The Government and Covid-19
We have recently experienced something which none of us will have experienced in NZ, the government ordered churches not to gather for worship. Of course, they did not single out religious groups alone to be closed down, but for the first time that any of us have experienced in this context, we were forbidden to meet for worship. Questions arose in our minds about the rightness of this act, and these questions were multiplied as we hit the various alert levels, and especially as we were coming out of the stricter levels into those with more freedom. Questions like...
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The Church and Covid-19
The recent pandemic has raised questions over the nature of the church. All over the world governments asked churches to close and many have taken to streaming church, essentially replicating the church service but having online versions of it. There have been some bold statements like, Church will never be the same again, if things like the hug and the handshake have to go, so do various forms of worship like sharing a communion cup, or too much singing because of how much of our germs we are pushing out into the air around us. Some have relished the...
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God and Covid-19
We are interrupting our series on Luke to do a Christian analysis on Covid-19. Here in NZ we are very blessed to be at alert level 1, but this is still a living reality for many in the rest of the world. My concern in doing this is a pastoral one. More than ever before we have been inundated with the voices of the media in analysing what has recently happened. We have all been tuned into the media and been saturated with their perceptions, judgements, and problem solving principles. We have all learnt new words and concepts and...
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