Undoubtedly, this has been a challenging year for the whole world due to the pandemic, but mainly for our church, which is going through a process of structural reorganization, which runs through its schedule of activities, as well as its administrative obligations. This is a year of moving God's cloud over his church!

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We started the year by resuming our face-to-face activities, in accordance with the current Municipal Decree, and so we continue, with the change of address of the church. We started 2021 with many administrative adjustments, the main ones of which were fulfilled according to the law, but others will still need to be applied with the challenges of getting around and searching for a property of your own. Together with the leadership of the church, we have prepared an agenda of activities, aiming at the better organization and dissemination of annual works, which now needs to be rethought due to space and activity limitations. We restarted the cellular works for communion, prayer and Bible study, which will only meet again virtually, due to the worsening of the sanitary crisis in the city and in the country. Anyway, we are being challenged to always do the best, even when we are surprised. This is a year of reforms!

 

However, even in the face of extraordinary measures, we have avoided improvisation in all our administrative or ecclesiastical actions. Our services are carefully prepared throughout the week, our social media rigorously updated every Sunday, our schedules completed, our meetings held, our council meetings held, our financial commitments made, our missionary partners assisted and all Small Group fed.

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Practically speaking, our activity dynamics will not change much with Small Groups meetings during the week, even remotely, as well as in relation to the Sunday Evening Service. As we have already written in previous articles, our church was born with this perspective. Our initial vision was of a low-cost church and combating religious activism. So, the more communion, involvement and at the same time detachment from bureaucratic and administrative burdens, the more time we have to serve the Lord outside the church, with the content we receive, we will have.

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The church should always seek simple and objective ways of serving the Lord, aiming not to overload the faithful, especially the most dedicated, with the excess of activities that could often have been compressed and used with the maximum strength of the congregation in strategic days and times. For example, last Sunday, March 21st, we managed to hold a quiet Extraordinary Assembly, just before the service at 18:00, where we had a good presence of members and tranquility to deal with four complex issues, in 40 minutes. There was even time for water and coffee! However, attempts at previous calls in the Sunday morning period have been thwarted by the absence of members who prefer to go to church in the afternoon on Sundays.

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We need to be practical, economical, objective and effective in the Lord's work. When we look at the ministry of Christ, we see that he always had a very clear objective in his actions, when, for example, he created all the logistics of his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, on the so-called Ramos Day, which is celebrated in the Catholic tradition on the day today, March 28th. Jesus observed the event area, Jerusalem, over a hill (v.1); he appointed helpers, who were his disciples (v.2); he requested adequate transportation for that event (v.2b); and prepared his workers for opposition (vv. 3 and 5). The name of this is administrative strategy! Through it Jesus has always been successful!

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The primitive church itself did not have a temple to gather, but it used Solomon's Portico, a more public area of ​​the Jerusalem Temple to spread the Gospel to the masses and their famous domestic meetings, from house to house, where they broke bread and they lived in communion (Acts 2: 42-47).

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With these guiding principles, our church will continue on its path, always guided by the Spirit of God who enables us and sends us to preach the Gospel to the whole creature, starting from Jerusalem, which is our city!

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May the Lord bless us!