Going in circles?

Feel like your church is going in circles? Feel like your church is just treading water or going round and round in a holding pattern?

This isn’t the way we would choose to do things – stuck in our homes, maintaining social distancing. Pastors are preaching to camera. Small groups are “meeting” via Zoom. This isn’t how church is supposed to be!

“God has a habit of using the “wrong” methods to achieve his desired ends. ”

What could God be thinking? This is not how to grow the Kingdom. The family of God operates best face-to-face. Even God chose to come down as a human being in order to speak with and touch humanity.

All of our plans for the spring and the summer are blown to pieces. All of our vision-casting and strategies are on hold or scuttled. What we thought was the best path forward is no longer an option.

Time for Plan B.

Except maybe Plan B was Plan A all along. God has a habit of using the “wrong” methods to achieve his desired ends. Sometimes God’s plans seem to be totally impractical or even nonsensical.

Think of Joshua and the battle of Jericho. Jericho was a nearly impregnable fortress, but surely with the right tactics or the right siege engines, the Israelites’ superior numbers would win the day.

But God’s strategy was not a traditional one. His general told Joshua to have the people march in circles around Jericho. Do you feel like your church is going in circles? Well, that is literally what God told Israel to do.

In the end, God’s crazy strategy worked. All of that circle-walking and shouting and trumpet-blasting brought down the walls. But that’s not really how it happened. Nothing that the Israelites did had any direct correlation with the walls falling. It was all God. God brought down the walls in response to the Israelites’ obedience to God’s crazy plan.

And this is what God is asking from us today. He wants us to be faithful to do church the best we can in this unusual way. It is not ideal. Sometimes it may not look like our current methods are the best way to build the kingdom. But if we obediently walk in these circles, might we see God respond by taking down some walls?

Randall Curtis serves as the Rhode Island regional coordinator for the Baptist Convention of New England.