Building not simply churches, but building THE church, worldwide, is no mean feat. Part of the barrier to doing so is the existence of so many legacy churches left by the schisms of history. The pandemic broke up this fallow ground, so now there is more of an open field and many people not attending any church but aware of their personal beliefs and doubts about religion. What is needed is for circles of real belief to form, in which sheep find each other among the goats, and start to meet together as sheep, for the name of the Shepherd. This is some way off. Everyone still thinks of church as something already formed and functioning in old fashioned ways, but most of all, unchanging, unchangeable, and if irrelevant, then always so. Many no longer attend services like that. The pandemic lockdowns stopped that habit, and for many it never restarted. Weddings still happen, funerals, and maybe Christmas and the like. But we all of us learned for up to two years of pandemic to live our lives without going to church. Now we can choose whether to start going again, but this time out of something other than habit. It needs a deliberate choice to go back to that habit. But there had always been a big question, even in days when attending church was for many a simply normal fact of life. Are the churchgoers actually real in their faith, such that they would visit me in time of need, and help me? Or are they going through the motions of church attendance but not the religious reality of following Jesus Christ as his true sheep? Now is time to aim for church to be real. A reset could take place. The sheep could seek each other out, and meet truly in the name of the one they honour as their true shepherd, Jesus. The fallow ground is broken up, but now is time for planting good seed.
