How We Respond Matters: Coronavirus and the Church

March 20, 2020

By
Peyton Jones

At a time when our nation is on lockdown for the Corona virus, I’m holed up writing a textbook. It truly feels like I’m fiddling as Rome burns. I’ve always been in the wrong place at the wrong time. When 9/11 hit, and the Passion film came out in this country, I was overseas and missed the opportunity to act. As I’m between church plants finishing up a manifesto of training the next generation of planters, I wanted to share my observations with the current generation of leaders.

This will be the road mark of a momentous epoch of history, and like 9/11 changed everything going forward, things will be different from now on. Like the space shuttle challenger disaster for my generation, and the duck and cover drills during the cold war, this will be a pivotal as a memory in the minds of my children forever. It will also be a pivotal time for the church to re-examine what church really is. I’ve been asking church planters for years to define what they would do to reach their communities if they could do anything but throw a Sunday service.

Sadly, I’ve seen the energy go into running the Sunday show remotely as if spiritual input was a streaming service like Netflix or Disney+. When the ship is sinking, all of the rats will run upwards to the last available dry spot. What I’m asking leaders to do is to jump into the water before the ship goes down. Some of us have been diving for years.

At this time, more than any other, I believe that the weaknesses of the Western church are being exposed. Allow me to quote a small portion of my last book, Reaching The Unreached: Becoming Raiders of the Lost Art, where I write, not to leaders, but to the believers everywhere:

“We’ve been expecting our church services to be the witnesses when we were told that we ourselves would be his witnesses. For decades the church bombarded the enemy with powerful mortars, like a massive battleship, while we safely stood on deck behind the armored plating, swabbing the decks, and doing other church chores. That worked great in the eighties, but in case you haven’t heard, the eighties were over a quarter of a century ago. Those days are done. That’s why those battle tactics won’t work anymore, and it’s time to regroup.

Reaching the unreached in the years to come will require people to infiltrate communities like Navy SEAL teams. Our military brass entrusts some of our most critical missions to SEAL teams because they can perform extractions where naval battleships fail. In the case of reaching the unreached the splinter cell approach is the right tool for the job. The average believer can infiltrate enemy territory throughout the week with the stealth of an airborne ranger, duck-dive over the railings, and plunge into the deep. If immersion into hostile waters is an occupational requirement of being a Navy SEAL, we’ve been unable to accomplish the mission because we’ve been afraid to get our feet wet. Just being you, filled with Christ will bring you many more conversations and experiences to proclaim Christ than seeking out a “mission.”

Stories have piled up about communities changed by small unassuming everyday believers discovering new and innovative ways of connecting with individuals as they blunder into mission. Big doors turn on small hinges. Tugboats turn tankers. Splinter cells can win wars. We’re in a different kind of battle, where individual guerilla tactics make you a fast moving, light footed, low to the ground reconnaissance weapon of witness. You won’t be effective in big numbers in the future. You won’t need the heavy artillery. You’re perfect for the job in a way that your church never will be. No matter what we do, no matter how many programs we launch, stadiums we fill, or outreaches we put on, statistics from Lifeway Research tell us that sixty percent of the un-churched American populace will never come to church. Period. It’s up to you. There is no cavalry riding over the hill, no big guns, no backup ground support, no rescue team coming.

Just you.”

Ministry according to Ephesians 4 says that the gifting of the church with shepherd, teachers, evangelists, prophets, and shepherds, is about “equipping the saints to do the work of the ministry”. That means that when something like the Corona virus hits, leaders should be thinking of it as a pop quiz to measure how effectively they’ve been discipling their congregations.

The church can shine bright, even on lockdown.

Our members can display peace in the midst of panic.
They can model sacrifice in contrast to the survival instincts of the hoarders.
They can keep the candle of hope lit as a beacon to those who are adrift and tossed by every wave of social media madness.

Perhaps it’s our people who should be instructed how to take meetings online. Maybe our people should be trained to gather online community groups on their street, and act as counselors. Perhaps all those years in small groups, where they learned to use their gifts, and get on mission…

READ THE REST OF PEYTON’S ARTICLE HERE.

Peyton Jones

Peyton Jones is a serial church planter, author, speaker, outreach consultant, and founder of NewBreed Training. Born in Washington, D.C. but raised in Huntington Beach, CA (Surf City), he married the girl he fell in love with at 17. He is the proud father of two amazing girls. Peyton served as a youth pastor, assistant pastor, and interim pastor of the mega church Refuge Huntington Beach that has served as his sending church since 1999 when he embarked on a 12-year mission to Wales UK. Originally serving as the Evangelist at Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones’s historic Sandfields church, Peyton served as both the interim pastor, and helped them plant their first church. From there, Peyton engaged in a replant of a Baptist congregation in West Wales, which grew and led to Peyton planting a collegiate church in a neutral venue based around discussion groups. Peyton’s church planting experience include planting a church out of a Starbucks, which multiplied three churches, to planting a church in urban Long Beach, that also planted two other churches. In both the U.K. and United States, Peyton formed NewBreed Training, a training collective that specializes planting in hard places utilizing 1st century principles. NewBreed is a collaborative network and Peyton has served Presbyterian (Welsh Calvinistic Methodist), Baptist, Southern Baptist, Calvary Chapel, RCA, and Nazarene churches over the years. Peyton has also been bi-vocational for nearly 20 years, using his RN license, serving as a firefighter, factory worker, barista, online university instructor, or anything that will help him accomplish the mission. Peyton also co-founded Church Planter Magazine, the Church Planter Podcast, Hardcore Church Planting Podcast, and the Ministry Ninja Podcast. Peyton is passionate about writing (Church Zero 2013; Reaching The Unreached 2017; Church Plantology 2021; and Discipology 2026), and training. Training under Mac Lake, Peyton assisted NAMB in a training rewrite project, and managed training for the Western United States/Canada. In addition, Peyton has developed his own training called CityWide that trains planters in collaborative church planting teams wired for multiplication, and Jump School (a six-month training for planters to train their core teams). Peyton has also served as Content Director for both Exponential and Through the Word, helping develop transformative resources for a wide audience of Christians and church leaders.

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