need faithful pulpit ministry, corporate prayer, and to celebrate the Lord’s supper within the corporate gathering. The faithful know that they need to join voices with other saints in praise to the Lord Almighty, the King of all creation. Today millions of Christians across the world may be yearning to return to public worship, to be with fellow saints. Soon they will return with a renewed appreciation of Hebrews 10:23 – 25, the gathering of the saints. 

Today we have been shut out and cannot gather or see our brothers and sisters face to face. One way we “hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering” is by considering one another and steering one another unto good works. As the saying goes, out of sight, out of love. It is undoubtedly hard to consider those we don’t meet often. When we gather faithfully with other believers, we have the opportunity to hear of and see their needs. Many believers take this opportunity of helping others for granted; maybe they keep putting it off. During this lockdown, we are being reminded that we should make use of every opportunity we have to be a blessing to others. We are learning now that these opportunities will not always be there. It is a possible outcome that at the end of the lockdown, many of us will make use of every opportunity to bless someone in our congregation. 

Those who have no pleasure in gathering with the saints now have no business to look forward to the final gathering with the Lamb of God. There is a high possibility that the coronavirus lockdown has reminded God’s people of the temporary nature of our gathering. That one day, we will no longer gather here, but with the King of kings and the Lord of lords. Maranatha! 

This article was first published on this site  on April 11, 2020.

Written By Pastor Malamulo Chindongo of Antioch Baptist Church in Blantyre Malawi,  where he has been laboring since 2008. Author of Rethinking Guy/Girl Relationships 

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I am an African woman.

I am an African woman who is white.

If you are a black African woman, I can see your nostrils flare and smoke coming out of your ears as you indignantly whisper ‘How dare she call herself African!!’

Your black African identity has just presupposed superiority over my white African identity. Seriously, that is what you have just done. Default prejudices and stereotypical expectations and assumptions have been reinforced. I am pleading with you, my black ‘sistas,’ to just breathe, count to ten and to not stop reading.

I am an African Woman.

I was born in Africa and have lived here all my life.

I concede that my lineage and roots cannot be traced to Mapungubwe. My ancestors were not slaves. For all I know, my ancestors could have been slave traders.

I am a 4th generation South African whose paternal great grandparents were from England and whose maternal great grandparents were French Huguenots. My maternal grandfather was a true Afrikaans boer, a sheep farmer from Cradock.

My paternal grandfather left school at the age of 14 to learn a trade to support his mother and nine younger siblings after the death of his father.

I was born in the summer of ’69, [the only significance of this is that it is the title of a Bryan Adams song].

I am a product of growing up under the Apartheid regime on the side of white privilege.

My birthplace is a little town called Queenstown in the Eastern Cape.

I have lived in South Africa, Uganda and Rwanda.

I am an African woman.

I have realised that if there is any group in South Africa that can be pitied from a cultural richness and heritage perspective, it is us English white South Africans. Please hear me out. Perhaps the only card I can play is that we are a minority group! [I hope you can find the humour in this irony].

South Africans who have cultural and tribal allegiances have unique traditions and practices, be that Zulu, Xhosa etc. These could be traditional marriage practices, lobola, coming of age ceremonies, and traditional dress.

The Cape Malays have a rich food culture and lingo.

The Afrikaners have koeksusters, melktert, braaivleis and rugby.

What easily discernible traditions or cultural practices do I as a white English South African have? Perhaps white privilege? Are you slowly starting to feel sorry for me? Do you realise why I have an identity crisis?

Thabiti Anyabwile has so transformed my thinking on this idea of racial identity. His premise is the following: ‘The category of race is a social fiction. It is not a real Biblical category.’ [He refers to Acts 17:26] ‘The idea of race is an illusion. Nowhere in the Bible do you find anything describing race.’

He goes on further to explain that there is one Biblical story. We are one human race descended from Adam.

In Genesis 3, Eve is called the mother of all living.

After the flood, the rest of humanity descended from Noah and his sons.

We are all unified as descendants of Adam and Noah. The table of nations in Genesis 10 illustrates that all are descended from Noah’s sons. It does not mention race, but rather class, language and ethnicity. Thabiti argues that before Christian unity, there is biological unity because we are all descended from the same parents. ‘As Christians, we need a thorough rethinking of anthropology… We need some truth-telling in a vigorous Biblical way.’ 

So in the church, dear ‘sistas,’ we do not have the right to look at one another in terms of racial categories. That would be a sin. That would be racism. And it is a sin in the way racism has manifested itself in the hearts and actions of people. This may be historically justified but that doesn’t make it right.

I do not have the freedom to look at you and behold first your skin colour and base an entire narrative on that and you do not have the freedom to do that to me. Because of our citizenship in heaven, I have more in common with my black ‘sista’ in the pew than I do with my white neighbour who is an unbeliever. That is what Christ’s blood bought on the cross. We are co-heirs with Christ. We are one in Christ. As Jesus said in John 8:32, the Truth will always set us free. What more wonderful truths could there be for you and me than contained in these verses:

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.[Galatians3:28-29]

Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all. [Colossians 3:9-11]

Where does that leave you and me?

It leaves us deliberately and intentionally changing the way we look at each other. I must look at you with different eyes. You must look at me with different eyes. We must view each other through the lens of the Gospel of Grace. We are ‘sista’s in Christ.’

Tim Keller articulates this so clearly: ‘Racial pride and cultural narrowness cannot co-exist with the gospel of grace. They are mutually exclusive.’

Identity crisis? What crisis?

I am settled in this. My identity does not need to come from my skin colour, my language, my traditions or my cultural practices. None of that defines me. It may explain me, but it does not define me. My identity is found in Christ and that trumps all else, because that is eternal.

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