Do Not Give Up Meeting Together
By Goldie Chong
Times are changing because of Covid-19. We cannot pine for the good old days. We must be creative to adopt and adapt to new ways. How do we continue to obey the Scriptures which tell us: “Do not give up meeting together”? Can we still comply during a lockdown?
An Alternative
Restrictions due to COVID-19 have wreaked havoc in many churches but on the other hand, we have seen opportunities that we have never thought of before. One idea which we got from Ed Silvoso, founder of Harvest Evangelism, was to make our family an ekklesia which means ‘church’ in Greek. A church is not a building. It is the people who gather in the Name of Jesus: “where two or three are gathered in My Name, there am I in the midst of them”. So Tek and I began to use our home as our ekklesia and do our ministry in our neighbourhood.
Start Praying
When I was working in my garden, I saw a Chinese mother and her toddler out for a stroll. We struck up a conversation and I offered to give her a pot of mint for her to grow. After several encounters, I found that some missionaries have been visiting her and given her a Bible. Since COVID-19, they have not visited for some time, so I offered to read the Bible with her. We met once a week with her continually showing interest in studying the Bible. Finding out her husband was from Malaysia, I suggested that Tek meet him. The whole family visited our fellowship which was held in our neighbourhood cafe. Following that, we invited them for lunch in our home where they were surprisingly open in bringing up some family issues. Tek suggested meeting up with the husband to talk more. So, step by step we are becoming closer neighbours and friends. They have brought up their needs, and by connecting them to God, we believe God will draw them to Himself.
Another Neighbour
For many months, I noticed an old lady walking past our house several times a day. I always waved to her and knew she goes to the church in our neighbourhood. When I asked her about her church activities, she sighed, “there are no activities in the church because of COVID-19.” I suggested we read the Bible together. She readily agreed so we started meeting at my house every Friday. Sometimes she does not show up as being in her 80s she gets forgetful. But eventually, she got into the habit of coming regularly. Her husband had died, and she came from China to Perth to live with her son’s family and to look after her grandchildren. When they grew up, she moved out and lived on her own. We enjoy our chats and Bible studies (although I must admit I don’t understand her dialect entirely) but being well-taught in her church she has good spiritual insights. I am encouraging her to reach out to her family members and friends.
Sharing the Vision
We are encouraging our fellowship members to start their own ekklesia, especially to reach out to relatives and neighbours. They lamented that it was extremely difficult to invite them to church outreach programs, so we suggested an easier way was to invite them to the home first.
How Do We Start Our Own Ekklesia?
We discussed some simple steps learnt from Ed Silvoso which we called the Luke Ten Principle because it is based on Jesus’ instructions for evangelism in Luke 10:1-9:
- Pray that God will bring a ‘man of peace’ – a relative, old friend, neighbour, etc. who you can relate to and feel comfortable with.
- Build a relationship with them by meeting up, doing something, getting to know each other, etc. Invite them to your home before inviting them to church.
- When they bring up a need, offer to pray with them. When they are connected to God their heart will open to hear more of your wonderful God.
Another Ekklesia
May shared her story. “For Christmas, I felt the Lord wanted me to invite my in-laws for lunch. To my joy they accepted. I wanted to bring in some meaningful conversation about God. At a loss how to begin, I prayed, and God brought it about when my son’s girlfriend shared her story of how she was born without a lung and how with her parents’ fervent prayer she went through a successful operation at the age of three. Now a teenager in university, she is a committed Christian living a normal life. With everyone’s interest aroused at the power of prayer, I offered to pray for a blessing over each of them. They readily accepted.”
May has since followed up with the same relatives for Chinese New Year lunch. We believe good things will continue.
Long-term Follow-up
The ekklesia we started at home will continue until such time we can transition our friends to our fellowship group, then to our church. By then they will have a foundation and can adapt easily to a larger group of believers who will provide more facilities to meet their variety of needs. Our main aim is to personally reach out to those in our circle of influence, to arouse their interest and desire to know God. We trust that if we do our part step by step, God will continue to work.
